The Image of Violence

I've seen the future, baby, and it's 1994's Natural Born Killers on Disney+. I assume it's on Hulu in the U.S. but, here in Japan, one of the favourite movies of the Columbine shooters is available on to-day's equivalent of the Disney Channel. I didn't see that coming. Or maybe I kind of did. It's all right there in the movie itself, after all; a society so desensitised to violence that they venerate killers. Director Oliver Stone's Big Message, though, about how media perpetuates a cycle of violence, comes off pretty trite if you read Quentin Tarantino's far superior original screenplay for the film, which is more about the difference between real and fictional violence.

Oliver Stone is not a smart man. I remember listening to his commentary for the scene in which tabloid journalist Wayne Gayle (Robert Downey Jr.) interviews serial killer Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson). Stone compared it to Geraldo Rivera's interview with Charles Manson and observed how Manson actually came off as more intelligent in the interview than Rivera. In the original screenplay, Tarantino describes Wayne Gayle as a journalist like Geraldo Rivera so maybe Tarantino had the same thing in mind. But however superior Stone may feel to Rivera, I think the two have a lot in common. He portrays Wayne Gayle as a fool who is eventually caught up in the glamour of Mickey and Mallory. Stone himself, in recent years, has become enamoured of Vladimir Putin, though he did condemn the invasion of Ukraine. It's no surprise to find that, in comparing the Tarantino screenplay and the film Stone shot, that Stone was clearly seduced by Mickey and Mallory, too, just like one of the suckers he was supposedly lampooning.

He gives Mallory (Juliette Lewis) a tragic backstory with abusive parents and, in this context, Mickey becomes the hero who helps her escape by murdering the two. Stone's other most notable contribution is a Native American shaman who is essentially portrayed as saving the souls of the killers.

One of the scenes cut from the film, that existed in Tarantino's screenplay, is a courtroom scene in which Mickey, acting as his own defence attorney, taunts and murders one of his victims on the stand (Ashley Judd). In an interview included with the scene, Stone confirms that the shaman scene was meant to show that Mickey and Mallory were no longer meant to be viewed as killers afterwards.

The real villains in Stone's film are Wayne Gayle and the police detective Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). Both characters, particularly Wayne Gayle, are much more complicated in Tarantino's screenplay, which could be said not to have heroes or villains at all. Which would have been normal for Tarantino in the '90s. Is anyone really a hero in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction? Mickey and Mallory do bear some resemblance to the protagonists of True Romance, a Tony Scott movie with a Tarantino screenplay.

Part of the reason Tarantino's movies are great, usually even better than the exploitation films that inspired him, is that he doesn't feel the need to make a protagonist likable. Real people can do or say things you like one moment and in the next do something you absolutely abhor. Lesser filmmakers can lose the thread too easily if they start to like a character. Stone liked Mickey and Mallory so, in his version, Mallory couldn't use a racial slur, and he couldn't portray any of their victims as human. Wayne Gayle gets it the worst. As good as Robert Downey Jr is, Stone's version reduces him to a slobbering cartoon character. In Tarantino's screenplay, he's very much like Geraldo Rivera. Shallow but not a psychopath. Not unlike Oliver Stone.

The dichotomy Tarantino was considering in writing the screenplay becomes more apparent when you compare it to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Others have noted he essentially transferred Mickey's dissing of Bruce Lee to a scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In interviews, Tarantino has talked about the difference he sees in Lee's Martial Arts, which is effectively more of a performance, and the skills of a real killer like Brad Pitt's character--or Mickey in Natural Born Killers. Again, it's about a comparison between real violence and movie violence. The two things are very different animals.

Stone's film does have a great soundtrack, though. At times it functions like a great music video for a mix tape. Leonard Cohen, Patsy Cline, Patti Smith, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails. Back in high school, when all I listened to was movie soundtracks, the Natural Born Killers soundtrack was one of my gateway drugs to a lot of other music. Though, at that point, I already admired Trent Reznor from the Lost Highway soundtrack.

