I'm also interested in pursuing Sterling Chen's questions about different
types of violence in films and what kinds of affects these differences
create.  It seems to me that one of the most powerful elements of the
violence in Res. Dogs is that it always stands as a quotation of violence
as much as an act itself.  We might even see in the final three way face-off
a reference to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and to Woo's The Killer.  I'm
trying to work out what makes certain films' violence more effectively
stylized than that in other films.  For example, why is it that the violence
in True Romance doesn't achieve the same force as in Res. Dogs.  It is just
as excessive, but somehow the surface of it is very different.  Yet, as I
was watching the film all I could think was that it wasn't quite there.
 
Also, does anyone have any opinions about the connection between film violence
and the superficiality of the Crime Bills recently passed in the Senate, and
I believe still on the way towards passage in the house?  I may be trying to
associate surfaces here: self-reflexive films with self-reflexive legislation?
 
Margaret Ervin
Indiana University