January 13, 2011 at 3:50 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected.
October 9, 2009 at 1:19 P.M. Interference with my Internet signal makes it very difficult to write or access my sites. I will try to work from a public computer later today.
October 5, 2009 at 3:28 P.M. Attacks on my computer prevented me from completing a scan of my system. An effort was made to disrupt my security system and deny me access to the Internet. I cannot say how many essays have been damaged or altered during this intrusion into my computer. I do not believe that these daily hacks, intrusions, spyware and other induced frustrations in violation of the Constitution and criminal laws can take place without the cooperation of state governments. This matter warrants federal investigation.
October 1, 2009 at 5:50 P.M. Attacks on a number of essays and other writings have resulted in missing letters and words as well as other disfigurements of the texts. I suspect that Cubanoids from Miami disapprove of my opinions. I cannot imagine why they feel this way. We must never give in to fascism. I will make all corrections as soon as possible.
Apparently, additional "errors" have been inserted in essays. I will review these works carefully, especially since I will be away on a brief trip. Any "errors" inserted in my absence will be corrected upon my return to the city. Is MSN Groups still closed? My reviews at Amazon were vandalized. I wonder why?
"Shoot 'Em Up," Directed and written by Michael Davis, New Line Cinema, 2007. Clive Owen as Smith; Paul Giamatti as Herz; Monica Bellucci as Donna Quintana. Special credit to Sydney Mende-Gibson as Baby Oliver.
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (New York: Signet, 1961).
October 1, 2009 at 3:08 P.M. Unfortunately, this review was also defaced by N.J. hackers. It is possible that they do not approve of sexual imagery in connection with Christianity. Hence, I have decided to include more such discussions in the future.
August 2, 2008 at 5:57 P.M. More hacker-inserted "errors" (not found in my print copies) and my corrections.
The following works form the background of associations for my review:
Karen L. Carr, The Banalization of Nihilism: Twentieth Century Responses to Meaninglessness (New York: SUNY, 1992), pp. 51-85, pp. 140-143.
Andrew Collier, R.D. Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy (New York: Pantheon, 1977), pp. 139-163 ("Defining Sanity and Madness").
Terry Eagleton, "Art After Auschwitz: Theodor Adorno," in The Ideology of the Aesthetic (London: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp.
Richard Eldridge, The Persistence of Romanticism: Essays in Philosophy and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 145-165, pp. 205-229. ("Can tragedy matter for us?")
Fred Inglis,"Relativism and Hermeneutics," in Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 130-151.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Marcuse (London: Fontana, 1970), pp. 87-93.
Joseph Pearce, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde (London & New York: Harper Collins, 2000), pp. 274-281 ("Hounded by Heaven").
Beryl Schlossman, Objects of Desire: The Madonnas of Modernism (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 187-217 ("Virgin or Madonna?").
June Singer, Androgyny (New York: Anchor, 1977), pp. 117-127 ("The Gnostic Vision of the Fall").
I. "Eggs have no business with stones."
This is a movie which is really a kind of ballet. The violence is deliberately, grotesquely over-the-top for a serious as well as a humorous purpose. There are several layers of meaning to this work. The movie is, on the one hand, an argument against violence and the culture of violence in which we are incubated; on the other hand, it is a celebration of the cinematic imagery of violence as "trope," a figurative device of aesthetic communication in an obscenely violent society. The only way to shock or demand one's attention in an age of violent images is by means of violent images. Believe it or not, this cinematic text is an argument "for" gun control.
The rich poetry of these images is concerned with questions of gender-roles, maternity-paternity in our postmodernist settings, the language of image and sound, together with the ways in which these strange unions shape the psyches of persons born into the televisual-cinematic culture.
Baby Oliver -- the relationship with Dickens' Oliver Twist is established early, as is the allegorical tradition in which the film must be placed -- is calm only when he hears head bangers' music because he must have heard it in the womb. Men receive calls from their "wives" to see how everything's going in the midst of a killing spree; tough guys change diapers or care for babies. I would not know about that.
