American Cinema and gun culture

[exte]

...I don't believe Tarantino really knows what he's talking about when it comes to uses of violence in films (despite his track record). I think enjoys how it looks, rather than what it means. It will make his WWII picture (if and when it gets made) at least interesting.

You know, I've seen script revisions for Pulp Fiction. Originally, Jules just shoots Pumpkin and Honey Bunny. I guess Tarantino figured a real turnaround for Jules would be, I guess, too in keeping with traditional narratives and tying up loose ends. I don't know. Anyway, I think the way he handled and embraced Jules final transformation is a thing of beauty. He could've had a huge, ballistic shootout, but he went with words instead. I guess I'll just have to disagree...

[HerrSchreck]

Guns have the following possible purposes:
1. They kill people (offensively or defensively). Every spiritual tradition in the world would condemn this.
2. They kill animals and birds (for those who enjoy hunting). Every spiritual tradition in the world would condemn this also, when done as a sport.
3. They are a sport (e.g. target-shooting). I can think of other ways to entertain myself, since once it is there, gun can be used to kill people.

I am an American, and am proud of being an American. But I am proud of America despite its obsession with guns rather than because of it. For a culture to have the belief that guns are an essential freedom, it has to have a propensity for violence. Americans do. And our arts reflect that. This does not mean that all American works of art depict violence, but a significant proportion does. The most disturbing aspect of this is that we have lost our sensitivity to life, and believe that many problems can only be solved through violence.

This subject transcends the scope of this forum. However, given that it has been raised, and I am passionate about the subject (as many others are for the opposite point of view), I have found it necessary to express myself.

Forgive me if someone has gone at this one beyond what sausage wrote. I haven't gone down beyond his response.

Guns (or violence, interchange them as you will, since you'll find little use of guns in "spiritual traditions" past a certain point into antiquity simply because of the lack of gunpowder, but there was ample use of spear, knife, sword, mace, axe, catapolt, battering ram, etc) are as central to western spiritual tradition as oxygen is to red blood, man.. for gods sakes. From the roll into Canaan, the blood spilled by the Romans for Mars, the crusades, the Ottomans, the sense of religious destiny tied to the push to the American western frontier while liquidating the american indian, the foundation of modern israel, the rise of islamic fundamentalism. Violence is an absolutely essential, defining feature of spiritual tradition in the western (and middle eastern) world. Observe the posessions of the typical hilltop/outpost israeli settler in the west bank-- Bible, corrugated tin sheeting and some drywall, and an M16 (plus Greenwich Village hipster clothing gear & haircut).

In fact I'd say, typically, that, beyond the mayhem of ghetto gangsterism, in white America it is the liberal white agnostic or aetheist who is horrified by guns and gun violence, and the tradition bound conservative, christian who hunts, goes target shooting, etc. For this mass center chunk of middle americans, the gun is a near sacred object as it is by this tool that our nation was founded: gun, horse, woman, covered wagon, an appetite for road dust and grit and gristle. It's just who we are.

We aint no Hindus or Buddhists around here brother. Not mostly, anyhoo...

[Antoine Doinel]

Sometimes, in life, you must turn to the Simpsons:

BART
Hey Dad, can I borrow the gun tomorrow? I want to scare that old security guard at the bank.

HOMER
Only if you clean your room.

MARGE
No! No one's using this gun! The TV said you're fifty-eight percent more likely to shoot a family member than an intruder!

HOMER
TV said that? But I have to have a gun! It's in the Constitution!

LISA
Dad! The Second Amendment is just a remnant from revolutionary days. It has no meaning today!

HOMER
You couldn't be more wrong, Lisa. If I didn't have this gun, the King of England could just walk in here any time he wants, and start shoving you around. (he starts pushing Lisa) Do you want that? Huh? Do you?

LISA
No...

HOMER
All right then.

He reaches for the gun.

MARGE
I'm sorry, Homer. No weapons.

HOMER
A gun is not a weapon, Marge, it's a tool. Like a butcher knife or a harpoon, or, uh... or an alligator. You just need more education on the subject. Tell you what - you come with me to an NRA meeting, and if you still don't think guns are great, we'll argue some more.

