cronenberg's HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is inneresting mooie

[Polin Farase]

history of violence won praise from alot of critics. cronenberg is a
master of sorts. he constructs movies like a rubick's cube, where the
apparent chaos of patterns hides a twisted logic. but, is there
anything other than the clever, even brilliant, construction or, is it
like origami? in terms of substance, paperthin. cronenberg may be an
expert conceptualist of film. but, this isn't my idea of a mooie.

the story is run-of-the-mill genre exercise with elements of both noir
and western. but, the treatment is that of an 'art film', an
intellectual postmodern exercise. like 'far from heaven', it works
with familiar--even outdated--genre material which is transformed
inside out. indeed, many cronenberg films give us the impression of
organisms whose innards are dangling on the outside. imagine
puncturing a hole in a rubber ball, prying the hole wide open and then
pulling the inside of the ball outside until the ball's been totally
reversed inside/outside. that is essentially the vision of david lynch;
he guts humans like a chinese chef guts fish. it's one of those
subversive thingeys.

you will have noticed by now that there are two kinds of
filmgoers--among others. one likes movie movies. other like movie
unmovies. a movie movie crowd will see 'starship troopers', 'three
kings' or 'history of violence' straight, as a fun rah-rah sort of
mooie. the movie unmovie crowd will see another layer--so-called
subsersive or subtextual layer--that subverts or questions the very
genre it serves. so, starship troopers is both a 'fascist sci-fi
epic'--as movie movie--and a satire--movie unmovie--that exposes the
shallow emptiness of facism and sci-fi spectacle.
in the audience, you can spot the movie movie people. they are
slackjawed and watch the screen like idiots, tossing popcorn into their
gaping mouths. the movie unmovie crowd will sit there, looking over
their shoulders, feeling smugly superior and intellectual. they
flatter themselves that they can enjoy the movie as both entertainment
and subversive satire on society, culture, and entertainment; they
make me sick. history of violence will surely appeal to both crowds.
the dummies can enjoy it as gungho story about a peaceful man being
forced to stand up for his family. the smarties can pat their own backs
for noticing all the hints and clues throughout the movie questioning
the culture and mentality of violence that have such toll on our
society.

cronenberg, being canadian, has a rather condescending attitude toward
americans. the leading character is played by viggo morgenstein,
another leftwing non- and anti-american bunghole. the movie purports
to show us the mentality behind american penchant for
violence--though, any careful reading of the movie would suggest the
movie's implications are universal. still, there are enough elements
that remind us of lars von trier's patronizing view of america as a
land of guncrazed homicidal morons who can't settle any problem without
resorting to barbarism(yeah sure, europeans should be lecturing us
about violence and barbarism. you got some great soccer fans there).
history of violence partly resembles a cross between shane and bowling
for columbine. it's like everyone is willfully playing stupid as only
americans can be. you get a sense that every actor been told to act 20
pts below his natural IQ. cronenberg is telling us, 'this is why you
stupid americans are soooo dumb and violent'. well, shut up, tard
canadian boy. you wouldn't have an audience if not for americans.

there are roughly two kinds of action movies--among others. one
presents a simple good vs evil which justifies the good guy whupping
the bad guys. we never question the nature of such violence. we root
for the good guy to kick ass. consider stuff like dirty harry and john
wayne mooies(though not all).
the other kind of action film questions the violence and exposes its
dubious justifications. consider films such as 'deliverance'; the
macho guy and weakling reverse roles. we root for the guys but are
compelled to face questions about right and wrong, manhood, redemption
thru violence. nothing is clear.
history of violence goes much further in questioning the role of
violence in our lives and mooies--so closely linked to the national
psyche. it isn't anything new. if anything, its message or theme is a
tiresome retread of revisionist films since the late 60s, or even 50s.
indeed, hints of revisionism surfaced much earlier than most of us
might assume--as we've been told again and again that everything was
square prior to the 60s(what with Love, Drugs, and Peace fantasies
everywhere, it could actually be argued that 60s generation was the
most naive of all. 50s pop culture may have been more naive but the
people were probably maturer, willing to grow up, work, raise families,
and bear the burdens of life; in contrast, 60s generation thought it
could change the world by smoking pot and daydreaming about communes).
consider the westerns of anthony mann such as winchester 73. consider
red river. however, the older films only suggested, thru muted irony,
at the contradictions imbedded within the genre. the revisionist films
of the late 60s and 70s were truly fundamental in overturning the
assumptions of genre formulations. little big man doesn't suggest
revision like a mann movie; it assaults western themes in a
take-no-prisoner manner.
but, this kind of subversion or revision has become old hat for some
time. consider films such as unforgiven, mystic river, joe, taxi
driver, something wild, dead man, ghost dog, 25th hour, the general,
natural born killers, fight club, sling blade, house of games, in the
bedroom, dancer in the dark, to live and die in la, fargo, man who
wasn't there, three kings, elephant, etc.
The Revision or The Subversive is a genre in its own right. i suppose
these films still have importance or usefulness because the traditional
form of action spectacle is still powerfully with us--in the same way
that alcoholics anonymous will always be around as long as we have
alcoholics... which is prolly forever; same reason the stories in the
bible are relevant forever since mankind suffers from the same sins
generation after generation.
mankind cannot be purged or saved but only reminded and made sober,
which is a never-ending process.
most mainstream movies--as well as alot of indies--are basically simple
minded shoot-em ups with good guys vs bad guys, or at least badass guys
vs just bad guys. so, there is a sense of ongoing urgency to preach to
us about the true nature of violence and how it's misrepresented by
movies, tv, videogames, etc. too often, movies represent the reality
of our social rage only to resolve the problems in a fantastic
explosion of heroic or retributive violence as though the barrel of a
gun is the answer to all problems.

of course, there is a moral contradiction in most of these movies
because they have to function on two levels. they have to work as genre
pieces delivering the goods so as to attract the dummy masses. they
also have to work on a subversive level, undermining the very material
served for our amusement in order to delight all the smarties.
few people wants to see a truly honest movie about real violence--such
as my beautiful laundrette--, and realist films are not much of an
artistic challenge for clever filmmakers; in making realist films, the
style and technique must serve the actuality of reality. but, genre
films are constructed of elaborate stylization and invite further
stylization based on imagination than on any fidelity to reality;
realism doesn't allow for stuff like the 'good, bad, ugly' or 'dirty
harry'. the artist can play with genre ideas. you can't do much--at
least on a fantastic level--with the material of bicycle thieves but
you can play endless variations of a hitchcock movie, noir, sci-fi, or
western.
one must be faithful to reality in a realist film; one can be inventive
with blatant fiction which creates its own rules. cronenberg wouldn't
have relished making a realistic films--at least of the sociological
kind; however, he prolly believes his films, no matter how weird, are
no less truthful in their exploration of the reality INSIDE us; he
considers himself a pop kafka.

now, one can make great realistic films. consider 'prince of the city'
by lumet and many films by tavernier. but, it doesn't allow much in
the way of personal style; characters and sense of place are more
important than the vision of the 'auteur'.
cinema is the history of artistic ego, and cronenberg's is as big as
any other. he's as insistent an auteur as the thugs are as killers in
history of violence. he has to have it his way. besides, genre films
attract more audience than realist films. people wanna escape reality,
not face reality. so, the subversive filmmaker has to give people what
they want while sneakily subverting certain elements as if to suggest
that appearances are often false.
consider a film like 'three kings' which, on one level, function as an
gungho war movie and a crowd pleaser. on the other hand, it pulls the
rug on every assumption intrinsic to the genre. it never subverts to
the extent of killing the fun. but, it's supposed to make us question
international politics and how entertainment--including three kings
itself--distracts us from the real complexities. three kings plays the
distracting game but positions the mirrors so that distracted
reflections finally stare us back in the face. it's ridiculous and
smug, but enough idiots bought into its cleverness for the same reason
they fell for 'starship troopers'. it's a dumb excuse for pretending
to be smart.

