The Slap

The thousands of words on Twitter reflected my own emotions as I watched ABC TV’s The Slap last week. One tweet said: “it’s totally brutal!”, another: “searing, uncomfortable melancholy” and one more: “did anyone else’s heart sink tonight watching The Slap?”

Mine certainly did and I was not the only one. It was a bit close to the bone for many, as it shone an unceremonious light on characters’ Aisha and Hector’s 16-year marriage.

As I watched Aisha fake anger and hurt at Hector’s admission of his minor infidelity, all the while withholding her own more major dalliance, an image of marriage popped into my head: Marriage is a bonfire stack piling higher and higher with hurts, waiting for a spark to ignite an explosion of desire or destruction.

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Should it be a crime to hit your child? Throw that question around at your next barbeque and see how people respond. Chances are you won’t be talking about the price of real estate, religion, sex or politics anymore. But prepare to be shocked, because few questions can divide people as much as this one.

You could also just switch on the television this Thursday night and watch the new ABC series, The Slap, for the same effect. The television adaptation of the 2008 book of the same name by Australian author Christos Tsiolkas follows the lives of a group of family and friends ripped apart after one of their number slaps a child that is not his own during a backyard barbeque in Melbourne. 

The series is expected to cause a stir. Faithful to the book, the TV script promises to mirror the incidents through the contrasting reflections of its characters - an “examination of the mores and morals of the middle class”, a “satanic version of Neighbours” and a “perfect social document of what Australia is today.”

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