MovieChat Forums > The Proposition (2006) Discussion > Given the choice: Hanged, or Flogged?

Given the choice: Hanged, or Flogged?

posted 12 years ago by foebane72
4 replies | jump to latest

I mean, hanging is excruciating as you're choking and gagging for air and all the time your neck is highly constricted meaning blood is painfully trying to force its way past the rope into your hypoxiaing brain... but you're guaranteed to lose consciousness quickly and die soon after.

But with flogging, it lasts longer and is just as excruciatingly painful if not more, and you're just as likely to die as well.

So that dick with the moustache orders 100 lashes for our Mikey in addition to the eventual hanging, and after only 40 lashes and a hideous spectacle that revolts all the initially-eager spectators AND leaves Mikey mortally wounded from massive scarring, trauma and loss of blood, he is spared the hanging because he will die before then, but has suffered more in the meantime.

This scene was quite traumatic, and the brilliant performance by Richard Wilson was utterly compelling. He was great in that role.

In any case, how would you like to go, if you were faced with only those two choices? 100 lashes to the back, or hanging?

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[–] Nosferatu6979 12 years ago

That decision is pretty much a no-brainer. Hanging, if it's done properly, is much more humane than flogging. You only asphxyiate and suffer if it's not done right. When done correctly, your neck instantly snaps and you die very quickly. A lot of hangmen would do it wrong just to torture the person more, but if you are lucky enough to know your hangman is a consummate professional, you'll be dead quick!

[–] eYeDEF 12 years ago

There is a chance you could survive a flogging though.

[–] Zero1020 12 years ago

He only died from the flogging cause he was still young. Many grown men have survived hundreds of floggings.

As far as I know nobody has survived a hanging. (If you survived the first hanging they'd just do it again until it worked.)

I'd go with the flogging cause after 20 or so you probably wouldn't feel it too much from the nerve endings being stripped away.

[–] memres 12 years ago

The ferocity and brutality of flogging depicted here--and in most films, is excessive. While there were many incidents of real cruelty with terrible results, these seem to have been the exception rather than the rule; this nonetheless inhuman treatment was generally applied with much more restraint. In director Peter Weir's commentary to the DVD of his 2001 "Master and Commander," he explains that flogging in the British navy--a film set eighty years earlier--was not administered to impair men's abilities, and specifically "not as they show in the movies." Indeed, in the actual diaries of William Bligh of the "Bounty," he laments that he had to order a "very severe flogging of 18 lashes"--mild by movie standards. It doubtless varied, but there were guidelines. As applied to children--Mike Burns is fourteen, this is beyond the historical pale, though of course, it carries the plot forward. An earlier version, presented as a "deleted scene," counts only to 23 strokes before Martha faints and an already unconscious Mike is released. Obviously, in the final version, for a minor to receive an inhuman 40--with an even more grotesque intended 100, was intended to reinforce its savagery and the near-certainty of the character's death, despite its improbability.