history of violence is certainly a crowd pleaser. tightly constructed,
it's packed with tension and suspense, and serves up cathartic doses of
violence. it's all very cool. but, on another level, what happens in
the mooie matters less than how we react to the mooie. the film
functions as a rorschach test; ultimately, our reaction says more about
us and our society than about the movie. the movie is like a national
psycho-moral test.
in a way, cronenberg is saying that we are all like the character of
tom stahl-- or, even like the character played by fiennes in 'spider'.
we pretend to live on one level of reality when there are other levels
concealing our true nature. in 'spider', the fiennes character accuses
his father of killing his mother but it turns out he done it as a kid.
in history of violence, tom stahl pretends that he's a man of peace. he
wants to believe it so much that he's in a kind of auto-induced
amnesia. but, he was actually a savage killer in the past, and his
savage instincts may still be quietly running thru his veins.
what does this imply? in a way, cronenberg is saying all
people--especially stupid americans--are walking time-bombs going tick,
tick, tick. we watch movies where people blow up cuz it vicariously
relieves all the tension inside of us; indeed, in 'scanners', people
literally blew up.
we watch 'history of violence' pretending to be good people siding with
the good guy against the thugs. but, are we not killers and thugs in
our hearts? if not in actual deed, then in our hearts, minds,
fantasies, and dreams?

tom stahl's retracing of his past serves as a metaphor for mankind as a
whole. there is the biological root of violence. there is also the
historical/social/cultural. the process of evolution made all of us
potential killers in order to survive, hunt for food, and mate with the
choicest ho. no wonder that sexuality plays an important element in
the movie.

in the enlightened world, we think of sex/love as something separate
from violence, or its opposite; make love, not war. 'all you need is
love' as opposed to war, for example. but, sexuality and violence are
linked as kubrick done showed so brilliantly in dr. strangelove. in
the animal worlds, males fight to fuc* the choice ho. and female
animals are usually 'raped' by males.
in 'gone with the wind', rhett butler rapes scarlett in the midst of
war; he carries her up the staircase while she hornily resists. there's
a staircase fuc*ing/rape in 'history of violence' as well. it's a
process on the evolutionary ladder. 'make love, not war' is a naive
joke. in our society, among the lower classes male physical power wins
the ho's. among the higher classes, money and privelege win the ho's.
the point is there is a layer of violence or power--which is always
backed by threat of violence-- imbedded in sexuality.
tom's son is pushed around in highschool, and he backs down in the
locker room when it's guys vs guys. but, when he's pushed around with
his girlfriend in tow, he lashes out like a wild animal and kicks some
butt. his sexual instinct/love brings out the most vicious streak in
him.
earlier in the movie, we saw tom do a 69 with his wife dressed in
cheerleader outfit. while she is a strongwilled and 'liberated' woman,
there is something in her that begs for some macho hard dick up her
poon. cheerleaders cheers for the top athlete. though her 69 with her
hubby is mainly for play, there is a subtext of 'fuc* me hard, you
alpha male stud, you'. it's as if both man and woman, by sucking
eachother's genitals, is accepting the primacy of sexuality in any
human relationship. yes, it's like in straw dogs where the blonde
bimbo can't resist the roguish charms of beefy stud thug dude.
or, maybe it has an opposite meaning. in a 69, man and woman are, more
or less, equal. he has her poon and she has his dick. both are
vulnerable. in the early scenes, man and wife are equal partners. but,
when tom rapes his wife on the staircase, it's the man finally saying
'take this bitch, i is da man' and the woman submitting, 'i is da ho'.

later, when the wife finds out about tom's real past--his real name is
joey finkelstein--she's disgusted and angry. oh my, she's been living
with a murderous beast all along. she's confused and bitter... that is
until joey rapes her on the stairway. the rape soon turns to
submission, suggesting that what she needed most to overcome the
confusion and anxiety was to adjust to the new male. in a way, she may
subconsciously prefer the 'new' hubby, the badass killer male. 'tom'
was uncle-tom-ish. she loved him but didn't really respect him as
man-of-the-house. he was a partner. but, joey is someone who asserts
his power over her. tom is someone she could argue with. joey is
someone she must surrender to. the rape scene is pretty powerful, up
there with similar scene in 'smash palace', the 1979 australian mooie.
tom that she knew was a good boy. he was a liberalish sort of guy who
never asserted his male power over her. she thought his outer niceness
was matched by his inner niceness. but, she comes to realize that his
outer niceness was a kind of put-on, no matter sincere. deep inside,
he's a killer badass. the more she confronts him on this issue, the
weaker she becomes. she realizes that their equal partnership was not
written in stone. it existed only cuz tom allowed it to exist. equality
of the sexes is a social myth. in fact, both historically and
biologically, woman is da ho. in the final scene, she sits meekly at
the dinner table, both fearful and respectful of joey finkelstein.
her equality as spouse was a privelege allowed by tom, not some natural
law.
the natural law is that balls are mightier than the poon.

anyway, tom/joey doesn't only represent our evolutionary/biological
past but our historical, cultural, tribal past. it's significant that
tom, seemingly a small town goy, turns out be a former jewish gangster.
in america, we all like to think of ourselves as starting anew, having
no fixed cultural past. but, we all belong to traditions, and all
traditions carry their peculiar baggage of violence.
and what better represents the legacy of cultural/historicl burden than
jewish history? we are children of evolution but also of the original
sin.
in the bible, brother kills brother. cain is marked with a sign on his
head. we are all tainted by the capacity for greed, power-lust, envy,
etc.
joey's brother, richard finkelstein--played by william hurt--, calls
joey 'bro-him'. it's like a hipsterish take on ibrahim. though we are
living in the modern world, the enmity among men, even between
brothers, is strong and destructive. we even saw this between the
corleone brothers in godfather II.
joey's jewishness also signifies world affairs today. there is a
history of violence in the middle east region. like tom hiding in a
quiet small town, jews set up israel to have peace and quiet. but,
there is a dark story to how they earned that peace--by kicking
palestian butt. today, arabs and muslims wanna get even so we have
ongoing warfare. no matter how jews try to escape their past, they
can't--no more than whites can run from the ever worsening black
problem. 'you can run but you can't hide'. every action leads to a
reaction(unless the action wiped out the enemy totally like americans
did with indiansl but then brother may still kill brother among the
same kind; just look at the hatred between patriotic republicans and
anti-american democrats). god told Lot and his family, 'don't look
back', but we are always looking backward or being pulled backwards.
just when we think the past is behind us, it's before us.
jewishness is also significant in terms of modern western history. jews
were victims of antisemitism which culminated in the holocaust. jews
had tried assimilation, zionism, and radicalism to deal with the
hostile goyim. assimilation is what we have with american jews. zionism
is israel. radicalism was communism. the latter two involved great
deal of violence. however, even assimilation hasn't been entirely
successful cuz jews being smart, they have gained great prominence in
society and become objects of envy, resentment, and mistrust. in a
way, tom's son represents all three aspects of jewish experience. at
school, he tries to get along. when, push comes to shove, he shoves
back and kicks butt--like commie jew or zionist jew. he also draws
close to his family. he has slightly curly hair, hinting at some
hidden semitic genes; his girlfriend is kind of jewish looking too,
suggesting there is some tribal subconscious tug among people of
similar background. his tormentor is a blonde white nigger arsehole.
the bully represents nazi terror and the current gangsta rap mentality
that has poisoned the minds of so many young ones.
jews are interesting in the context of world violence cuz jews have
been both great victims and key players/benefactors of violence. they
were victims of countless persecutions and pogroms and exiles. but,
some jews also profitted greatly by financing wars of nations. jews
survived by mastering both defeat and victory. during world war II,
many jews were the ultimate victims of violence. but, thru israel, jews
have come to represent the greatest fighting machine on earth.
ed harris's character is blind in one eye as a result of being struck
with barb wire by joey. harris wants revenge. barbwire has special
meaning cuz it conjures up images of concentration camps. that harris
was struck in the eye reminds us of 'eye for an eye' rule in the jewish
law. joey turns out to be baddest jew mofo since dustin hoffman got
real pissed in 'straw dogs'; speaking of peckinpah, i was also reminded
of 'bring me the head of alfredo garcia'. the barb wire also suggests
the frontier west where men fought over territory and livestock, often
shooting one another like in the westerns. cronenberg's point is
similar to one made by neurotic leftist cranks like jon jost: that
america--indeed all nations--were founded on violence, bloodlust,
arbitrary territorialism, myths, and deceptions. as even peace was won
and established thru violence, we are all the children of violence and
the parents of violence. suppose nazis had won in russia and had wiped
out the slavic peoples. in 100 or 200, yrs those could be peaceful
germanic territory. but, can you pretend the past didn't exist? are
there tremors of the aggressive violent nature running thru all our
veins. like the bully kid in highschool, people naturally seek
conflict, domination, competition.

