why can't we all just get along with bill?
I actually watched a movie I liked last night, so I thought I’d mention it here so as to prove I’m not just a complete curmudgeon. It was Kill Bill. I’m not a huge Tarantino fan, although I did very much like Pulp Fiction. I particularly loved the internal consistency this movie had. I remember hearing John Cleese saying what he thought was great about Monty Python was the way they would start with an absurd premise, but everything else in the sketch would be logically consistent with that premise. That was the sense I got out of this film – the skill and ethic of the warriors was utterly fantastical, but the words and actions of the characters were logical consequences of the opening premise of the warrior culture. Blood didn’t just spray once for effect – once blood spraying (very Pythonesque, by the way) was introduced it had to happen repeatedly to be logically consistent, and it did. In retrospect, this was what bothered me about The Life Aquatic, the way that the strangeness in the film was random rather than purposeful. Kill Bill didn’t feel gimmicky at all – it was a brilliant marriage of form and function. For example, there was an anime scene that wasn’t just there because it would be cool to have anime (although it was very cool), but it was used to advance plot elements (e.g., paedophilia) that couldn’t possibly have been done with live action. Many of the shots were stunningly beautiful, especially the fight-in-the-snow scene.
Of course, there were elements I didn’t like. As you’d expect, the violence was boringly excessive. There’s enough research on the effects of exposure to media violence that I don’t just want to pass this off lightly – I really don’t think Tarantino understands the potential for harm his films have. What’s interesting to me is the way that a number of films and t.v. shows have started to “soften” the violence by having a woman commit it. In a way, this is empowering, since it has women in a role traditionally played by men. But, this “lowest common denominator” approach to equality of the sexes is both lazy and dangerous. Rather than questioning the system (e.g., the imperative for violence that makes so many wars seem acceptable and necessary), slotting non-traditional people into roles previously reserved for white men ultimately validates the system - the faces change, but the acceptability of dominance and aggression remains. In fact, the main motive for the lead character in Kill Bill is the loss of her child. In this way, one of the meta-points of the movie is that it is justified for women to be aggressive as long as it is in the service of the traditional caretaker role. A subtle justification of the present gender system, all the more potent for how invisible it is. (note, also, how most "tough guy" actors do their first comedy by taking on a caretaking role such as babysitter- there was a recent Vin Diesel movie like this - oh, how FUNNY it is for men to show affection to children).
In my version of equality of the sexes, it’s not just about accepting women into traditionally male roles (e.g., soldier), it’s adjusting the system to accommodate less “masculine” values. Equality is not putting more women on the front lines, it’s putting less people in wars in the first place.
Anyway, I want to give Kill Bill a rating, but a point first about attitudes. Most (all?) movie reviewers tend to give movies a rating on one single scale, such as a 4/10. What attitude research suggests is that attitudes actually have two components – an evaluation of positivity and an evaluation of negativity. So you can like your father at the same time you dislike your father (i.e., ambivalence; having weak positive and negative feelings would be indifference). With Kill Bill, I felt largely positive (really, I loved almost everything about this film) and mildly negative (I just can’t get behind the violence, and I think Tarantino’s hostility toward women is barely masked in any of his work even when it’s clever and well-shot). So I’d give it 9/10 on the positive scale and 4/10 on the negative scale. I’d call that liking it, not being ambivalent, but also recognizing some negative elements.
Of course, there were elements I didn’t like. As you’d expect, the violence was boringly excessive. There’s enough research on the effects of exposure to media violence that I don’t just want to pass this off lightly – I really don’t think Tarantino understands the potential for harm his films have. What’s interesting to me is the way that a number of films and t.v. shows have started to “soften” the violence by having a woman commit it. In a way, this is empowering, since it has women in a role traditionally played by men. But, this “lowest common denominator” approach to equality of the sexes is both lazy and dangerous. Rather than questioning the system (e.g., the imperative for violence that makes so many wars seem acceptable and necessary), slotting non-traditional people into roles previously reserved for white men ultimately validates the system - the faces change, but the acceptability of dominance and aggression remains. In fact, the main motive for the lead character in Kill Bill is the loss of her child. In this way, one of the meta-points of the movie is that it is justified for women to be aggressive as long as it is in the service of the traditional caretaker role. A subtle justification of the present gender system, all the more potent for how invisible it is. (note, also, how most "tough guy" actors do their first comedy by taking on a caretaking role such as babysitter- there was a recent Vin Diesel movie like this - oh, how FUNNY it is for men to show affection to children).
In my version of equality of the sexes, it’s not just about accepting women into traditionally male roles (e.g., soldier), it’s adjusting the system to accommodate less “masculine” values. Equality is not putting more women on the front lines, it’s putting less people in wars in the first place.
Anyway, I want to give Kill Bill a rating, but a point first about attitudes. Most (all?) movie reviewers tend to give movies a rating on one single scale, such as a 4/10. What attitude research suggests is that attitudes actually have two components – an evaluation of positivity and an evaluation of negativity. So you can like your father at the same time you dislike your father (i.e., ambivalence; having weak positive and negative feelings would be indifference). With Kill Bill, I felt largely positive (really, I loved almost everything about this film) and mildly negative (I just can’t get behind the violence, and I think Tarantino’s hostility toward women is barely masked in any of his work even when it’s clever and well-shot). So I’d give it 9/10 on the positive scale and 4/10 on the negative scale. I’d call that liking it, not being ambivalent, but also recognizing some negative elements.
posted by H. Now at 5:54 p.m.
