Killer culture
This is a quote from one of the reviews of "Grindhouse" posted at Rotten Tomatoes, a site that gathers movie reviews from newspapers and websites from all over the country.
The movie is the latest from Quentin Tarantino, the movie director who has made millions feeding sadistic fantasies to the American public. His latest movie, which I have not seen and will not see, prompted the above reviewer to let his readers know that for $11 they could relish realistic scenes of horrific violence, and that, indeed, that is the reason to go see it, and the reason it was made in the first place.
Of the many reviews Rotten Tomatoes has posted on this movie, 81 percent have given it a thumbs up. Eighty-one percent. Judging from the subject of the film (an homage to cheap, violent films from the 70s), Tarantino has kept his ironic detatchment, but otherwise has dropped all pretension as to having a story to tell. Let's face it, fans, he says, we're sadistic and we're proud of it. It means we're bad, macho, cool.
Just like the advertising you consume everyday, the TV you watch, the corporate-sponsored sports, you have the smarts to understand you are being lied to, manipulated, hyped. You are hip to it. It doesn't affect you and doesn't really mean anything. Well, except on the meta level, of course, the way it is all massaged, pitched, spun, and, most importantly, the numbers, i.e. who is making a killing.
But the violence that fills our theaters and TV screens, do you think, maybe, there is any connection to what happened to Kathy Sierra? To what happened at Virginia Tech? To the non-reaction of the public to the sadism of the Bush Administration, if you don't count calculations of which defense and security stocks to buy?
Watching movies such as "Grindhouse," and the ever-more grotesque representatives of the horror genre such as "Saw" or the action genre such as "300," desensitizes us from our own humanity. These flicks achieve their mesmerizing power by reducing the human experience to a savage binary: kill or be killed.
In such reduced circumstances, we must know, we become desparate to know: Who are the victors? Who survived? Who can we idolize?
Quentin Tarantino?
Yeah, he's killer.
Quite a deal for $11 -- a veritable smorgasbord of decapitations, impalings, attempted rapes, car chases, explosions, good and bad acting and well-endowed women in very short shorts.
-- Lou Lumenick, Some Grind of Wonderful New York Post
This is a quote from one of the reviews of "Grindhouse" posted at Rotten Tomatoes, a site that gathers movie reviews from newspapers and websites from all over the country.
The movie is the latest from Quentin Tarantino, the movie director who has made millions feeding sadistic fantasies to the American public. His latest movie, which I have not seen and will not see, prompted the above reviewer to let his readers know that for $11 they could relish realistic scenes of horrific violence, and that, indeed, that is the reason to go see it, and the reason it was made in the first place.
Of the many reviews Rotten Tomatoes has posted on this movie, 81 percent have given it a thumbs up. Eighty-one percent. Judging from the subject of the film (an homage to cheap, violent films from the 70s), Tarantino has kept his ironic detatchment, but otherwise has dropped all pretension as to having a story to tell. Let's face it, fans, he says, we're sadistic and we're proud of it. It means we're bad, macho, cool.
Just like the advertising you consume everyday, the TV you watch, the corporate-sponsored sports, you have the smarts to understand you are being lied to, manipulated, hyped. You are hip to it. It doesn't affect you and doesn't really mean anything. Well, except on the meta level, of course, the way it is all massaged, pitched, spun, and, most importantly, the numbers, i.e. who is making a killing.
But the violence that fills our theaters and TV screens, do you think, maybe, there is any connection to what happened to Kathy Sierra? To what happened at Virginia Tech? To the non-reaction of the public to the sadism of the Bush Administration, if you don't count calculations of which defense and security stocks to buy?
Watching movies such as "Grindhouse," and the ever-more grotesque representatives of the horror genre such as "Saw" or the action genre such as "300," desensitizes us from our own humanity. These flicks achieve their mesmerizing power by reducing the human experience to a savage binary: kill or be killed.
In such reduced circumstances, we must know, we become desparate to know: Who are the victors? Who survived? Who can we idolize?
Quentin Tarantino?
Yeah, he's killer.