seems to me that cronenberg has a thing for the duality of man. think
of his other movies. in scanners, there is good side and bad side of
ESP power. in a way, the two brothers are flip side of the same coin.
consider the FLY where the monster/fly is the flipside of the
scientist/intellectual. it's as though hidden inside every sharp
intellect is hairy instinct. and, consider dead ringers which was
about twin brothers who are two sides of one person. consider spider
where fiennes was both pathetic loser who couldn't hurt a fly and a
sociopathic murderer. and, history of violence presents a similar kind
of duality. tom is the flipside of joey and vice versa. in a way, the
movie is saying all of us are like this. most of us never killed
anyone. we are like tom, with regular jobs and getting along nicely in
town. but we have the joey side of us, created by biological evolution
and burdened by the original sin of history and tradition. we are all
potential killers for either animal or cultural passions. just look at
the curren crisis in the middle east. piss off a seemingly peace-loving
pacifist jew and suddenly he will kick your ass real bad. yet, how did
jews win their peace in the first place? conquest, war, and
asswhupping. who is the real aggressor in the middle east? everyone
sees himself as a victim. indeed, who is the victim in 'history of
violence'? ed harris thinks he's only seeking vengeance for what joey
had done to him. he's the one seeking justice from his perspective.
also, he's more honest cuz he's still a gangster while joey is hiding
out as tom the lawabiding good man when he's really a psycho killer;
indeed ,when his wife asks about his past, he feels little remorse in
saying he used to kill and rob; he did it cuz he felt like it which
implies he's good only cuz he feels like it also; there is no moral
depth to his goodness.
though the movie is about a man and his family, he represents all of
us, all of history. he represents the duality within everyone of us.
even women. on the one hand, tom's wife is a modern liberated woman.
she is assertive and tough. she thought she was married to a nice,
rather bland guy. when she finds out that he's really a badass jew
toughguy, she resists at first but comes to accept him after he pulls
her pants down and rams his god-chosen schlong into her shikse poon.
she's both a liberated woman and a ho' slave of man in control.
similar themes run thru 'mystic river' by eastwood. these ideas are
rather tiresome and cliched by now.
this sexual tension is present in alot of cronenberg mooies. often,
there will a be strongwilled independent woman who's used to modern
empowerment of women. meanwhile, the male figure seems overly
cerebral, liberal, castrated. but, when as the true nature of maledom
comes to the fore, the woman is relegated to scared-shitness. take
'the fly'. geena davis is initially the aggressive partner in the
relationship. but, when jeff goldblum fuc*s her like a superfly stud,
she looks up to her man. finally when goldblum becomes total flyman,
she's screaming like a pussybitch. the man, unrestrained by liberal
social norms, is the master.
same in 'spider'. on the surface, fiennes character seems timid, nice,
and pathetic. but, inside him is the male possessiveness that wants
power over womankind, whether it be his ma or any other ho. beneath
his niceness and harmlessness is a lurking male monster master dude.
in a way, cronenberg is like the kid in 'calvin and hobbes'. feeling
insecure as a geek-man, cronenberg exercises power over us thru creepy
crawly. notice how calvin is disregarded as a weakling and tard. the
only way he can freak out girls and have power over them is to eat a
bug or some such. over the yrs, cronenberg has grown older and
maturer--less like calvin and more like hobbes. it's the basic
duality of cronenberg: calvin and hobbes. he likes to freak us out like
calvin and then wryly comment on such boogerishness with the sardonic
aloofness of hobbes.

another key theme in history of violence is territoriality. this too is
an old theme, most powerfully conveyed in peckinpah's straw dogs which
drew inspiration from robert ardrey's african genesis and the
territorial imperative(neither of which i read).
history of violence presents two kinds of men: hunter/nomads and
farmer/settlers. now, tom is not a farmer but he lives in small town
community where agriculture surely plays a central role(tom owns a
diner which suggests he exists in the grey zone between being settled
and being on the road). also, it's a town where people all know one
another by name and stay put. nomads may be tribal but they are not
broadly communal. nomads only stick with their own kind--fellow killers
of the same tribe; often in hostile or strange territory, their
readyness for warfare has to be finely tuned. settlers are peaceloving
folks, more confident in their rootedness, more easygoing.
but, there are some striking ironies. tom, a peaceful settler, was once
joey, nomad/hunter. so, even the inhabitants of a settler community
could be closet hunter/killers. also, every community, in first being
settled, had to be conquered by nomads, and conquered territories must
be defended. so, while the town seems peaceable, the sheriff is an
important figure in guarding its safety; he's like the sheepdog
guarding the sheep from the wolves; but, it could well be that every
sheep is really wolf in sheep's clothing. for all the town's
friendliness and tolerance, it is also territorial and suspicious of
out-of-towners. also, within the very bosom of that town, we have a
blonde haired white niggerish bully with strong hunter/nomad instinct.
so, even settler communites spawn aggressive folks. it's in the nature
of the human genome no matter what kind of community it be.
anyway, it's significant that tom is robbed in his place of business;
later, thugs arrive at his house. but, there's a twist to all this.
tom, the almost victim of robbers, was once such a killer/robber
himself. so, when he faces the thugs at his house later, is he
defending his house against strangers? or, is he a stranger himself?
after his family finds out about his past, they see him as an intruder
than as a defender of home and hearth. it reminds us of the final words
in 'straw dogs' where hoffman says he doesn't know where his home is
either. in a way, the movie indicates the tension within every nation.
america was first conquered. all these white settlers were once
hunter/nomads who done driven the injuns out. and jews in israel, who
seem like peaceful settlers, done driven the ragheads out. negroes
were brought to US and settled as slaves but them negroes in africa had
been hunter/nomads. and the hunter/nomadish negroishness is pervasive
thru our culture. we are attracted to the negro cuz there is a buried
part of us that wants to revert back to hunter/nomadic macho
badassness. we often like to disparage whitebread suburbs and like to
see ourselves as hipsterish mofos always on the road, conquering places
and ravaging women. so, it makes sense that the bully kid, though
white, talks like a nigga. he prolly done heard rap music and such as
alot of white boys do. the irony of all this is alot of white kids
ostensibly partake of black culture cuz of its noble victim elements,
YET, in truth, the real attraction is the macho power element. thru
negro culture, one can play wolf in sheep's clothing and sheep in
wolf's clothing(if you is a honker); you can have the fried chicken and
eat it too. you can sing, scream, and shout about buring down the city,
beating up folks, robbing and shooting, and raping ho's, but it's okay
cuz guilt ridden liberals always insist that anything negroish is just
a tragic result of centuries of evil white oppression. martin luther
kingpin.
anyway, the theme of territoriality is most striking when tom/joey goes
to see his brother richard. joey is the outsider, at the mercy of the
master of the house and his henchmen. but, joey's killer instincts
emerge, and richard's henchmen are all easily disposed of. richard
pursues joey who ran out of the room after killing the henchmen. soon,
richard finds himself locked out of the house, and when the door opens,
joey shoots him dead. in other words, the master of the house changed
in the flicker of an eye. joey won the territorial battle. richard,
master of the house, became the outsider and shot dead like burglar--in
his own house.
if we wanna be extra-leftist, we can argue that this is the dynamic of
capitalism itself--that there is no sense of fixed justice or
rootedness. property changes hands as a result of ruthlessness or
dog-eat-dog competitiveness. just look at the all the foreclosures as
the housing bubble burst.
and brother will turn against brother. in the darwinian sense, this is
only natural. in the biblical sense, this is the cause of sinfulness
within our hearts. according to marxism, this is the basis for class
conflict. according to capitalism, we must harness this energy thru
rules and regulations and make everyone work extra hard to get a piece
of his own.
anyway, this territoriality theme is associated with jewishness also
cuz jews are famous as nomads throughout history. yet, jews were not so
much nomadic hunters as nomadic settlers. they were not idealists of
nomadism but nomads idealizing a permanent home. yet, even today, the
contradiction within jewish reality is causing big troubles in the
middle east.
whereas vikings went into other towns like a pack of wolves to bash and
smash, jews often entered other communities like a virus. though
israelites were famous for their wars, most of jewish history is that
of nomadic jews settling amongst strangers than take the land outright
from them. if jews gained wealth and land, it was not thru the sword
but thru the pen.

