To understand violence, I frequently turned to novels and film, at least in the previous millennium. In particular, I was drawn to A Clockwork Orange. That applies in equal measure to Anthony Burgess’ (1917 – 1993) novel (1962) and Stanley Kubrick’s (1928 – 1999) film (1971). Admittedly, but irrelevantly in terms of this weblog post, I was also drawn to the film by its use of synthesizer music, composed in part, arranged and performed by Wendy Carlos (1939 – ).
Burgess once stated: In 1945, back from the army, I heard an 80-year-old Cockney in a London pub say that somebody was ‘as queer [= mad/ insane] as a clockwork orange’… For nearly twenty years I wanted to use it as the title of something… It was a traditional trope, and it asked to entitle a work which combined a concern with tradition and a bizarre technique.
Beyond gratuitous gang violence there is psychological horror, presented in The Shining. Once again there is a novel (1977) by Stephen King (1947 – ), and a film (1980) by Stanley Kubrick, with synthesizer music by Wendy Carlos. Both involve an exploration of the human psyche, the role of social isolation, and portray one person’s descent into insanity.
I attended a symposium on violence in film in the early 2000s. Part of the reason for it, was in response to the Columbine killings. On 1999-04-20 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered their Columbine, Colorado high school planning to detonate homemade bombs. When that failed they walked through the halls using four guns to injure 24 people and kill 13 more, before killing themselves. The symposium was designed to give teachers a better understanding of violence, how violence could be perceived by students, how violence could be prevented by teachers.
The oldest film screened at the symposium was Dirty Harry (1971), produced and directed by Donald Siegel (1912 – 1991). It is often described as neo-noir, and being based on the Zodiac killer, an unknown, anonymous male, who claimed to have murdered 38 people in the 1960s in northern California. Discussion focused on antihero Harry Callahan (1930 – ?), portrayed by Clint Eastwood (1930 – ), who has his own vision of justice where possession and use of a gun take precedence over human rights, and a rule by law. Teachers cannot be allowed to imitate Dirty Harry in the classroom. Pupils have to be treated justly, perhaps aided with a modest proportion of compassion.
While working on this text I had a discussion about law with my son, Alasdair. We, along with Trish, had taken law courses when we studied business management, not to become lawyers, but to understand legal thinking. One common misunderstanding is that courts will do what is fair, rather than what is just. In Norway, courts are obliged to base their judgements on laws. Juries are not obliged to justify their verdicts. A person is either found guilty or not guilty. Because of this, Norway has eliminated juries. Instead, court cases often use a mixture of lay and professional = those with a legal education, judges.
In particular, we both remembered one particular case, where a person had chopped down a neighbour’s tree and was sued by that neighbour. Through three instances the neighbour won, but the chopper took it to the next level, hoping to win a fair judgement, from his perspective. He lost, and had to pay not only for the loss of that tree, but also the legal costs for himself and his neighbour. In the end, he had to sell his house, in order to pay these expenses.
Back to violence: I remember, in particular, the emphasis placed on Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), directed by James Cameron (1954 – ). The essence of the film is the relationship between a boy and the father he never had. This sequel works because there is a strong bond between the reprogrammed title character and the teenager he’s sent back in time to protect. The T-1000 android assassin, made of mercury that could shape-shift into any other organism, cannot overcome/ defeat this relationship. So there one has it. To prevent violence, one has to develop relationships. What I have found particularly interesting about the film was how difficult it was for Cameron to be allowed to work on a sequel to The Terminator (1984), despite the original’s unexpected success.
Quentin Tarantino’s (1963 – ) Pulp Fiction (1992), proved to be the most difficult film to analyze. There are four stories, that are intertwined; the plot is not presented in chronological order; monologues dominate dialogues. It is not what one expects from a film, but it works. What this film shows is that the mind does not operate chronologically. It creates its own world, its own reality. Each person is building their own unique monologue.
The most interesting film at the symposium was The Eel = うなぎ = Unagi (1997), directed by Shōhei Imamura (1926 – 2006). It is a violent film, but with more compassion. Imamura has commented that he enjoys making messy films. I would add the adverb, emotionally, to make that statement understandable.
Westerns have always been important for showing violence. One of the most notorious is The Wild Bunch (1969) directed by Sam Peckinpah. It is set in 1913, and is about an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico–United States border trying to adapt to the modern world. The men were crude, the violence graphic, but everyone portrayed is just trying to survive, using the skills at their disposal.
There are two western films I am obliged to comment on, because of geography. Little Big Man (1970) was directed by Arthur Penn. It never felt right, possibly because it included too much humour, and was focused on being a parody. For people from Vancouver, Geswanouth Slahoot aka Dan George (1899 – 1981) portraying Old Lodge Skins, was its saving grace. It can be safely avoided because, as a film, it is irrelevant.
McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971), the next film directed by Robert Altman after M*A*S*H, was described as an anti-western by Altman himself. It is set in the Pacific Northwest in 1905, but filmed in greater Vancouver. For me, it helped explain the mindset behind the culture I grew up in. Starting in 1910, my maternal grandfather was an armed cattle buyer in this same environment. I have often wanted to read the book upon which the film is based, McCabe (1959) by Edmund Naughton (1926 – 2013), but have been unable to find it, at an affordable price. I have a print of the film that I watch periodically.
Almost all of the Westerns I appreciate have been labelled revisionist. Others include Shane (1953) directed by George Stevens (1904 – 1975); Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) directed by Sergio Leone (1929 – 1989); and, Dances with Wolves (1990) with several important roles provided by Kevin Costner (1955 – ).
