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Screen violence not all bad
By Mary Shaffer But despite superior writing, acting and filmmaking, some films have simply been too tough for mass audiences. They prefer the entertainment of such cartoon violence as the Rocky and Terminator films to the harsh realities of "The Deer Hunter" (1978) and "Raging Bull" (1980). Some film fans find life difficult enough without turning the pleasure of a darkened theater into more depressing news. The entertainment and news industries get blamed for promoting violence by glamorizing crimes and criminals, as if evil would vanish if TV shows and movies all had happy endings. Bruce Willis, star of such violent films as 1994's "Pulp Fiction," noted: "Two million people just got killed in Rwanda. I doubt any of them saw my movies. It's a violent world." Ignoring the darker sides of humanity won't make them go away or help us understand how and why they exist. Knowledge is power. What makes people and society turn violent? Are they fighting for survival, a cause or just the hell of it? What does their fight say about our world? Great films explore those questions rather than exploit them. Hollywood has rewarded films from "Little Caesar" (1930) to "Unforgiven" (1992) with almost 200 Academy Award nominations for best picture, acting, directing and writing. Quentin Tarantino's astonishing black comedy "Pulp Fiction" joined the list with XXX nominations on Tuesday. This is a triumph of great writing, with an ingenious plot and inventive dialogue. "Pulp Fiction" moves down unexpected alleys, surprising viewers with its lurid yet complex and interwoven tale of drug dealers, hit men, prizefighters, perverts, lovers and thieves. Yet the film rarely shows any violence. It is the intensity, subject matter and plot twists that shock us. Michael Cimino's powerful "Deer Hunter" has only three very brief scenes of bloodshed, but it remains one of the most difficult films we've ever watched three times. Most of the violence is psychological. The key images are Russian roulette and a deer hunt, one a game of random death symbolizing America's involvement in Vietnam and the other a game of skill and tradition with a code of honor. The film is grim, deeply disturbing and haunting. Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull" traces a different war, the brutality middleweight boxing champion Jake La Motta routinely inflicted on people in and out of the ring. "Raging Bull" is a tour de force of moviemaking, using black and white film, slow motion, point-of-view camera angles and long tracking shots to reveal La Motta's savage character. La Motta's not evil or malicious. He's angry, paranoid, instinctual and without self-awareness, a raging beast unable to control his appetite for food and women and only able to express himself through his fists. Yet Scorsese makes La Motta sympathetic when he has a single moment of personal insight all alone in a dark jail cell, beating his head and hands into an unforgiving wall. Man and society act equally bestial in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), a symphony of destruction set to classical and popular music -- from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to "Singing in the Rain." This futuristic satire catches a society in decline, a culture heading into chaos and barbarism, where the establishment is as threatening to the human spirit as the worst street gang. A vicious hoodlum loves Beethoven and randomly beating and raping people. Then he is imprisoned, drugged, subjected to behavior modification, exploited by politicians and left homeless and defenseless on the streets he once terrorized. The victim and victimer seem interchangeable. Richard Brooks follows a similar trail with "In Cold Blood" (1967), a superb cinematic adaptation of Truman Capote's book about the killers and victims destroyed by a senseless, vicious true crime that shocked the nation 35 years ago. Two ex-cons slaughter the Clutters, a hard-working Kansas farm family, because the killers believed a cellmate's fantasy tale of treasure hidden in the house. The victims were irrelevant to the crime, one killer explained just before his execution. "It had nothing to do with the Clutters. They just happened to be there. I thought Mr. Clutter was a very nice man...right up until when I cut his throat." That act, unfortunately, pales compared with today's drive-by shootings, serial killers, cannibalism and preteen hit men. Many a film that offended audiences 60 years ago now seems nostalgically simple and good-hearted. James Cagney shocked audiences by jamming a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face in "Public Enemy" (1931). a far cry from the wife-beating and murder that fills today's news. Censors in 1932 feared Howard Hawks' "Scarface" romanticized gangsters and delayed the film's release a year until the studio tacked on a preachy, overly moral ending denoucing mobsters. "Bonnie and Clyde" now seems dated, but was extremely controversial in 1967 and remains relevant, touching on how the media made heroes out of common criminals so folks forgot their troubles during the Depression. The film portrays the couple who robs banks and kills people as modern Robin Hoods until they are brutally gunned down in what was considered a shocking, excessively violent ending. The film's director Arthur Penn said that eliminating violence from movies would be "like eliminating one of the primary colors from the palette of the painter."
Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram- Tribune reporter. Filmmography
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