the problem with cronenberg is that he's a boogerhead, no matter how
smart he may be. he's a master of film form no doubt. his approach is
precise and surehanded. but, there's a detachedness and clinicality
which turns alot of folks off. i'm not so sure that cronenberg's style
really suits his material.
degeneracy or pathologicality of man is a fascinating subject for art,
though not my favorite. there is psycho-degeneracy and
socio-degeneracy. there are several ways to approach this subject. one
is by becoming possessed by degeneracy like a shaman. think of jimi
hendrix. this is surely the most risky, dangerous, and destructive way
to go, but it can produce powerful art--as long as the artist remains
alive, which usually aint for long. another way is to approach it
morally or humanistically, as in 'amores perros', which shows us a
world of all sorts of vices and lunacies. empathy and ruthless devotion
to truth are the keys to this approach. the artist musn't wallow in or
play with social or psychological pathologies out of mere fascination.
we are always reminded of the primacy of reality and moral
responsibity.
the third way is more cautious than the first, more nihilistic than the
second. think of david lynch in eraserhead. lynch doesn't wanna go let
loose like a wild negro in the degenerative realm. nor does he wanna
draw some moral or humanistic conclusion based on his vision. yet, he
wants to immerse himself into the dark, twisted, sorryass depths of
the human psyche-physiology. think of the image in eraserhead where
the guy sinks into a liquid bed. cronenberg has something in common
with lynch but cronberg's detachment which prevents him from merging
fully with his material. unlike lynch, who submerges totally, sinking
into the goo and slime, cronenberg always puts on the whole scuba
gear. he submerges into the dark territory but more as a fascinated
tourist or lab experimentor than as a real gutsy artist.
in one way, cronenberg is the surgeon of the subconscious, and i'm sure
his approach is just as valuable as any other. why should all
directors follow the same method? however, considering the extent to
which cronenberg is willing to go with his material, he risks far too
little himself. he remains aloof and clean while damning everyone else.
kubrick was kinda detached and aloof too but it was the result of his
transcendental/cosmic view of the world.
he was suggesting at something even greater than his great self;
cronenberg's films give you the sense that cronenberg has all the truth
in the palm of his crafty hands.
kubrick, on some level, was an spiritualist. think of 2001.
in a way, 'the shining' has something in common with 'history of
violence' in that an apparently harmless man slowly reveals some hidden
dark side of his soul. and come to think of it, both kubrick and
cronenberg made movies based on stephen king novels. but, when i see a
kubrick film, i see an artist who puts himself totally on the line, in
frontlines of battle. cronenberg is more like a strategist who cooks
up ever more creative ways to blow things up while remaining snugly way
behind the lines. this is becoming more so with his later 'art film's.
videodrome, scanners, dead zone, and the fly may be crude and sleazy
but they are most honest in terms of cronenberg's true taste for trash.
his later films rework trashy material into art film contraptions; they
are accomplished and impressive in terms of visual finesse and plot
construction. still, it looks like cronenberg is trying to score
respectability points with the intellectual crowd. what's wrong with
this? well, the problem is cronenberg is trying to earn respect with
material that is hardly worthy of serious consideration. they are
worthy material for sleazy, gory, ugly, sensationalistic films. such
films can even be brilliant. videodrome is a sick demented classic.
but, they are hardly the material for deep profound art. you have to go
another route to attain such--like lynch with mulholland dr and
eraserhead which belong in categories of their own; they are genuine
art films based on personal vision. cronenberg, for all his ambition,
works within genre form--rather trashy and disreputable kind--and no
amount of mastery of technique can cover up the threadbareness of his
material.
the character of diane selwyn is fully realized in mulholland dr. she
may be fuc*ed up, but her complexity is obvious. but, clear away all
the conceptual web that holds cronenberg's films together and there's
precious little to say about people and their psychology except the
most trite and banal. 'spider' was an impressive masterwork in terms
of visual power, plot mechanics, symmetricality, and suspense. but what
does it ultimately say about its character? that he went a bit too
nutty with the oedipus complex thingey.

another problem of cronenberg is he lacks a basic humanity when it
comes to understanding his characters. to him, people are like insects.
it's no wonder that his films have often involved insects, arachnoids,
or crustaceanish critters either literally or metaphorically. consider
the fly where goldblum turns into a big bug, naked lunch where a
typewriter turns into a roach, existenz with funny chinese food, and
the spider where fiennes's psychology is a spidery web. cronenberg is
like a curious and precocious kid tearing insects limb by limb, by head
and tail, and carefuly examining the various parts and wondering if
they can be stuck together in different ways. if cronenberg had made
one of the alien sequels, he would have sided with the creature. i
haven't seen naked lunch but i heard it's based on william burroughs.
there is also a connection to kafka, famous for the metamorphosis among
other things. and, i'm sure that cronenberg, like lynch, is a major
admirer of kafka. but, there is a crucial difference between cronenberg
and kafka; and between either and burroughs.
the case of kafka is genuinely moving cuz he didn't seek to be weird or
'fuc*ed up'. if anything, he wanted happiness and normality. but, he
was genuinely weird, having been raised under an oppressive pa, being a
jew in a goyim dominated world, and living in a schizophrenic world
that was both archly conservative and feverishly revolutionary. welles
caught this sense in his version of 'the trial' where even modern
architecture cast medievalist/gothic shadows. kafka's work was not a
put-on. he genuinely grappled with inner pain, which is why his works
are moving, even somewhat heroic.
i never read burroughs but i get a sense that he was a lowlife punk who
was looking for trouble and to be fuc*ed up. this can be interesting,
even fascinating--if the artist is talented enough--, but it's not
moving. someone who goes out of his way to use heroin or shoot his
wife in the head by playing william tell isn't worthy of our sympathy.
maybe burroughs was a kind of pathological visionary genius. i dunno
cuz i never read him. but, he consciously chose to be far more fuc*ed
up than he needed to be. his work was something of a put-on. still,
burroughs paid the price for his craziness. he really lived a screwy
life of drugs, excess, paranoia, and such. he wasn't kidding. he was
real like peckinpah in terms of lunacy. he may have consciously acted
crazy but he paid the price for his craziness.
cronenberg, on the other hand, is a total put-on artist. he's not truly
weird like kafka, at least not internally. he's 'intellectually'
fascinated by weirdosity but as an outsider. also, unlike burroughs,
cronenberg is careful to always remain unscathed by the material he
works with. burroughs may have stupidly sought lepers but he bravely
contracted the disease. he became a card carrying member of the fuc*ed
tribe. cronenberg approaches leperosy with surgical gloves, face mask,
and other protections. he goes to weird places but always remains an
outsider, an observer, a note-taker. he never goes native.
now, again, there is certainly an advantage to this approach, and there
should be no reason for all artists to do likewise. STILL, i admire
artists who express pain, agony, or weirdosity either thru genuine
personal anguish or at least by sincere immersion--no matter how
unwise. cronenberg always remains unscathed. he's too like a smartass
sadistic kid playing with toys or hapless insects soon to be
dismembered and place under a microscope.