Not all Western films provide insights. The one film that I have the greatest difficulty with is How the West was Won (1962). It is often described as an epic. I find it sentimental, focusing on three generations of one family and their situation, and ignoring how they negatively impacted others. It was divided into five segments: 1) The Rivers (1839); 2) The Plains (1851); 3) The Civil War (1861-1865); 4) The Railroad (1868); and, The Outlaws (1889). John Ford (1893 – 1973) directed the civil war segment. George Marshall (1891 – 1975) directed the railroad segment. Henry Hathaway (1898 – 1985) directed the other three. The key to understanding the film is that the West was only won after the rule of law became enforced. Many groups of people, including First peoples/ native Americans, are still waiting for that to happen.
Some may have noticed that the newest film here is Unagi (1997), which is more than 25 years old. That is because, since the symposium, over twenty years ago, I have avoided violence in film. I have accepted that I will not and do not understand it. In 1998, the American Psychiatric Association said that the average 18-year-old American has seen 200 000 acts of simulated violence in entertainment, including 16 000 killings. Later, research from the University of Pennsylvania confirmed that moviegoers are increasingly desensitized to, and accepting of, violence. I want neither.
And so to the point of this weblog post…
Arthur Penn’s (1922 – 2010) Bonnie and Clyde (1967) would have felt appropriate at the symposium, but was not screened. The setting of Bonnie and Clyde was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Banks were villains, for what they had done to ordinary people. In the course of the film, Bonnie and Clyde are transformed from petty criminals to iconic heroes. In particular, the violence at the end of the film resulting in the deaths of Bonnie Parker (1910 – 1934) and Clyde Barrow (1909 – 1934) comes unexpectedly. Once the credits have played, viewers are more critical of the police, and more sympathetic to the criminals.
Across the world, politicians lose popular support for their legislation. For them, that is unimportant. They have billionaires who support them financially, as long as they allow other excesses to continue. Democracy is reduced to voting for A or B. They are, effectively, the same!
In the United Kingdom (UK), an international panel of human rights experts convened by the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) conducted an authoritative study of state impunity, where the UK has been shown to have operated a widespread and systemic practice of protecting security forces from sanction during the conflict in Northern Ireland. The panel investigated claims that the UK had not only engaged in collusion, but blocked proper police investigations into conflict-related killings to protect security force members and agents implicated in crime. The NCHR warned that UK’s reputation would be severely damaged by the proposed Northern Ireland Legacy act.
Well in advance, the NCHR recommended that the UK abandon the legislation that came into force 2024-05-01 to grant conditional amnesties for crimes during Na Trioblóidí (Irish) = The Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. The legislation gave soldiers and paramilitaries immunity from prosecution for crimes if they cooperate with a new body aimed at truth recovery. This bans victims’ families from future legal challenges.
Meanwhile, in the United States (US), Biden has lost considerable support among young voters. He has been too supportive of Israel, and not recognized the deaths of 34 000 Palestinians as genocide. Not everyone appreciates young, peaceful student protestors exercising their first amendment rights in support of Palestinians. I see a generational change, reminiscent of the Vietnam war protests of the late 1960s. Gen Z is fed up. They are Bonnie or Clyde. The Post-Pandemic world of the 2020s, mirrors the Great Depression of the 1930s. Universities with their excessive tuition payments, have replaced banks as villains.
If I were to utter one word of advice to politicians, it would be to ensure that house ownership becomes affordable. For most young people it is not.
In 1968, Columbia university called in the police to clear anti Vietnam war protesters. This was followed by many other institutions, including Harvard in 1969. This resulted not just in photos of bruised and bloodied students in the national press, but in the national guard opening fire on students protesting the war, killing four at Kent State University, in Ohio. At Yale, president Kingman Brewster refused the police access to the campus, and opened it up to protesters. This non-confrontational approach defused the situation. Some current university presidents are not closely enough tied to their students, but probably have too intimate ties with their financial beneficiaries.
Those now-ancient protests were called anti-American, the new protests anti-Semitic. These new protests have also met with police violence and mass arrests. I am particularly disgusted by the police at Emory University in Decatur, Georgia. Undoubtedly, most of those peaceful demonstrators will forever see the police as an adversary. I keep hoping that some new generation will see the fraud that allows billionaires free reign, yet condemns the majority to ever lower standards of living. I hope today’s youth are determined to end of the individualistic excesses of the ever ongoing Reagan and Thatcher era. A recommended book is Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth (2024) by Ingrid Robeyns.
In the US, both Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) and James Luther Bevel (1936 – 2008) advocated nonviolent methods to improve/ win civil rights for African Americans. Cesar(io Estrada) Chavez (1927 -1993) and Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta (1930 -), co-founders of the United Farmworkers Association, which later become the United Farm Workers, also adopted the non-violent approach, advocated by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 – 1948). More recently Gene Sharp (1928 – 2018) has advocated this approach, used in several of the political protests in eastern Europe. He has been the subject of an earlier weblog post.
Dolores Huerta, will be allowed the last word on this subject, her lifelong crusade to correct economic injustice began when she left her job as an elementary school teacher: I couldn’t tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.
Note: Parts of this weblog post have been sitting around collecting digital dust for years. There has never been any urgency to publish it, because it involved events, now 20 years in the past. Except, when I started reading about the tribulations of Gen Z-ers in 2024-04, I realized that the content could be used, and published with some urgency.
