Movie Violence
By
Psychologically, of course, this all makes sense. Penn, Peckinpah, even Porter (according to some interpretations) were attempting to make the viewer feel complicit in their films’ violence—something they assumed would provoke shame. But that’s not how movies work, or even stories. We only empathize with fictional characters in a compartmentalized way, imagining ourselves in their place right up to the point where it’s no longer convenient to do so. We can get all the thrills of gunning someone down with none of the guilt, and it frankly doesn’t matter whether we’re the hero or villain in that scenario.
It’s an allegiance that can shift on a whim, depending on who’s providing us with more cathartic pleasure. In the dark, we can indulge a fantasy of all-encompassing nihilism. So hell yeah, give us more guns! Bigger guns! Guns in each hand! Guns that have extra hands attached to them to hold more guns! Guns mounted on motorcycles! Guns popping out of boobs! Surreal, Salvador Dali guns, floating on the melting mirror of time glimpsed in a flamingo’s gun! Guns that, at first glance, look like our boring office-mate David, but then you flip him over and a barrel pops out of his ass and boom, now Dave’s a gun! Fuck yeah, guns!
Of course, as a sort of meek, intellectual type (read: snobby wuss), I’ve never been titillated by sheer arsenal alone—your Commandos and Cobras, your Schwarzeneggers and Stallones wielding rocket launchers and submachine guns in a loud frenzy of coked-up ’80s excess. Effete fop that I am, I like guns that have stories, so you care whose gun it is and why it’s gunning. In particular, I’ve always been drawn to the sorts of gangster films where the gun remains, primarily, a silent threat. My longest-held favorite movie is Goodfellas, whose characters are stabbed, stomped upon, shoved headfirst into ovens, and—in the case of the dorky Bruce—beaten with guns. Yet only Joe Pesci’s Tommy is crazy enough to actually fire one, even when his fellow wiseguys tell him to put it away. (In a bit of poetic justice, it’s only Tommy ends up taking a bullet to the back of the head.)
In movies like this—and in similar stuff I love, like The Sopranos—the gun is just a codpiece, conferring heft and swagger on these not-especially-tough-looking tough guys. To those with neither heft nor swagger, as I was when I first saw it as a 13-year-old boy, there was a natural psychological connection there. When I first heard Lorraine Bracco’s Karen say, upon being handed a bloodied revolver to hide, “I gotta admit the truth—it turned me on,” it sent a signal to my pubescent brain: Guns are cool. Guns are sexy. Girls want to have sex with cool guys who have guns. I was far less interested in what guns did to others than what they did for you.
I think I am going to have to watch a Wild Bunch/A Better Tomorrow double feature tonight and then launch some attacks against the NRA on Twitter before bed tonight.