now, why does cronenberg have such an insectoid view of mankind?
perhaps, cuz of cronenberg's understanding of the dna and rna.
i don't know much about genetics, but i know we are basically the
product of our dna. there are 600 trillion cells in an average human
body and each cell carries the same genetic code. yet, new research
has shown that rna is just as important as dna. indeed, much of the
difference between man and ape is not so much due to dna difference(we
are 99% alike dna-wise)but cuz the rna turns on different dna codes.
dna is like a piano keyboard. suppose the human dna keyboard has 100
keys while the chimp dna keyboard has 99 keys. while that one
additional key is of great significance, of equal if not greater
importance is that the rna plays different notes on what are mostly
same keyboards.
indeed, two pianos can be exactly the same but play very different
music. dna is the keyboard, rna is the sheet music.
according to this view, man is essentially like other animals. the
difference is basically that different notes are played on our dna
board. if the rna played different notes on our dna we would be very
different. truth is much of our dna remains unplayed. it implies
there is potential for us to have hairy faces, have flippers instead of
arms, have fangs instead of teeth, have paws instead of hands, etc.
we have the wolf or ape gene in our dna. the only reason we aren't apes
or wolves is cuz our rna plays only those keys that make us human.
cronenberg isn't only interested in evolution but something called
devolution, which is the study of how life develops from a cluster of
genome to fully developed organism. look at human development and we go
from single cell to tadpole like creature to fish like creature to
froglike creature to reptile like creature before we turn mammal-like.
no wonder cronenberg was fascinated by gynecology in dead ringers. and
remember the nightmare where geena davis gave birth to a maggot child?
it's cronenberg's fear and fascination that the humans have the fly
gene in us; they are just not turned on by our rna. now, human dna and
fly dna are very different, but we have more in common with other
animals--at least latently--than we think. it's very possible that our
dna has the potential to produce rodentishness if the rna chose to play
those notes.
the way cronenberg sees it, the fundamental building blocks of our mind
and body are insect-like. if we were to look deeply into the most
elementary units of our physical construction, we'd find all these
insecty or mollusky, clickity-clackity linkages. take the cochlea
which looks like a snail. and look at the little bones in the middle
ear. it's insect like. insects are built like machines but their
bodies are gooey if crushed. and, the machinery and gooery of life are
what fascinates cronenberg. we think of ourselves as human but
cronenberg sees us as insect-man. for kafka, this was a personal
nightmare. for cronenberg, it's fun. how does goo turn into machine
like parts that make up living organisms? but is goo really just goo?
look into the goo and there's the dna strand which is like a spiral
machine structure. even goo isn't really goo. indeed, look at chemical
formulas. it's not just goo but there is a structure in how molecules
form and connect. so, cronenberg finds the goo beneath the structure
and the structure beneath the goo.
this prolly explains cronenberg's fascination with chinese cooking in
existenz. in one scene, jude law took some bone in a chinese stew and
constructed it into a gun. chinese cooking is fascinating especially
to some western folks cuz it's exotic and weird. chinese will use stuff
that western folks traditionally have discarded. consider some chinese
dish with jellyfish, fish, pork, veggies, etc. it's like a dna soup
ranging from the most primitive to the most sophisticated organisms.
most of us would find alot of the ingredients just plain yucky and
uneatable. yet, the chinese have a way of combining all these elements
and producing some fine cuisine.
same could be said of both the dna/rna and the human mind.
genetically, the human dna is like chinese cooking. there is more
stuff than we care to admit. instead of humans being wholly different
than apes or dogs, it's more like we are basically the same but
different keys are played on the dna piano. like chinese cooking,
there's more to our dna stew than we can ever imagine. just as
bone-gun can be formed out of chinese stew, lots of different stuff can
be molded out of the human dna. we can be apes or gophers.
similarly, our minds are like the chinese stew. beneath the layer of
consciousness is the subconscious which isn't necessarily human. there
are animal instincts that are very close to those of other animals. we
rationalize everything into human ideas but the underlying instinct or
impulse that drives us in our lives could be chimpish, doggish, or
gopherish.
there is no certainty to humannessness. we are merely different music
played from the shared dna code. same is true of human imagination,
feeling, and action. they are variations of ingredeints in the same
sczechwan primordial stew. so, while we think of good guy vs bad guy
in mooies like history of violence, it's really a matter of gopher-man
vs wolf-man.

cronenberg toned this down mostly in 'history of violence' but he
suggests as much thru the motif of water and coffee. water is the
basis of life. in the first scene, we see killers stopping by hotel
and killing everyone and taking water from the dispenser(which looks
like a giant maggot). now, what happens when water is used for life?
it becomes stained with the guck of life. take blood, pee, saliva,
etc. they all watery but gucky. so, pure water becomes blood and piss
thru the process of life. so, we have ed harris who comes and enjoys
tom's coffee. coffee is like life juice. life is water stained by
guckishness. later, when we see tom/joey kill people, their blood is
dark red, almost black like coffee. it's like his victims are bleeding
folgers.
though people consider themselves independent and individualistic, we
all share the same dna and the same water. killers drink the same
water as the victims. and we all stained by dna coffee like cain was
marked by a sign saying 'he done it'.
water and coffee also have significance cuz so much of historical
violence and wars were fought over them. before people fought for oil,
they fought for water. and coffee was a very important crop for
imperalism in latin america and africa. even today, coffee is an
important crop in alot of war ravaged third world nations. nothings
seems more harmless than sipping a cup of coffee, but the real price of
coffee is alot of blood.

liberals may like history of violence because, like 'far from heaven',
it addresses certain issues liberals can't voice honestly. let's face
it. alot of liberals and leftists are fed up with negro jivery,
aggressiveness, lunacy, idiocy, bullyism, etc. but, they've been
raised to think the black man is never ever wrong. it be 'racist' to
blame the negro for anything. so, movies like 'far from heaven' is so
pleasing to liberals cuz it allows them to dream of a time--the
50s--when the negroes hadn't gone totally crazy. they can nostalgically
look back to a time when there was so much promise, when a negro would
have married your daughter but still acted like sidney poitier than
like flavor flav or mike tyson. 'million dollar baby' also had this
kind of appeal; it presented a politically acceptable way to criticize
black behavior--we saw nice old fashioned negro morgan freeman whup a
foulmouthed nigga punk who be whupping a white boy. and, 'history of
violence' underhandedly condemns nigga attitudes by having a blonde
white guy talk nigga trash(just as most cop movies feature white
criminals instead of black--even when set in detroit; remember
robocop?). cuz the bully is white, it's not 'racist'. but, since the
bully is acting niggerish, we can assume that liberals are hoping that
blacks will see this and think, 'dang, it sho aint nice to be acting
all uppity and wild and shi*'. yes, liberals are this stupid and
naive. i mean how many black folks done see cronenberg mooies? also,
negroes are so wild and stupid that they howl with laughter whenever
there be violence. i once did see a mooie called 'sugar hill'. in one
scene, a punk was physically abusing a ho'. the negroes in the
audience were howling with laughter. when the woman punched the dude in
the balls, the negroes howled with more laughter. it don't matter who
gets hurt. negroes done love watching violence like they loves to watch
pitbulls slaughtering eachother to rap music. it's in their
testasterone drenched blood. and, i wonder if you done seeed 'menace
II society' with a bunch of negroes as audience. they be howling from
beginning to end, celebrating every violence as so daaaaang cool. the
only time they done be sad was when the lead homey be killed at the
end. otherwise, it all be fun and laughter, like when negroes done
throw a party after OJ been declared not guilty. negroes always be
complaining about unfair white jury in the south but as 'birth of a
nation' done show, negroes be far far worse. they be like animalistic
chillun.
liberals always be saying mooies like menace II society or some such
will sober us up and make us face the truth. but, those who already
know violence is bad don't need such dumb mooie. but, those who glorify
violence cannot be won over by some dumbass movie, which, by the way,
for all its cheap moralizing, was essentially a gangsta paradise
fantasy mooie--no more truthful than pulp ficton. indeed, hughes
brothers later went on to make a movie celebrating nigga pimps who be
using white ho's as sex slaves.

cronenberg is famous for his sense of symmetry, most obviously employed
in dead ringers, a movie about twins. cronenberg's basic idea is that
there are two sides or aspects of everything. yet, if you peer thru the
outershell of symmetry, you find an asymmetry that is equally
remarkable.
in history of violence, tom is the flipside of joey. man of peace is
the flipside of man of violence. both are same but both are also
different.
the movie begins with a killer and his sidekick partner, which is later
matched by highschool bully and his sidekick. tom and his wife doing
69 like kids is matched by the relation between tom's son and his
girlfiend. tom's 'heroic' antics in the diner are matched by his son's
headbashing of the bullies. tom's actions are seen as heroic, yet his
son is punished for his actions. all these symmetry/asymmetry raises
questions about the nature of perception of reality. when does bullying
become acceptable and when does it become criminal? when is fighting
back heroic and when is it, itself, criminal? to what extent is
tom/joey a defender and an aggressor? there was a similar kind of
symmetrism in 'spider' where sad pathetic fiennes was the flipside of
ruthless murderous fiennes. the relationship between victim and villain
is both symmetrical and asymmetrical. it's whacky.
kubrick was also known for his sense of symmetricality, and i'm sure
many have compared cronenberg with kubrick. however, i feel symmetrism
is too much of a readymade convention for cronenberg. it's almost an
excuse for not really thinking or searching thru his ideas. it's just
an easy philosophical principle to rely on to supposedly reveal the
hidden patterns of human psychology and behavior.
and, cronenberg hasn't so much identified symmetries that really exist
but imposed his theoretical principles on reality. this makes his
films seem a bit dogmatic when it comes to interpretation of human
behavior. if you know the rules of cronenberg game, his movies become
rather too obvious, even a bit tawdry and geeky. for this reason, his
films feel more like exercises than real stories. they are chinese box
mooies. they are closer to crossword puzzles than novels. it's fun to
look for connection and the right answers but once you find them, they
don't add up to much.
'the shining' leaves the viewer with alot of questions. yet, as
masterful and flawless as 'spider' or 'history of violence' is, is
there anything worthy of afterthought? with cronenberg, when it's over,
it's over. the only exception is maybe videodrome which is truly too
strange for any kind of summary. in fact, i don't even recall most of
it though it saw it only a year ago. it feels more like bits and pieces
of a forgotten nightmare than a movie experience.
it was like a crazy chopsuey movie, sort of thing you'd get if william
burroughs ran a chinese carryout.
but, i recall spider all too well. it's like a fossil displayed behind
glass in a museum. striking but lifeless.