[Michael]

Can't get enough of guns? Make sure to pick up the gun-sucking puppy GUN CRAZY - the greatest portrait of contemporary America.

[starmanof51]

All well said, Schreck.

There is also European (or at least English) history of populations being periodically either mandated to be armed or mandated not to be armed. The dangers of both extremes and their implications were on the minds of those drafting and voting on the second amendment to the US constitution. Constitutional law isn't really the last word on the subject (common law matters, and you can have plenty of state gun laws that have nothing to do with the second amendment), but "keep and bear arms" seems be a convenient political football statement for Americans who like to argue a lot.

I think an important link between the legalistic basis for gun ownership and the perceived importance of guns in fictional media lies in at least one of the political bases for the second amendment in the first place - that an important check on Government is a tangible capability of the population to resist that Government, indeed violently overthrow it if necessary (I think Jefferson assumed we would have taken torches and pitchforks to the place along with the guns long ago). Half the people who supported the Second Amendment were thinking along these lines.

So -resistance, distrust of central authority, self-reliance - I think these are some of the themes/traits/interests/whatever that find themselves dramatized. Rafts of Westerns and Gangster films exist that are built around this. I think they exist and succeed based not on the simple fact that they show somebody shooting somebody else, but to the extent and method by which they work out these ideas of self-reliance, distrust of authority, individualism, and individual responsibility, or the misplaced application of these same concerns. Sometimes, it may be on a very visceral, inarticulate level, but these seem more likely to be consumed and forgotten.

I also think maybe the "gun" itself is too specific a topic for consideration, for the reasons Schreck wrote of. A gun is just convenient and current, both in life and drama. A medieval version of Reservoir Dogs with broadswords rather than guns might be just as plausible and just as entertaining. And for all the gunplay in that film, the most horrific weapon in it is a razor.

[Polybius]

"Bark, bark, bark, little dog. Will thee ever bite?"

[flyonthewall2983]

Sometimes, in life, you must turn to the Simpsons:

HOMER
A gun is not a weapon, Marge, it's a tool. Like a butcher knife or a harpoon, or, uh... or an alligator. You just need more education on the subject. Tell you what - you come with me to an NRA meeting, and if you still don't think guns are great, we'll argue some more.

Even funnier, if I think this is the same episode, is where Homer goes around the house and shoots the lights out.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I just had to add an other Simpsons quote said by Tarantino.

Guns are everywhere because...

"Violence is everywhere, man. Even in breakfast cereals"

[Person]

Sometimes, in life, you must turn to the Simpsons...

Agreed. Seventies sci-fi provides the final word of irrefutable logic, though:

"The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life, and poisons the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth and kill!"

[Poncho Punch]

It appears as though my last post was deleted. For those who didn't see it:

<--

I think it was a valid comment on the topic in question. Taken during a month-long trip that took me not just across but around the country, the image to the left is the one thing I found most descriptive of much of American society today and the culture that has shaped that society since before there was a United States. I don't know why the United States of America haven't been able to grow out of the mindset that they "required" to "tame" this land, but the fact that they haven't -- and that this tendency in conjunction with globalization have caused countless conflicts and other problems worldwide -- seems clear to me.

http://www.wamego.org/beecher.htm has a history of the site I happened across, and I think that it shows just how much HerrShreck's comments were dead on.

[kekid]

Guns have the following possible purposes:
1. They kill people (offensively or defensively). Every spiritual tradition in the world would condemn this.
2. They kill animals and birds (for those who enjoy hunting). Every spiritual tradition in the world would condemn this also, when done as a sport.
3. They are a sport (e.g. target-shooting). I can think of other ways to entertain myself, since once it is there, gun can be used to kill people.

I am an American, and am proud of being an American. But I am proud of America despite its obsession with guns rather than because of it. For a culture to have the belief that guns are an essential freedom, it has to have a propensity for violence. Americans do. And our arts reflect that. This does not mean that all American works of art depict violence, but a significant proportion does. The most disturbing aspect of this is that we have lost our sensitivity to life, and believe that many problems can only be solved through violence.