I read Tarantino's screenplay for Natural Born Killers for the first time this morning. I was intrigued that he had Wayne Gayle's cameraman, Roger, argue that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is Steven Spielberg's best film. Tarantino occasionally puts his own opinions in the mouths of his characters and this felt like one of those times. But when I looked for lists of Tarantino favourite movies, the only Spielberg film I saw was Jaws at number 11. But then I found a Vanity Fair interview in which Tarantino describes the opening action sequence in Temple of Doom as one of the best of all time. So I guess there was indeed a little bit of Tarantino himself in "Roger". I guess it would have been boring to have Roger claim Jaws as Spielberg's best film, Temple of Doom is the more provocative opinion. I don't know if I agree with Roger but I do think Temple of Doom is the best Indiana Jones film.

Violent Worlds

I watched the first episode of the new Stranger Things season last night but I want to avoid making a full review until I've watched through all the new episodes that were put on Netflix. But it was a very strong season premiere and I found myself comparing it to Obi-Wan Kenobi, which it easily outshines. It's funny how a show that deliberately uses stock characters from the 1980s manages to make more complex and interesting characters than most shows.

I couldn't help being struck by two aspects of the show, though, that echo current issues--violence in high schools and a threat posed by Russia. I think the season was more or less in the can before Russia invaded Ukraine though, of course, violence in American schools has become an all too common occurrence. On Friday, a fellow teacher at the Japanese junior high school where I work asked me about the recent mass shooting in Texas. She told me a lot of people in Japan are talking about it. I was a little surprised and admitted that, since it has become so sadly common in the U.S., I hadn't actually paid much attention to the story.

Generally, feelings about the U.S. seem to be positive among the people I meet in Japan but quite a few regard Americans with horror and disgust. Sometimes I overhear things from people who assume my Japanese isn't as good as it is. I remember once overhearing someone at one school trying to mollify a teacher regarding my presence by reminding her that the U.S. is also responsible for Microsoft and Google, companies with a ubiquitous presence in Japan. Then, of course, there's Disney, Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and various other companies and brands. I wonder if it's really reassuring. Is it a reminder that America is responsible for good things or just awareness that Japan has irrevocably bitten of the same fruit so they better hope American culture isn't inherently corrosive?

I have talked to students with parents who are fearful about their children being exposed to too much negativity. I was reminded of this in the scenes featuring Dungeons & Dragons on Stranger Things and references to the 1980s' "Satanic Panic". Yet I can't remember the last time I saw the level of ultraviolence I saw on the latest season of Kimetsu no Yaiba, which seems to be popular with people of all ages.

I'm long past having any qualms about making or viewing art with dark themes or a willingness to explore the worst impulses of the human heart. But I'm constantly confronted by the debate, both from the U.S. and Japan. I can only hope that people aren't diverted from the contemplation of human nature I think is truly necessary in art for all sorts of reasons, the understanding of real violence being one of them.

Once Upon a Violent Time

It's been over a week now since Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was released in the US. In that time, the movie's done well for something that's not another prefab Disney blockbuster and its detractors have had a remarkably difficult time articulating any kind of moral argument against it. The best anyone was able to come up with is that Bruce Lee's daughter and protégée disapprove of how Lee was portrayed in the film as a bit arrogant. This holds no water, though, for anyone who's seen any interview with Bruce Lee.

I thought Lee actually came off pretty well in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, particularly in the flashback of Lee training Sharon Tate for The Wrecking Crew.

Over at The Atlantic, reviews have been positive. One--I guess I'll call it an exceptio--is this article by Spencer Kornhaber. I hesitate to call it an exception because its arguments are so vague and unformed. Sometimes he seems to like the movie, other times he seems to be arguing that it's empty and callous, even dangerous. But the article interested me because Kornhaber focused on the same thing I focused on in my review, the apparent statement in the film about the difference between fantasy violence and real violence and the nature of how the former might influence the latter. This idea has taken on a new relevance, too, after the recent series of mass shootings which President Trump responded to by putting the blame, in part, on violent video games. Also at The Atlantic, Ian Bogost has written a pretty thorough article on research that has gone into the potential influence of video games on violent behaviour and the history of politicians, on the right and the left, crusading against video games.

In light of this, Kornhaber's article on the same site seems odd and sloppy, not for expressing a contrary opinion but for the lack of effort Kornhaber put into his argument. In discussing the motives Sadie Atkins (Mikey Madison) expresses in the film for committing murder, Kornhaber asserts "the film could almost be read as taking Atkins’s stance," without explaining what he means by this. Tarantino gives Atkins some dialogue in which she argues that people who are responsible for creating violent media, like Leonardo DiCaprio's character Rick Dalton, are in fact murderers because of the crimes they inspire and should be killed. Where in the movie does Tarantino take a position even "almost" like that?