because cronenberg takes an highly clinical approach, his view of
humanity is condescending and superior-ish. history of violence is
more like hypothesis of violence. more like a cleverly devised
theoretical argument than demonstration of some truth--no matter how
incomplete or imperfect. for a movie that purports to address social
reality, it's more like reality reduced to pulpish genre elements and
grown in a petri dish in a laboratory to assert foregone conclusions.
at best, cronenberg's characters are like guinea pigs. even when they
have strong personalities, they lack any sense of individuality or
uniqueness. they are trapped inside cronenberg's mindgames and act
according to the preordained patterns. with kubrick, the wider pattern
implied some cosmic truth or reality beyond rational understanding.
kubrick's formalism always suggested a greater mystery; it served as
the midpoint between the chaos of reality and the mystery of
super-reality.
in cronenberg's films, the pattern is simply a game imposed by
cronenberg. it really doesn't suggest at anything deeper. it's
basically a gimmick employed by any hack mystery writer. it's a
schtick.

the problem i have with cronenberg is his essential dryness. he's
certainly not the only artist to take a kind of anthropological or even
entymological view of mankind. think of imamura of 'insect women' and
other movies where his perspective on human nature and behavior is
refreshingly unconventional. it's both modern and primitivist. but,
imamura was a very engaged artist. he was part of the muck that he
presented. consider films like 'profound desire of the gods' or 'dr.
akagi'. imamura surely understood the strange side of human nature;
but, he exulted in its vitality and zaniness--a sense that there's much
more than meets the eye or mind. like sexual fluid, life is an ever
regenerating spring of energy and dynamism.
but, there's almost nothing beyond the formula in cronenberg's movies.
his movies are constructed like math problems and finally when we
arrive at the answer, that's it. there is a neat numerical summation
that minimizes rather than expands our understanding of human nature
and experience. the final scene of 'history of violence' seems to say,
So this is the final piece of the puzzle. with a movie like 'death
trap', another clever contraption, it doesn't matter cuz, as a simple
mystery tale, it plays us for suspense and laughs and when it's over,
it's over. history of violence, on the other hand, has pretensions of
being an art movie that offers some deeps thoughts about humanity and
such. yet, at the end, i felt a bit cheated, rather like after
'spider'. spider is an excellent movie, expertly constructed, with all
the threads meshed into a cobweb nightmare. but, when the pieces
finally came together, its so-called philosophy was the crudest form of
freudianism imaginable.
i prefer videodrome cuz its craziness resists any neat summation.
though perverse and sleazy, it's memorable for its inspired excess.
the later films are more finely crafted, even flawless. but, they are
more like machines than organisms. it's like cronenberg is a spider who
captures insects and sucks out all the life juice, leaving only the
outer shell.

all said and done, history of violence fails as a moral argument
because it's too fun and exciting. by now, it should be apparent to
everyone that you can NOT persuade an audience that violence is bad by
making it exciting. you can use all sort of subversive or
self-reflexive tricks or rationalizations.
the smarties, while picking up all the intellectual signals, will still
enjoy the bloodletting. as for the dummies--always outnumbering the
smarties--they will get a real kick out it. the best you can do is
present compelling enough characters whose humanity ultimately
outshines the violence. one of the most effective movies about violence
is 'something wild' which got to me cuz i cared about the jeff daniels
and melanie griffith. and, of course, the very great amores perros.
but, the characters in 'history of violence' are essentially stick
figures despite the solid performances.

intellectual types can justify their excitement over mooies like 'in
the bedroom', 'three kings', 'elephant', and 'history of violence' all
they want.
they are fun. not fun in the rah-rah sense but in the eye-popping, skin
tingling sense. sure, elephant is disturbing and shocking and such.
but, how can you not get a thrill out of watching two kids walking down
hallways and blowing people away? it's like the opening scene in dawn
of the dead.
now, the intention of the filmmaker may be to excite us, and in
exciting us, hold up a mirror to make us reflect on why we are finding
such thrill. it's like anger management or therapy where you are
encouraged to pour our your aggression or violence(like hitting hairs
on dr. phil show), and then made to sit up and think about the causes
and consequences of your primal emotions. i think john lennon went thru
such for his album 'plastic ono band'. but, come now. this crap really
doesn't work. sure, i thought about the meaning of elephant, history of
violence, and so on, but the fact is the violence is still appealing
cuz it's just exciting. why are there gapers' delay around accident
sites along the highway? why do like to watch news of wars and such?
it's not that we LIKE people getting hurt, but we like action, the
drama. it's the same reason we like sports. 'in the bedroom' raised
some very smart questions about anger, justice, vengeance, barbarism
and civilization, respectablity and bloodlust, tribalism and
universalism. still, i enjoyed the killing and burying of the dead. by
'enjoy', i don't mean i like the idea of people being killed. it means
my senses were hitchcockianishly titillated.
imagine making graphic movie after movie about the evil of rape. no
matter how artful or responsibe, it's useless cuz the scene will still
excite too many of us or, worse, because we will just become yet more
desensitized to it. for this same reason, violence can on screen
cannot teach us to be less violent.

this is why when it comes to violence, godard is right in the opening
scene of notre musique--where he juxtaposes real war images with movie
war images. movies as spectacle is a declaration of war on our senses,
an assault on our on our ability to think. movies have invaded and
conquered our minds and senses just as armies have conquered peoples
and lands. for all its highfalutin pretensions, movies like 'history of
violence', 'apocalypse now'',' elephant, 'full metal jacket', and
'jarhead'(didn't see) only perpetuate our fascination and excitment
with violence. this is why the wise kubrick never made an 'anti-war' or
anti-violence movie. he knew it was a part of human nature that cannot
be stamped out by rational argument. it could only be examined and
explored in an entertaining way. peckinpah understood this too, in such
mooies as 'straw dogs'. and same with boorman with 'deliverance' and
'zardoz'. but, cronenberg has gotten a bit solemnly sanctimonious with
history of violence. with his early movies, he showed us he was the
master of violence. with stuff like spider, he showed us he's the
master of the art film form. he wants to wow the gore loving culitsh
fans AND win accolades as a social commentator, as an intellectual
theorist of human history, psychology, and whatnot. give the man a
nobel prize for peace already. indeed, we may ask why do we keep
watching movies like this if we understood the point already? indeed,
there have been so many anti-violence or revisionist films that anyone
reasonably acquainted with movies shouldn't need the cronenberg's
latest to understand the nature of violence and how it's distorted thru
our national and popular myths.
yet, many people who praise cronenberg's latest as a thoughtful and
necessary work of sobriety will still flock to see the latest
violence-infest blockbusters. also, don't you think cronenberg has made
his point about violence enough times already? how many more
anti-violence movies with blood, gore, and mayhem will he make to keep
telling us of the darkness of violence? it's like an alcoholic who
keeps getting drunk to tell us that being drunk is bad. eastwood has
been doing this shi* too lately. he gives us action packed movies we
go to see cuz they got violence. indeed, who wants to see an eastwood
movie like 'bridges over madison county'? only women who watch oprah.
we like violence in eastwood films and so that's what he gives us cuz
it has market value. but, to show that he's not just a crass
entertainer but a responsible socially conscious thinker, eastwood
lards his latter day films with alot of obligatory ambiguous schtick
about the horrible price of violence. how bogus.
in a way, gibson's Passion says much about the our movie-addicted
mentality. give us violence, gore, and salvation.
but, can you blame eastwood or gibson? religions also thrill us with
stories of sin and violence only to conclude with how it's important
for us to be good chillun of god. this way, we get the sensationalism
and the do-goody stuff. i guess same is true of any talkshow where
topics are often sensationalistic and scandalous. we enjoy all the
juicy stuff but feel kinda guilty so we need someone like oprah to,
ehem, remind us that we do NOT enjoy any of this but we are ONLY paying
attention cuz we wanna be socially aware, connected, and responsible.
sure. oprah appeals to all the housewives, and cronenberg appeals to
all the would-be intellectuals, geeks, and cultish hipsters. everyone
wants both thrills and redemption.

