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September 1994

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From:
Road Angel <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 6 Sep 1994 00:33:49 -0600
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My thanks to Edward O'Neill for taking the time to respond.
 
>   On the relative value of image over narrative (or vice-versa):  when
> discussing this film with people who liked it (and enjoyment is a key
> term here), I find myself feeling old-fashioned, needing narrative and
> character and all those trite old things.  I don't entirely agree that
> Stone has been "meticulous--almost  painfully so--in his organization
> of images."  Rather, the flurry of rear-projected (etc.) images seem
> to me to fall in certain categories but to me mobilized with little
> specific discrimination at the great majority of points.  Hitler and
> Auschwitz, modern atrocities; animals killing or humping; TV
> banalities (the Cleavers, the Coke ad), etc.  I see the categories,
> but the details become a blurr.
>   I agree this large-scale use of this kind of technique is rather
> new for a full-length feature film.  But I don't see this in itself as
> any great virtue, possibly because it wasn't enough for me to make up
> for other more traditional deficiencies.
 
This is going to be a hard one to resolve, as neither of us had access to
the editing process.  Did Ollie toss stuff together haphazardly?  Did he
spend hours on each cut?  Hard to say with any authority.  The only way I
can resolve the issue is by examining the effect the movie had on me, and
when I do that I conclude that Stone has landed some major blows.  It's
hard for me to see the power I sensed in the film as being the result of
a disinterested editing and production process.
 
I agree that the technique alone is inconsequential.  Form is of value
only insomuch as it delivers content, and while I see Stone's willingness
to appropriate Godard and Lynch, among others, in the final analysis I
make my decision on the content.
 
>    I do not find the film's commentary on the media "powerful."  It's
> this I find perhaps the most hackneyed and unsophisticated.  This relates
> directly to my largest argument about  the film, which Mr. Smith didn't
> like or didn't pay much attention to:  that the film is not a critique,
> that there is no critical distance, that the violence is deployed as much
> for joke-y pleasure as anything else, and that there's no distance
> between what's ostensibly being criticized and the critique.  I take
> this failure of critique, this collapse, as being *quite* postmodern.
> It is precisely a glorification of violence, of the type we're very
> familiar with, from Terminator to Tarantino.  Whether the tongue is
> firmly in the cheek or not seems to me to make little difference.  It's
> not that I see such violence as reprehensible or morally dangerous--
> I couldn't care less.  What's of interest to me is the way the purported
> moral point-of-view functions as an excuse to display the violence, which
> certainly goes back at least to the gangster films of the '30's, but
> the moral point-of-view becomes progressively hollowed out.  d
 
I can only conclude from this that you see NBK as an excuse to pander
violence.  Clearly, Stone made this movie for a reason - what WAS that
reason?  An analysis of the text really doesn't support any
violence-for-the-sake-of-violence reading.  Whatever you may think of how
well Stone succeeded, it seems pretty transparent thet HE thought he was
making a commentary on media's relationship to violence, and he wanted to
go so far as to suggest that media makes certain types of violence
possible in society.
 
This moral point of view doesn't serve as an excuse to show the violence
- it makes the depiction of the violence necessary.  I have wondered
aloud, and found no takers on any of the lists where this film is
discussed, HOW Stone might have said what he wanted to say without
displaying, in fairly graphic fashion, a hefty dose of senseless
violence.  I am familiar with many films which seem to me to be indicting
violence in society in some way or another - whether it be any
number of anti-war films or some comment on the rise of urban violence
(like, say, BOYZ IN THE HOOD).  One thing these movies all have in common
is that they're very violent.
 
NOW - I'm surprised nobody has turned the tables on Stone with what could
be THE damning critique of the movie.  If Stone honestly believes the
moral message he's purveying, then isn't he guilty of fostering violence
by creating this mediated expression of ultra-violence?
 
If this is what you're driving at, forgive my denseness.  I haven't heard
anybody say this yet, and it seems to get well past the notion of
pastiche and image and pointless violence and all the other critiques I
think I hear.
 
>   I really don't think NBK is a parody of anything.  No, the viewer
> doesn't miss the point:  when it's written in ALL CAPS in Stone's
> style, how could anyone miss it?  But what point is this point supposed
> to have?  That's what I don't get.  (Perhaps my response is pure
> thick-headedness on my part.  I can only hope my own stupidity can
> lead to some helpful discussion/clarification.)
>   When TV has become what it's become, you can't really parody it.
> I firmly believe that TV is insult-proof, because as long  as people
> tune in, parody is simply beside the point.  (And here my inspirations
> are Slotterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason and a brief talk on
> dramaturgy given by playwright David Hare back in the late '70's.)
 
Ah, well - this is another debate altogether, and I suspect you're on to
something.  Can we really use the tools of vapid media to intelligently
indict those media?  I think this calls for some audience research.
 
Stone is not subtle in NBK, as I admitted in my original post on the
subject.  And the movie isn't parody in its entirety - it seems to owe a
good deal to Lynch in the way it moves back and forth between heavy
violence, coy humor, even metafilm commentary.  It is, in places,
excruciatingly funny.  It is in other places quite beautiful (in a
twisted sort of way).  And so on and so on.  But I am hesitant to speak
for "less critical" audiences, and until we hear from the body of
movie-goers I don't know how adequately we can answer some of the
questions I think you're driving at.
 
They are good questions, though.
 
Again, my thanks to Edward.  A thoughtful disagreement is always
appreciated over an unconsidered agreement.
 
==================================================================
Samuel Random Smith
Center for Mass Media Research          303.543.8610 (voice)
University of Colorado                  [log in to unmask]
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