The opening "shot" depicts our "hero" (Smith) offering tribute to Clint Eastwood in A Fistfull of Dollars, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (explicitly alluded to later in the film), as well Sergio Leone's cinematic style and vocabulary. Right away we know that we have a moral vision underlying the chaos because our hero cannot remain passive to the murder of a pregnant woman (blond), nor will he allow the surrogate "Madonna" -- who is also the prostitute, Magdalene (brunette) -- to be sacrificed. Necrophilia is the sick and twisted sin of every film director who steals from his predecessors' corpses, i.e., old movies. Happily, the artist (in the form of Smith) also delivers the baby -- that is, this movie -- to audience members.
Director Michael Davis knows that those two archetypes -- Mary and Magdalene -- are one woman. In this case, the woman is Donna Quintana played by Monica Bellucci. Ms. Bellucci, as always, zizzles on screen with erotic energy and attitude: that tilt of the head, hands on hips that are thrust forward. "Donna" reminds me of someone. The energy in the couple's choreographed love-making -- she's on top; then he's on top -- is highly fitting for this cultural moment. "She" knows who she is in my life. No one's going to bullshit her at this point. (See "Of Women and Their Elegance" and "Metaphor is Mystery.")
There are quite a few jokes that are splendid: the gun that does not fire except for its owner salutes Zorro's horse that answers only to his master's whistle, while the sword that only serves its true owner in the classic guy's action movie Prince Valiant, is also evoked; the carrots consumed by Smith tell us that he is "Bugs Bunny"; and Herz -- the name is another great joke -- is the rent-a-villain "Elmer Fudd"; while "Hammerson" is a direct elbow in the ribs to "Hammer Films" responsible for many of the exploitation/violence films of the seventies. One "m" or two in "Hammer"? I'll let someone else worry about that.
Scenes call to mind the Matrix (leaping between buildings, winding stairs) and also Equilibrium, the lights-on-lights-out violence. The scene where our hero and Donna make love as they are interrupted by would-be assassins is brilliant and surreal, making the necessary point about love and death, also the erotic charge in second-hand violence becomes the mirror turned on the audience, which is told that it is seeing exactly the sort of movie that they ("we") deplore in polite company. Everything becomes a pose, banal, a coolness competition because we have seen it all before. It's only a movie. Whatever.
Men in the audience are easily manipulated with humor, violence, and sex. We expect to be manipulated by film makers. Monica's appearance in the pink outfit with the ice cream at the end of the film ("Pulp Fiction") is a wink at the audience. You paid $10.50 for this. We will not disappoint you. To which I say, "Thank you." I felt like the guy whose milk shake exploded.
The wisdom of this film is delivered in close proximity to the sex: "My mother said, 'eggs have no business playing with stones.' ..." If violence becomes a central reference in everyone's mind, especially that of men, we must not be surprised at the frequent outbreaks of violence disrupting boredom in society. Sex and violence have become ways of ensuring that we are still alive in a society concerned to transform us into suburban zombies of normality. If we are overdosing on realistic violence in cinema, then the only answer must be surrealistic violence in movies to remind us that, after all, "it's only a movie." Hence, the tongue-in-cheek cheekiness.
Smith and Donna are stones to the rest of the world. With each other, however, they are fragile eggs. Each "breaks" the other, getting to the soft stuff underneath. I can relate to that. Very few women in a man's life will get to him in that way. Maybe only one -- or two -- will have his number. As Ms. Bellucci holds the sleeping infant, there are religious references to Raphael's and El Greco's "Madonna with Child." Dr. June Singer writes:
"A fragment of a little document called 'Little Interrogations of Mary,' and quoted by Epiphanius shows how Christ as the 'Second Adam,' is brought into the orbit of sexual symbolism through a story parallel to that of the Edenic Adam. Christ is supposed to have taken this Mary up to a mountaintop where, before her eyes, he produces a woman from his side and begins to have intercourse with her. If this crude symbolism offends our sensibilities today, it is not hard to imagine the effect it must have had on Christians of the third and fourth centuries. The author of the text" -- possibly, a woman -- "must have been aware of this, for he [or she?] writes that Mary was so shocked by what she had seen that she fell to the ground in a faint."
Carl Jung was very interested in this text along with other Gnostic texts containing explicit sexual imagery. Citing John 3:12, Jung suggests that this story should NOT be read literally:
"When Mary questions Jesus about the event, Christ responds to her: 'If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?' ..." (Singer, pp. 125-126).