also, violence cannot be discussed as something independent of human
thoughts and actions. it's like what shane said of the gun. it's only
as good or bad as the man using it. now, one may argue that shane is
being somewhat disingenuous. why do we need guns in the first place if
the world is full of good people? the very invention of the gun or any
weapon would indicate that alot of people are bad or dangerous.
similarly, if there was no burglary, why would we need locked doors?
and, are we essentially good or essentially bad? wasn't shane once a
bad man? but, before we get carried away with such ethical mumbo
jumbo, there is proper use of the gun, and there is a criminal use of
the gun. sure, if we wanna look back into human history and
past--biological and historical--we can speculate that all of us are
guilty. every american is, in effect, the inheritor of the genocide of
injuns. every israeli is the inheritor of the asskicking of
palestinians and the occupation of west bank and gaza. but, let's come
back down to reality as it makes sense to our daily lives. if some guy
wants to kill your family, you gotta use violence.
cronenberg's symmetrism ridiculously matches justifiable violence with
criminal violence; the theme of violence is presented way too generally
or intelletually. now, liberals love to go for this shi*. during the
cold war, many liberals used moral equivalence to argue that US was
just a flipside of USSR(or even worse, as USSR at least stood for
socialist brotherhood of man). many liberals like to make excuses for
black criminals while defaming law-abiding gun owning white family
folks as closet fascist goons--main argument of michael moore. black
violence such as looting and rioting is often explained as black man
defending himself against white oppression or merely trying to survive.
but, whites who form community organizations to watch crime in the
streets are ridiculed as paranoid and assholish. minutemen who wanna
protect the borders are 'thuggish lunatics' while illegals pouring thru
the borders are salt of the earth. since we, thru violence, stole the
land from the mexicans and exploited all of latin america, we are the
REAL aggressors in the SW territories. liberals are so dumb. but, ask
any liberal jew and he will defend israel to the death. i must say that
lefting jews, though retarded, are consistent in their radical
anti-westernism by bashing israel as well.

anyway, the argument of history of violence is too overarching,
strained, theoretical. it veers into bullshit ideology of the left.
the fact is justification for violence depends on the context.
being anti-violence or anti-war across the board is nonsense. indeed,
such attitude has been stamped out by the very process of evolution,
both biological and historical. any animal that is not willing to fight
to survive was killed off. and any nation or people that didn't have
the will to fight was rubbed out. even christians survived and
triumphed mainly by kicking butt. also, even if you don't kick butt,
you have to threaten to kick butt. like teddy roosevelt said, speak
softly and carry a big stick. most nations in the middle east don't
wanna mess with israel cuz they got their asses whupped in the 6 day
war. peace is founded upon fear of violence. the cold war was
peaceful mostly cuz US and USSR could blow eachother up. granted, we
had the moral right to blow them up while they had no such right, being
lowlife commies. but, peace prevailed only thru the threat of
superduper violence. if USSR and france had nukes prior to 1939,
hitler wouldn't have done what he done.
now, we can argue that germans were not all bad and the
allies--especially USSR--was not all good. germans, japs, and italians
had some legitimate greivances, and british empire, soviet empire, and
US empire were all founded on domination and violence and such. one
could argue that it wasn't so much as case of good vs bad, but bad vs
badder. if we use symmetrism, we may argue that germans and japanese
were merely a darker mirror reflections of all the forces at work
within the allied forces--racism, imperialism, nationalism,
conquestism, and violence. sure, it's kinda fun to make such arguments
as when charles lindbergh defended the holocaust as no different than
what US was doing to the japs. US was stamping out japanese insectoid
pests, and the germans were merely controlling the jewish rat pest
problem. heck, lindbergh was a sort of a rightwing precursor to
cronenberg, a real symmetricalist. but, all this is exaggerated,
demented horse caca. such fuzzyheadedness led to UK doing nothing when
germany was re-arming. self-loathing of a democratic people leads to
self-paralysis.
in the late 60s and 70s, lame liberal policies led to black crime waves
all across america, about which whites didn't know what to do... until
'new democrat' clinton said, 'throw them ni**ers in jail, already'.

cronenberg's control of the medium is one of the most precise and
impeccable in today's cinema. he's a like a cross between john
carpenter and claude chabrol, with a bit of david lynch thrown in. his
directing is surehanded and confident. he avoids most familiar tricks.
he has trimmed his cinema down to pure essentials, much like bresson
and ozu. some of the more macabre and outrageous stylistics of such
films as videodrome, scanners, and fly have long been gone. the first
film that set the latter-day tone may have been dead ringers.
as much as i can respect cronenberg's mastery, intelligence, and even
brilliance, i must say he's one of the biggest sleazebags in today's
cinema. for the most part, i don't buy his status as an art director.
i much prefer the more honest sleaziness and sensationalism of
videodrome and dead zone--though i can do without scanners or the fly.
while his early films are pretentious and pose some serious
philosophical/social questions, they are happy to primarily serve the
goodies. cronenberg's later films are made essentially for cultists,
intellectuals, cinephiles, geeks, and the like. now, there's nothing
wrong with making serious films. but, all cronenberg films are
essentially sensationalistic, sleazy, and exploitative. whether it's
existenz, spider, or history of violence, you don't really get a sense
that cronenberg wants to go all the way to grapple with his themes.
he's too enamoured of the pulpish surface of his material. like
william burroughs, he has a masturbatory obsession with mental and
social pathologies. lynch, at his best--eraserhead and mulholland
dr--, faced pathologies with honesty and courage. cronenberg is happy
to slide on the slick face of perversity, sickness, and dissolution.
lynch breaks thru genre forms to access the darkness. cronenberg is too
much in love with the form of popular genres. he peers into the
darkness but never really breaks thru. one may say chabrol has a
similar approach, but chabrol deals with realistic scenarios and
realistic people--always more interesting--caught in a web of intrigue
whereas cronenberg always deals with types cliched genre formulas.
'history of violence' is a typical postmodernist exercise in not being
a movie or a movie about something but really a movie about movies. it
really should be called 'history of violence in movies'. the film
assembles bits and pieces of movie conventions collected from film
history.

cronenberg is such a gifted director--indeed a master--that i can
understand the assessment that he's one of the most important directors
in the past 25 yrs. still, for whatever reasons--some due to
prejudices of my own--i can't much enjoy his films as anything more
than brilliant exercises in emptiness. i find his view of
humanity/reality barely fascinating on the surface but totally shallow
below. history of violence is, on the one hand, a powerful piece of
filmmaking by someone who has totally mastered the craft. on the other
hand, it's little more than 'malcolm in the middle' on steroids.

[Highlandish]

Quoth The Raven; Polin Farase <cerebur...@hotmail.com> in
<1155340868.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>

> history of violence won praise from alot of critics. cronenberg is a
> master of sorts.

geez, your reviews are longer than Sandro's, but his is more interesting.
--
Remove the _CURSING to reply to me

No one is perfect, but some of us are closer than others

[Alex Thrawn]

Polin Farase wrote and wrote and wrote....
11,703 words and not a single use of the SHIFT key. Pitiful. And what
the heck is a mooie?

Alex

[BTR1701]

In article <1155340868.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
"Polin Farase" <cerebur...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> history of violence is certainly a crowd pleaser. tightly constructed,
> it's packed with tension and suspense, and serves up cathartic doses of
> violence. it's all very cool. but, on another level, what happens in
> the mooie matters less than how we react to the mooie.

Is there some reason you keep referring to the film as a "mooie" over
and over again?

[Derek Janssen]

Yep--Gaza's troll "idol", sirblob, invented it, and Tony still dreams
his "soulmate" is going to ride in on a white horse and help him take
over the movie groups...