This subject transcends the scope of this forum. However, given that it has been raised, and I am passionate about the subject (as many others are for the opposite point of view), I have found it necessary to express myself.

Forgive me if someone has gone at this one beyond what sausage wrote. I haven't gone down beyond his response.

Guns (or violence, interchange them as you will, since you'll find little use of guns in "spiritual traditions" past a certain point into antiquity simply because of the lack of gunpowder, but there was ample use of spear, knife, sword, mace, axe, catapolt, battering ram, etc) are as central to western spiritual tradition as oxygen is to red blood, man.. for gods sakes. From the roll into Canaan, the blood spilled by the Romans for Mars, the crusades, the Ottomans, the sense of religious destiny tied to the push to the American western frontier while liquidating the american indian, the foundation of modern israel, the rise of islamic fundamentalism. Violence is an absolutely essential, defining feature of spiritual tradition in the western (and middle eastern) world. Observe the posessions of the typical hilltop/outpost israeli settler in the west bank-- Bible, corrugated tin sheeting and some drywall, and an M16 (plus Greenwich Village hipster clothing gear & haircut).

In fact I'd say, typically, that, beyond the mayhem of ghetto gangsterism, in white America it is the liberal white agnostic or aetheist who is horrified by guns and gun violence, and the tradition bound conservative, christian who hunts, goes target shooting, etc. For this mass center chunk of middle americans, the gun is a near sacred object as it is by this tool that our nation was founded: gun, horse, woman, covered wagon, an appetite for road dust and grit and gristle. It's just who we are.

We aint no Hindus or Buddhists around here brother. Not mostly, anyhoo...

I hear the arguments made by Sausage and Herrshrek. I just have difficulty characterizing traditions that advocate violence as spiritual. I could by accused of tautology, but that is a matter of belief.

I do not agree that non-violence is merely a Hindu or Buddhist belief. I associate Christianity with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Here is a man who rejected violence in the face of death. Whose "Surmon on the Mount" is the most articulate utterance on rejection of violence. Jesus taught love through his words and his life. The fact is that the Christian members of NRA cannot reconcile their faith with their desire to carry a gun. I have gun-carrying Christian friends who tell me that Christ may have been "Holy", but he was not very practical. This is the prism through which many Americans see the world. And they try to solve problems (real and imagined) by imposing their will through violence. They will fail. We cannot resolve our differences through arguments, but time will prove one of us right.

[Kirkinson]

I just have difficulty characterizing traditions that advocate violence as spiritual.

In that case I'd be interested to hear what you do consider spiritual. I don't think pacifism is a necessary part of the equation. If one thinks God has called one to fight in a war of good vs. evil, that seems to me like a very spiritual concept because that person is talking about absolutes (good and evil) which to them are eternal and immaterial.

The fact is that the Christian members of NRA cannot reconcile their faith with their desire to carry a gun.

The fact is that personal interpretation means there are as many Christianities as there are Christians. You may associate Christianity with Christ, but for anyone who views the entire Bible as inerrant, there's plenty of support for violence. Christian members of the NRA could just read about the more warlike Messiah in the Book of Revelations, or they can reflect on the doctrine of the Triune God and infer (with the support of many priests, scholars, and centuries of tradition) that Jesus was with God for all the violence and genocide of the Old Testament. The only way to infer unequivocal non-violence from Christianity is to do what Jefferson did: restrict the message to the Gospels and remove any reference to divinity. And even then you still have to contend with the temper tantrum Jesus threw at the merchants outside the temple, that bit about selling your cloak to buy a sword, and the part where he induces a herd of pigs to commit mass suicide (and possibly other things I'm not remembering at the moment).

Please understand that I'm not trying to argue down your faith. This wouldn't be the place for that. My point is that you have no basis for saying that Christian members of the NRA can't reconcile their faith with their desire to own a gun -- the truth is that they can't reconcile your faith with their desire to own a gun.

