From: Tony Williams English SIUC I think there is a distunct difference between DEATH WISH and STRAW DOGS. Despite problems inherent within the representation of violence which usually result in the director falling into the voyeuristic fascination syndrome he attempts to avoid (Oliver Stone and NBK), surely Peckinpah's treatment of violence is both ironic as well as attempting to push the viewer into facing the very ugly implications of the violence they initially flirt with? The film is really a critique on the Hoffman character fleeing from campus disturbances dealing with the Viet Nam War, masquerading as a pacifist but really harboring dangerous atavistic tendencies within his own persona. He is really indirectly responsible both for the rape and the bloody violence. Robert Ardrey's THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE influenced Peckinpah throughout his career. Also Amy also flirts with the guys from her village. Like Hoffman, she also has some dangerous primeval tendencies within her own persona which emerge during the rape scene. Jerry Fielding's morbid soundtrack attempts emphasizing this. But the scene is a representation. It is not intended to be taken as reality and far from the crude "she really likes it" philosophy. Like Hoffman, she bears responsibility for her actions and loses control of a situation she has indirectly provoked. The film is really a treatment of Ardrey's philosophy and a comment on the human situation which is still atavistic, violent, and oppressive as various contemporary spectrums ranging from Bosnia to the capitalist dehumanist practices in the Newt's America and Thatcher's Britain amply demonstrate. Like STRAW DOGS, DEATH WISH is also a Western. But it draws a reductive division between Paul Kersey and the "scumbags" who become immediately disposab le others. This is well before the creation of the "street people" in Britain and America provided an indirect method of removing the victims of society. Peckinpah's villains are ugly but also vulnerable towards the end of the film when Hoffman's inherent middle-class viciousness (a trait foreshadowed in Jack London's THE IRON HEEL continuing with various variants in Malcolm Bradbury's THE HISTORY MAN to the British T.V. drama THE POLITICIAN'S WIFE) REALLY comes into prominence. Although Peckinpah may not have been conscious of this, STRAW DOGS deserves much better than to be compared with DEATH WISH or castigated by movements concerning "political correctness" an academically stalinist trait which has hindered any serious explorations of the director's work (I'm not including you among this latter category, Don). But, as Charles Barr revealed manyy years ago in SCREEN, STRAW DOGS came too close to the mark in confronting viewers with the brutal implications of violent tendencies still present today in Bosnia, contracts on America, as well as indirect viciousness within certain middle-class and academic circles. Let the debate continue. Tony Williams ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]