"Murder Shrieks Out"

A couple of weeks ago I saw Lord of War, with Nicholas Cage as a black-market arms dealer. What piqued my interest was the common reviewers' observation that, beside the political-economic indictment of society-in-general's tolerance of such activities and the humanitarian crimes they engender (the five members of the U.N. security council are also the five largest arms exporters), the viewer-in-particular is implicated not merely as a member of society-in-general or as a beneficiary of such illicit activities but as an admirer of them, a contributor to their celebration as evidenced by (in this case) her presence in the screening room.

(For the record, the metaphysical implications of voluntarily seeking to be so implicated are neither lost on nor fully comprehended by me.)

I saw references to In Cold Blood, Natural Born Killers, and Three Kings as being films which share certain of these qualities. Having never seen any of them, I am now doing so, thanks to the good folks at Netflix. Last night I saw Natural Born Killers.

Jeebus.

It was appalling. Simply appalling.

As a film, I thought it was well-conceived and -constructed. I "liked" it better than Pulp Fiction; it was more sharply done in tone and message. Perhaps not as influential as the latter as a work of cinema art, but certainly ancestral to (for example, though I've seen it only in previews,) some aspects of the Kill Bill dyad.

But, my god.

Yes, it exagerrated. But it is not an argument, it is an objet d'art, and as such is entitled to artistic license. And, honestly, it did not seem all that exagerrated.

Still, my god.

Entertainment started with stories and songs around the fire. Tens of millennia later, we got reading material. A few centuries later, radio. A few decades later, television. Now, the internet. Each one put as a another remove from direct interaction with our fellow humans, a situation whose dissatisfactions are evident in the trumpeting of 'interactive media' (including, say, blogs, maybe?), which are a feeble substitute for face-to-face, five-sense interaction. Is it any wonder that life has been so commoditized that we traffick in and trade it for our very entertainment? I wonder if the difference between being civilized and uncivilized isn't that in the former, you do it for money. I really need to re-read Conrad's Hear of Darkness.