Violence a la Mode

When Buzzine needed a senior editor to write the Classic Corner, they chose a real “classic,” since I had seen and loved Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932, and sat on the edge of my seat when Clark Gable tossed Charles Laughton overboard in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). I got the job. But my age places me in the demographic which occasionally leaves the mahjongg game at the Senior Center to see Enchanted April and avoids films marked violence and strong language.

Forget demographics. I announced that I intended to sample the summer pop favorites, Wanted and Hellboy II. My younger son warned me: “Stay away from Wanted. Too violent for you.” He had seen me, years earlier, run out of a screening room in alarm when he showed a Clive Barker flick in which the protagonist got a medal and pinned it into his bare skin. “Mom,” he laughed, “it’s just make-believe.”

Well, I’ve been seeing films long enough to know real from make-believe. (And let’s just leave Clive Barker out of the argument. I know the prick of pins in bare skin when I feel it.) But, violence on my mind, I entered the cineplex with two questions: The first was: Are films today really more violent? The second: is this violence doing us real harm?

But wait. Hasn’t there always been violence on screen? I recall back in 1965 a great film called The Pawnbroker, where Rod Steiger, in a moment of extreme angst, shoved his hand on a metal paper holder, running the long needle clear through (it hurts me to think of that scene). Also, back in 1981 in a film called Eye of the Needle, Kate Nelligan sees the hand of Nazi spy Donald Sutherland trying to get in the door to harm her and her son. She takes a hatchet and chops off a couple of fingers. He, other side of the door, holds his maimed hand and howls in pain. I felt that pain. One of the best all-time TV series, I, Claudius (1976), contained one of the most violent scenes I recall: John Hurt (as a young actor – you see him as an old man in Hellboy II) plays Caligula who decides that his wife’s unborn child will try to replace him. He strings her up and…ee gods what a terrible scene.

I hardly noticed the violence in Wanted. I was too involved with figuring out why weavers should become assassins and how many people were saved by one assassination while the hero is throwing trains off tracks and killing hundreds in the process. Anyhow, I had seen a similar story in Star Chamber, and didn’t Luke Skywalker go searching for a real father and find a villain?

I soon realized that I was only watching a “cartoon” and, just as Daffy Duck doesn’t get concussions from being hit over the head with hard objects, nobody here is really getting hurt. It was just “make believe.” In fact, the most ardent fans of Wanted, in my social circle, are two totally Alice-in-Wonderland girls who love the movie because it “goes by fast and it’s fun!” And one woman of my age, whose life is as bland as oatmeal, and loved the vicarious thrill. (In the same way, a woman I know who would catch flies and let them out the window for fear of harming a reincarnated soul adores Dexter, which, if you are not a fan, celebrates a serial killer who bleeds his victims and packages up the parts like hamburger at Ralph’s meat department).

In these poporn make-believe violence movies, when you see your heroes running down a narrow canyon with a huge stone ball rolling after and about to squash them, you know you are only halfway through the film and you need these characters to finish. When Keanu Reeves in Matrix (the good first one) shoots the dozen huge guns chewing up all the scenery, you know that nobody is actually going to get hurt except maybe a stunt man hit by flying bits.

On the other hand, being an actual cartoony film, Hellboy II had all the human attributes that I, a former schoolteacher, consider great.

In our reality where “bad guys” are actually “getting away with it,” where two of last year’s “best of the best” had villains who actually walked away without retribution (it’s getting very scary), Hellboy beats the bad guys. In these bad times, I need a hero to win in the end.

Also – more important to young viewers – kids see a hero who, by world’s standards, is judged unattractive since he’s huge, red, and has horns, yet a beautful woman sees through his outward appearance and loves him for his good heart. Of course, she catches fire when she’s upset…but who doesn’t? As good a morality tale as the old Grimm’s fairy tales, which were indeed pretty violent.

So then is the upsurge of “real violence” in contemporary film a danger to society? From personal experience, I have to report that seeing John Travolta plunge a huge needle into Uma Thurman’s heart in Pulp Fiction did give me the urgent desire to plunge a needle into the heart of the editor who gave me rewrite notes on a film – wrong notes so she could fire me and give the job to a friend – but I didn’t act on impulse. Nor did it tempt me into snorting…at my age I guess it’s cake flour – sending me into drugged dreams of chocolate fudge cake, forbidden on my diet.

The rape scene in the great Pulp Fiction - yes, I had to close my eyes for that one, but it was integral to the film. Likewise the rape in History of Violence. Necessary in understanding the angst of the progatonist.

Movies are not just “entertainment” – they are a reflection of us. Today’s film is more violent in a time when we are most helpless…jobs lost, homes lost, ice cap melting, bad guys destroying nations for personal gain… What can we do? Very little. But we can vent our rage though guys who, in the context of film, can do something. In a similar way, back in my childhood, during the Great Depression, Fred Astaire and his bunch wore tuxedos, all fathers were rich, young, brainless daughters came to breakfast in chiffon, and eggs were served by the butler. We couldn’t pay the rent, but we could dream.

The world has always been violent. The difference today is that we have cell phones and Internet and TV. In my day, we were isolated – not intimately connected with ethnic murder, power grabs, thievery, the chaos of the world outside our little circles…

Movies are a way to process the violence in the world. Look at what’s happening on TV at the moment. Sunday night was our great family watch-night so that we could talk over what was great and what we deplored. We loved Deadwood (violence and strong language), The Sopranos (where, in last Sunday’s re-run, Tony killed Ralphie, then disposed of him by cutting him up, putting his head in a carry bag), Rome (which did not romanticize the gore of ancient Roman days), and Dexter, which you know. Watched and then went about our ordinary lives, caring for our kids and concerned about our fellow man. Those films are all gone for the summer. Now they’re showing Generation Kill when the real stuff is still going on in Iraq. Not distant enough to process. On that reality, I’ll pass, thank you.

I’m not saying that, at least for me, some junky violent movies aren’t trashy. But it gives us plenty of time to use judgment. Don’t see them. Okay, that was a quick rush, but hey…it was exploitation, and luckily I’m able to recognize it.

Not the movies but reality factors make our kids more violent today: poverty, hunger, cruelty of parents to children, and so much of our violence is “little murders” of the heart, unlove, small violence of the spirit unseen but as crushing as the crunching metal jaws you have to maneuver not to get quashed… What was it? Crystal Skull, or that crazy grinding machine in Galazy Quest…

Sure, I’m a ’40s kid. I’d prefer flicks like All Our Sons or Night of the Iguana which, like Greek drama, teach us moral lessons. But this is the 21st century, and we are in the midst of change. It isn’t movies which have become more violent – it’s our world.

The decade is rolling fast. We feel powerless and, at the moment, it seems we have few choices. The great thing about the movies is that if we need to escape, they are there. And, unlike reality, they give us choice. And if we don’t like violence, we can simply stay home and rent a classic video (see our Classic Corner) or check out that little foreign film which still softly explores the heart and spirit. And I still love Enchanted April, although to tell you the truth, demographics or not, I’m going back to take another look at Hellboy II. I just like the cool way he handles those bad guys. If only, like Woody Allen in that film where on-screen characters come to life, we could only get him out here. We need a couple of sweet-hearted, all-powerful supermen on our side.