Well, ninth time's the charm and it hasn't happened yet--in fact, SB
doesn't even seem to be aware of Tony's unrequited crush, and piles him
on with the same flames as the other troll-players--so they haven't been
getting along as well as of late
And even though Gaza still uses Blob's name in every other post, he
pretty much now retroactively thinks he invented the word himself.

Derek Janssen (next comes the restraining order, the answering-machine
messages and the boiled rabbits)
eja...@comcast.net

[Matthew Dickinson]

Derek Janssen wrote:

> Highlandish wrote:
>
> > Quoth The Raven; Polin Farase <cerebur...@hotmail.com> in
> > <1155340868.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
> >
> >>history of violence won praise from alot of critics. cronenberg is a
> >>master of sorts.
> >
> >
> > geez, your reviews are longer than Sandro's, but his is more interesting.
>

> Sorry, you'll have to repost your entire reply again, with "His *are*
> more interesting".
>
> Derek Janssen (yep, all nine paragraphs, that's the rule)
> eja...@comcast.net

What difference does it make?

[goofb...@gmail.com]

I thought it was a pretty weak film -- but *what is up* with the
extended EYES WIDE SHUT reference/swipe (Viggo's drive to his
brother's, the table of alcohol, the dodgy "explanation" etc)? It
served no purpose that I could discern,and Cronenberg usually doesn't
refer to other films so blatantly in his own work...

[Matthew Dickinson]

i dunno i turned the movie off after that opening scene where he shoots
the kid.

[goofb...@gmail.com]

You and about half-a-dozen other regulars in this place really try my
patience.

[Matthew Dickinson]

goofb...@gmail.com wrote:
> You and about half-a-dozen other regulars in this place really try my
> patience.

cool

[Derek Janssen]

goofb...@gmail.com wrote:
> You and about half-a-dozen other regulars in this place really try my
> patience.

<obligatory Groucho voice>
...You should come over and try mine, sometime! :)

Derek Janssen
eja...@comcast.net

[Walter Traprock]

"Polin Farase" <cerebur...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> history of violence won praise from alot of critics. cronenberg is a

The Politics Of Meaning behind "I'm a Loser", by Beck:

From: loser beck (loserb...@hotmail.com )
Subject: "I'm a Loser "Nazi Meaning Theory

View: Complete Thread (3 articles)

Original Format
Newsgroups: alt.music.beck
Date: 2003-07-13 15:20:31 PST
This is my theory. I think that Beck's song "I'm a Loser " may not be
just meaningless beat poetry, as many have claimed. I think that
there are a sufficient number of Nazi /German/Holocaust references in
the song to warrant the suspicion that Beck is trying to say something
along those lines. Anyway, here's my theory.

First, here is the entire song lyrics:

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control
Baby's in reno with the vitamin d
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat
Someone came in sayin' I'm insane to complain
About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don't believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park

Yo. cut it.

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
'cuz one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey-neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing
You can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite
That's chokin' on the splinters

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(get crazy with the cheese whiz)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(drive-by body-pierce)
(yo bring it on down)
Soooooooyy....

(I'm a driver, I'm a winner; things are gonna change I can feel it)

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(I can't believe you)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(schprechen sie deutches, baby)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(know what I'm sayin'? )

Suggested viewing:

"Boys from Brazil" (1970's film about plan to clone Hitler by Dr.
Mengele)

"The Producers" (1960's film about the making of a musical about Nazi
Germany. The star of the musical is actor Dick Shawn who mixes German
phrases like "Achctung" with beatnik lingo "Baby"....he actually uses
the phrase "Achctung Baby" in the film and this is the source of the
U2 album title).

Song Title and Refrain:
"I'm a Loser baby, so why don't you kill me"

Comments:
Usually taken in a comical and literal way by listeners, since such an
extreme measure (death) is the solution to being a " loser " and that
the suggestion is coming from the " loser " himself. However, consider
this sentence in the context of the Holocaust. Non-Aryans
(non-Germans) being sub-humans ("losers") with the remedy to this
being death by Aryans. Note the use of the word "baby" consistent
with "The Producers".

Song Lyrics:
"In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey"

Comments:
Chimpanzees and monkeys are non-humans or "sub-humans" if you will.

Song Lyrics:
"Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie"

Comments:
This web-page describes the horrific acts of Dr. Mengele:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/mengele/aus_4.html...
From it:

"Having actively and decisively taken part in selections in the
prisoners' sick blocks, of such prisoners who through hunger,
deprivations, exhaustion, sickness, disease, abuse or other reasons
were unfit for work in the camp and whose speedy recovery was not
envisaged貨 Those selected were killed either through injections or
firing squads or by painful suffocation to death through prussic acid
in the gas chambers in order to make room in the camp for the "fit"
prisoners, selected by him or other SS doctors貨 The injections that
killed were made with phenol, petrol, Evipal, chloroform, or air into
the circulation, especially into the heart chamber, either with his
own hands or he ordered the SS sanitary worker to do it while he
watched."

Song Lyrics:
"With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables"

Comments:
This web-page describes more horrific acts of Dr. Mengele:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/mengele/research_5...
ect=6 From it:

"In order to determine if eye color could be genetically altered,
Mengele had dye injected into the eyes of several twin subjects. This
always resulted in painful infections, and sometimes even blindness.
If such twins died, Mengele would harvest their eyes and pin them to
the wall of his office, much like a biologist pins insect samples to
styrofoam."

Changing the eye-color of non-Aryans was also briefly shown in "The
Boys from Brazil"

Song Lyrics:
"Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control
Baby's in reno with the vitamin d
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat
Someone came in sayin' I'm insane to complain
About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt"

Comments:
It is hard to make the case for any German/ Nazi /Holocaust references
in these lyrics. However, in general, white-trash imagery seems to be
being invoked. Is Beck identifying with white-trash here?
White-trash were also considered unworthy of living by the Nazis.

Song Lyrics:
"Don't believe everything that you breathe"

Comments:
This is a take-off on the saying "Don't believe everything you hear
(or read)" In the death camp gas chambers, people were led naked into
shower rooms for de-lousing (removing lice) treatment. They were lied
to - the gas wasn't meant to kill lice; it was meant to kill them.

Song Lyrics:
"You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park"

Comments:
Again, no case to be made here for Nazi /German/Holocaust references,
but again, white-trash imagery is invoked.

Song Lyrics:
"Soy un perdedor"

Comments:
This is Spanish for "I'm a Loser ". Many Nazis escaped to South America
after WWII (as shown in "Boys from Brazil"). A South American
non-Aryan (i.e. " loser ") would say this.

Song Lyrics:
"Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare"

Comments:
Nazis equal "Forces of evil".

Song Lyrics:
"Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber"

Comments:
Nazis were big into art and literature censorship (like the famous
book burnings). The "phony gas chamber" line is a pretty explicit
Holocaust reference. "Phony" suggests a revisionistic outlook of a
modern-day Nazi apologist.

Song Lyrics:
"The daytime crap of the folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string"

Comments:
No apparent reference here. Possibly, but unlikely, a vague reference
to the fate of those Germans who tried to assassinate Hitler (hung
with piano wire).
See also: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/julyplot.html Song
Lyrics/Sample:
"I'm a driver, I'm a winner; things are gonna change I can feel it"

Comments:
This is a sample of a George Bush Sr. speech in which he claims to be
a "winner." If Beck is saying that non-Nazis are "losers", then
Nazis are apparently "winners." Is Beck claiming that Bush is a Nazi ?
There actually are strong connections and associations between
the Bush family and Nazis both pre and post-WWII.

Song Lyrics:
"schprechen sie deutches, baby"

Comments:
I think this means "Do you speak German" in German. This might be
taken directly from the movie "The Producers" - something that Dick
Shawn said. This phrase would be something that a German-speaker
would say to someone he thinks might also speak German in a non-German
speaking country (like in South America ).

From the web:

"Mengele arrived in Argentina in 1949, a country that was ruled by the
popular dictator Juan Peron. The right-wing ruler had already
cultivated a friendly relationship with Nazis in Europe, as well as
with those who lived in the German expatriate community in Argentina.
Mengele was able to slip unnoticed into such a setting with ease and
had soon established a network of Nazi devotees who were willing to
help him assume a new identity in South America ."