6 Comments:
Nice review! I liked this one too...
Personally, I give movie ratings on the absolute scale of pure correctness, which unfortunately only has one dimension.
again, a comment that didn't seem to stick when it was posted:
that's an interesting question. is it ethical for a film maker to
make a film if he has reason to belive that it will have a negative
effect on society?isn't there maybe some value in the fact that such
expressive freedom is possible in the given society. and by
exercising that freedom the film maker is actually also making a
positive contribution to society by strenghtening the perception of
an individual's right to express himself.or something in that manner.
i haven't really developed the idea very far yet, being that this is
the first time i thought of it. but i'm sure i must be on to
something *cough cough*...personally i really enjoy cinematic
violence. admittedly maybe twisted and perversive, but all the more
exiting and entertaining. i might be desperately just trying to make
up some excuse for this, but in any case i'd imagine it being
certainly not very easy determining what the actual effect of
violence in movies is both on the individual and society level, since
films are a broad and complex phenomenon, and violence is rarely
something isolated from everything else.i think a film's job is
essentially what we assign for it. be it enjoyment or giving moral
guidelines. for each to his own. if the scientists come up one ofthese days and show us clear and indisputable evidence of ultimate
harmfulness, then i agree that it might be time to adjust our views
in the issue.
--
Posted by young reginald to Approach and Avoidance at 4/11/2005
08:52:49 AM
I appreciate your moral absolutism, Tim. I know your sympathies toward the thumbs up/thumbs down school of measurement.
As for the violence thing, what I think is really dangerous isn't so much what we take away consciously from the film, but the non-conscious, learned associations. Film violence does evoke powerful emotion, often positive emotion (if it didn't, people wouldn't watch it). But it's when you associate violence with *good*, and don't even recognize it because it's not conscious, it becomes easier to sell the violence of something like war. For example, "bad guys" is a term straight out of the movies, and now you hear generals talking about how many "bad guys" they kill in an operation in Iraq. There's a direct example of the army using a structure set up through movie violence to justify potential atrocity.
i would say that the 'bad guys' thing says a lot more about the state of the army, government and media than it does about movies.
there's all kinds of non-conscious
associations one can learn from films. maybe you're right and someone might after seeing kill bill walk out of the theater feeling slightly more acceptive
towards revenge and slaughter as something morally justified. but i'd argue that there's also the chance that he'd walk out slightly more qualified to tell the difference between fictional
and real violence, and between fictional and real morals, which could actually increase his awareness of different
ethical possibilities. and maybe through active watching of films that form a strong cultural
subdirectory, like quality splatter and ultraviolence movies, or why not just as well any films, he could actually develop his level of social awareness, the idea
being that culture feeds culture, and being exposed to culture increases understanding of culture.
i'm just not ready to accept that
people, however non-conscious it may be, absorb the messages from films so straight-forwardly. i keep getting the feeling that movies are an easy target to blame for bigger problems.
your data about the slapping is
interesting. showing that women are
capable of being just as stupid as men. i wouldn't go as far as to say that people see it as acceptable to do the slap in real life. when was the last time
a woman slapped you like they do in films?
i think my point (if i have a point)is that the formation of ones ethics is a slow process and involves all the environment the person in question occupies. i think the issue is the stupidity of films, not the immorality as such. the lack of mental stimuli, that is important in creating a balanced mind. people don't necessarily absorb immorality at face value, but if their environment is bad at educating them to think, it could lead their moral capabilities to be under-developped. that bad mainstream cinema is softening peoples brains. not the violence, but the culture that doesn't encourage thinking.
ooh, a long post. sorry if i'm being a little incoherent about this. i might be just trying to find anything that could defend something i love.
hey reginald - great comment, worthy of being posted on your blog as an entry in its own right. I think your point about the stupidity of films being more dangerous that the violence is well-taken. Kill Bill does engage more complex thought, and that in itself is a good model. And I certainly don't want to come off like the Moral Majority, I'm not trying to ban anything. Popular culture does make an easy target, and take people's eye of things like the divide between rich and poor that can rightly be blamed for a lot of violence.
Having said all that, I do believe strongly in the ability of media to create a definition of "acceptable discourse." Fox News is a perfect example - by saying hard right things on a "legitimate" network, the center shifts right. So, even though people don't think that slapping is right, it is still within acceptable discourse. So maybe there are some conditions under which it's acceptable, more conditions than would be acceptable if we weren't exposed to it to a numbing degree. And where are the non-violent examples in popular film for balance? There are way more Jasons than Ghandis on the screen.
Anyway, I appreciate your acknowledging the potential for defensive motives, since you're a self-declared film lover. I wish more discourse contained that kind of honesty. Personally, I find film violence boring - I don't mean that in an elitist way, it just doesn't interest me. So I'm likely to react against it and project my other issues on to it. Dunno. Thanks for engaging me on the issue, though.
anytime.
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