[tryavna]

The only way to infer unequivocal non-violence from Christianity is to do what Jefferson did: restrict the message to the Gospels and remove any reference to divinity. And even then you still have to contend with the temper tantrum Jesus threw at the merchants outside the temple, that bit about selling your cloak to buy a sword, and the part where he induces a herd of pigs to commit mass suicide (and possibly other things I'm not remembering at the moment).

The passage about selling your cloak to buy a sword comes from Luke 22, I believe, but an even more disturbing passage appears in Matthew 10:34-39:

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."

In fact, if we're talking about the historical Jesus, as opposed to the traditional Jesus, he probably was a revolutionary of some sort. A number of scholars have suggested that he was crucified by the Romans because of his temper-tantrum in the Temple, which amounted to a rejection of the Roman economic presence. (I.e., the money-changers were there because the Jews didn't allow graven images inside the Temple, which would have included Roman coins.)

[Person]

In fact, if we're talking about the historical Jesus, as opposed to the traditional Jesus, he probably was a revolutionary of some sort.

This is the position I have held for a number of years, but I also mark him as a 'mystic philosopher' from time to time, depending on the context. By that, I don't mean that he had mystical powers and an integrated system of reality, but simply that he couched his worldview in mystical garb - a Technicolor dreamcoat, if you will.

It all really began with the 27-year-old David Strauss' massively controversial 1835 book, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, where he examines Jesus' 'miracles' in detail. Nietzsche read it in his teens and it pretty much led him to abandon his church-going.

The foundation of my criticism of Christianty rests not with Jesus, but with that charlatan Paul. Jesus, was very much likely, his own man, though a "nihilist" as Nietzsche labels him in that he negated the value of life on Earth - the world as we find it daily and have to cope with, stuggle with and overcome; and that he taught an paradoxically egotisical self-negation on top of that, though not in the Buddhist manner, for in Christianity, the life-long self-negation is rewarded after a death with an eternal life of non-suffering, restitude and being with God. This is selfishness taken to its limit, is it not?

As for Jesus' death, it is best viewed as an 'event' in History. Why his crucifiers (Romans and/or Jew) executed him is a worthy question, but why hefelt he had to die is the real issue, ie. his psychology, motives, message. Self-negation concretized. To ascend to God, leaving behind a legacy and belief system - and most importantly, as far as we moderns are concered, a set of morals that were to be applied to all, across the globe - from peasant to king; idiot to genius; the sickly to the vigorously healthy and strong; no breaking of these laws and no personal codes of behaviour.

Jesus' "sword" is a metaphor for him severing the boundaries between individuals, families, communities, kingdoms, fiefdoms and what not and unify mankind under a collective worldview and moral law.

One aspect of Jesus remains very, very mysterious: his biology. Three days in the tomb? Why three days? Why not three hours? What would have been going on biologically in those three days, Mr Theologian? And what should be made of: "Touch me not, woman, for I am not yet ascended to my Father," after he had risen? Why could he not be touched at that time? What would his physiological state have been, Mr Theologian? Weird.

[tryavna]

One aspect of Jesus remains very, very mysterious: his biology. Three days in the tomb? Why three days? Why not three hours? What would have been going on biologically in those three days, Mr Theologian?

Well, 3 is one of those "magical numbers" that appear througout the Bible. Virtually every major event or span of time in the Hebrew scriptures somehow involves 3, 7, 10, or 40. And since the early Christian writers came out of the Jewish tradition, I've always read the "three days" as a cultural allusion to preexisting Hebrew traditions and figures, like the dreams Joseph interpreted for the baker and butler, the three days Job's friends attempted to comfort him, the three times the devil tempted Jesus, etc. I.e., I read the "three days" as a cultural manifestation rather than a historically concrete period of time.

I tend to read the entire Bible through that sort of cultural lense, anyway -- which is quite different from your own, it seems. So I'm less bothered by some of the questions you're asking, Gordon, though they're interesting.

[Person]

Listen, never mind about my pseudo-intellectual horseshit theories - this guy deserves the last word.

Sagacity personified.

[colinr0380]

Sorry I couldn't resist adding this!