The imagery surrounding the aspect of the Hindu Trinity associated with the feminine, Kali, is especially interesting because she (the final incarnation of Shiva) is the "destroyer of worlds" -- also a preserver of mysteries -- who shapes-shifts into Brahma, the creator, then Vishnu (the balance principle, ying and yang) that keeps the universe in place. The Hindu Trinity is the symbolizing of a hermeneutic circle. This is woman. It is from woman that the masculine principle is derived. ("'Holy Smoke': A Movie Review.")
Love-making is a "spiritual mystery." Furthermore, gender unity is established. Male and female originate, equally, in the divine and they are interwoven in sexuality. The ambiguity of social and gender roles and deep suspicion of hypocrisy is clear in a hit man who was an FBI profiler, a forensic psychiatrist perhaps. A U.S. Senator has no principles that are allowed to interfere with election success. Cynicism is the only response to the evening news, especially in places like New Jersey. Incidentally, these issues of sexual symbolism -- including very up-to-date imagery concerning gender freedom and celebrations of love, where sexual-orientation is irrelevant -- are common in religious texts early in the Christian era.
II. "Violence is one of the most fun things to watch."
"Violence is one of the most fun things to watch!" The psychopath says this line to an audience of middle class Americans who have come to the movie theater to see cartoon-like violence. Guess what that makes the good folks in the audience? Perverts? Criminals? Witches? Terrorists?
At such moments the movie winks and draws back from the edge of an abyss. The courage of this insight is abbreviated to make a buck. An interesting move for the director would be to break the reality of the story, have Smith turn to the audience and engage in a brief discussion of the psychology of violence and aesthetics, then speak of eros in theology and connections between great paintings and cinema. Smith might refer to Adorno's question concerning art after Auschwitz, then point a gun at the camera and say: "You're all dead!" Eventually, Smith would be quite correct:
"... 'The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in the face of despair,' reads the concluding, Benjaminian section of Minima Moralia, 'is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption; all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light." (Eagleton, p. 360.)
Art is its own rationality and healing for our wounds. Movies are now a kind of religious language. It is where our hero and his princess can meet, until they meet in the real world -- and they will. (See "Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Redemption.")
I recently saw "The American," starring George Clooney. I was surprised to find a sensitive and meditative work that is deeply spiritual and philosophical in the guise of an action-thriller. A number of parallels between that misperceived film and "Shoot 'em Up" seem obvious. Sadly, the reviews of "The American" have not been very comprehending of the movie's serious purposes. I am sure that European critics will be more receptive to this excellent film that must have been made by a Catholic director.
"As the playful and sensuous, the aesthetic is not, Adorno insists, accidental to philosophy; there is a clownish element about knowing thought's remoteness from its object yet speaking as though one had that object assuredly in hand," -- if only I did! -- "and theory must somehow act out this tragicomic discrepancy, foregrounding its own unfinishedness." (Ibid.)
This movie is art for art's sake and for money. The movie is also art as redemption from and response to the madness it seeks to illustrate and protest in the only way that will capture your attention. Everything from A Clockwork Orange (Smith sees the bad guys shot on video screens) to rock music (the head bangers in the hotel t.v. set) is made a co-conspirator to the atrocities of our history and to a nice profit for film makers.
Smith walks through a blasted landscape littered with bodies that is weirdly similar to a car-bombed street in Iraq where Americans lose their lives, seemingly, on a daily basis. Why are we in Iraq? Is it because "men love war"? (Woolf) Maybe Music provides a clue, "The Flight of the Valkyre" introduces a James Bond-like struggle as Smith skydives to safety. We must live, psychologically and aesthetically, in this wasteland of violence and sexual imagery. There is no escape from our situation. Accordingly, we numb ourselves to feel nothing in order to survive, like the prostitutes that we have all become in this jaded age. (See "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.") "I am for all the people," our politicians say:
"... man's existence centers in his head, i.e., in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality. Anaxagoras had been the first to say that Nous (Mind) governs the World; but not until now had man advanced to the recognition of the principle that Thought ought to govern spiritual reality." (MacIntyre, p. 23.)
As we sit in the movie theater and the lights go down, "we must dream."