Kornhaber goes on to write:

Once Upon a Time has been widely interpreted as an elegy for a beloved cinematic era that ended with the cultural shifts of the late ’60s, which were embodied by Manson’s curdled, deranged hippiedom. But it could be argued—and, indeed, is argued by Atkins in the film—that the film industry’s bloodthirstiness corrupted a generation that then murdered its idols. Old Hollywood, in Atkins’s reading, created the Mansons, seeding its own destruction. Sure, "it could be argued," but not very intelligently or well or anywhere in the movie except by Atkins. Where else in the movie is anyone encouraged to murder the idols of Hollywood?

It's ironic that Kornhaber claims the film's argument is incoherent and "facile" as those words fit his own argument pretty well. One quote he pulls from a 1994 interview (but Kornhaber added an exclamation point to the quote) seems especially timely;

[Bruce] Willis - who is currently making a third Die Hard film and also plays a double-crossing boxer in Pulp Fiction - recognizes an essential distinction between the two kinds of productions. In the Die Hard movies, he said, violence is a gimmick.

"In every reel, there has to be some big thing, an explosion or a big action 'beat,' " he explained. In Pulp Fiction, the brutality "all comes out of human beings just behaving, and not because it's time for an explosion. . . . I think that's the big difference."

The suddenness of the new violence also sets it apart.

"In real life," Tarantino reflected, "when violence enters our world . . . it kind of just rears its ugly head and we are not prepared for it."

No scary music. No ominous shadows. No warning signs.

The filmmaker suggested an example: You're in a restaurant, enjoying a pleasant dinner, chatting with some friends.

"All of a sudden, three tables away, some man smacks his wife," he said. "Whoa! It comes out of nowhere. It affects everything!

"And I'm not interested in just the act - the act of the guy smacking his wife," he went on. "I'm interested in what happens after that."

As we've seen again and again in mass shootings, the killer's motives tend to have little or nothing to do with the people he actually killed--the violence, as Tarantino says, seems to come out of nowhere, with no logical context, but obviously it affects everything. Much like the real life Manson killings the motives for which are difficult to untangle from the incoherent testimonies of the killers and other Family members. What had Sharon Tate to do with Manson's prophesied race war? It all seems likely to have been related to the fact that Manson's former associate Terry was the former occupant of Tate's house and she became the victim of his irrational resentment, and maybe the even less concrete class resentment of the Family members who perpetrated the killing. Simply put, mass murder is a crazy thing to do and it tends to be done for crazy reasons.

But in spending so much time talking about whether Once Upon a Time "absolves" fantasy violence of culpability, Kornhaber misses what's right in front of him, which is the film's argument for the positive function of fantasy violence. This comes from a general problem in criticism in which critics are unable to differentiate between different kinds of fictional violence. It would of course be inappropriate for there to be a scene in the middle of Schindler's List where a starving Jewish man is suddenly able to crush every Nazi guard's skull in a flurry of martial arts prowess. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take pleasure in Indiana Jones wailing on another Nazi in another movie. Some violence in films is there to give us an impression of a horrible experience, some violence is cathartic. And there can be overlap, certainly, as in Yojimbo where we feel the horror of Sanjuro getting worked over--but then it's even more satisfying and cathartic when he prevails against the people who hurt him.

This is what Tarantino is doing in Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. These aren't propaganda films, or they're not meant to be--they're not misleading us about what really happened. Because we already know. Tarantino is arguing that there's value in fantasy that's not about tricking people or deluding them. It's not such a radical idea--we can read Lord of the Rings and appreciate it without believing in the existence of Hobbits and Elves.

Twitter Sonnet #1264

Contestants change for chocolate dressing capes.
Beneath the suffered hat's a thorny web.
A town descends to sleep behind the drapes.
Appointed times allow the thoughts to ebb.
The waggon filled with stones began to move.
A push above the hill and time was out.
And then a wobbly wheel was locked a groove.
Became the fabled train and stuck the route.
The stars were bubbles, nights in certain clubs.
Through quiet tunnels certain ghosts remain.
A foreign movie played with English subs.
Immersive tubes could race a bullet train.
In skinny forests, ruins clearly stood.
Translucent dances burn the brittle wood.