Jordan,
Thanks for answering my question. With the exception of Natural Born
Killers (which, by the way, is extremely different from Tarantino's
screenplay, not that it's much better; the Belgian film Man Bites Dog
did the idea much better, as QT has also said) and From Dusk to Dawn, I
like the films you didn't, like all the films he directed himself (agree
he's the worst actor in the world, though). However, I can think of
other films that do strike me the way those did you (I tend to avoid
slasher films, for instance). So I think it may just be a matter of
different thresholds that separates us.
I also agree that seeing it and reading about it can provoke very
different reactions. But again we disagree on the specifics. For
instance, I thought Caught Stealing was great, and often funny.
However, I stopped reading Rex Miller's Slob.
Gotta ask, though: you said you watched Jackie Brown for Pam Grier. How
is its violence any more excessive than Foxy Brown, Coffy or Friday
Foster? Or than many other blaxploitation films?
Still, this discussion intrigues me. For instance, is excessive
violence the same as glorified violence? Yes, Pesci's character in Good
Fellas was excessively violent, but glorification implies to me an
endorsement and I don't see Scorsese as endorsing Pesci's violence.
There's also the distinction between act and depiction. Is any
depiction of an act of violence a violent depiction? Or does it depend
upon how graphically it's shown and/or its context? For instance, it's
hard to think of a movie more excessively violent than Saving Private
Ryan, but does it glorify? And old noir films probably have at least as
many, if not more, acts of violence than contemporary films, but those
acts were not shown so graphically. So are they less violent? And is a
moral at the end of, say, a gangster film enough to overwhelm the
violence that brought him to power?
I keep thinking of Pelecanos's shootouts in this context. His heroes,
to varying degrees, try to avoid violence, save it as a last resort.
And they are always affected by having to resort to violence, but they
do. So is its inevitable necessity a tacit endorsement, even
glorification? Or is it a warning?
Oh, by the way, if you don't like Tarantino's violence, steer very clear
of Takashi Miike.
Mark
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