“The question to ask with a full barrel is what are you going to do with the six bullets that are sleeping there. The last one is for you, you know that from the start. And don’t miss it, life is pretty disgusting as it is. Open your mouth wide, press the barrel against your palate, you should be fine. A flash, feedback and nothing. But the first is for your mother. If that bitch had thought with her head instead of her ass, you wouldn’t be here. The second is for your father, the slave who lay down between his thighs to ensure that a minion wipes his ass when he can no longer do it on his own. The third rightfully goes to the creature that haunts your quilt and keeps telling you day after day that she loves you, as if that meant something, as if it could ward off loneliness and death. The fourth for your boss, the puff who made you believe that the meaning of life was to fill his pockets with your sweat. And the fifth will lodge in the heart of the poor idiot who passed by there early in the morning, for the beauty of the gesture, because all that makes no sense and they have to be reminded from time to time. »
Where did I put my gun
In his Second manifesto of surrealismAndré Breton wrote: “The simplest surrealist act consists, revolvers in hand, in going down the street and shooting at random, as much as you can, in the crowd”. God Bless America released today in theaters and it is an opportunity to return to these films which each time rekindle the flames of endless debates on fictional violence. So of course, the above-named film is a comedy, but it refers to works in which laughter is not exactly the main ambition. It’s no way revenge old rifle in question, not a murderous liberating run at the Bonnie and Clyde, but of total letting go: the desperate response of the one who is not listened to and who has nothing to lose, who stagnates in his solitude and only sees to remind the world the mortal explosion of a revolver . Because Travis Bickle and his congeners are the forgotten offspring of a sick system, crushed by its cogs.
In Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese (1976), De Niro embodies the emblematic taxi driver of all these social suicides. Locked in his head, disgusted by the state of the world and eaten up with frustration, Travis seeks to raise his voice to restore order in an absurd and cruel universe. But his derisory stunt only generates more chaos, an admission of powerlessness in the face of the march of the world, from which he has been ostracized. This motif will be taken up by others, among which the very mainstream Joel Schumacher with Falling Down, where Michael Douglas “freaks out” after losing his job, his wife and his kid; Gus Van Sant with infinite subtlety in Elephant ; and Gaspar Noé (an assumed obsession) with Alone against all, the French counterpart to Scorsese’s masterpiece. Philippe Nahon plays a former horse butcher who comes out of prison after having his daughter and butcher removed from him. Held on a leash by a shrew pregnant out of spite, he breaks down and flees, wandering in sordid misery while waiting to take his revenge on the world. The spectator is locked up with him in his head, a flood of thoughts alternately hateful, desperate or vengeful assailing him without stopping. What is left for someone who sees the ground slipping away from under his feet and all the reasons he gave himself to continue living emptying out of their meaning? Luckily for Travis and his ilk, there’s the NRA.
Hitler is not a monster
When they arise in our daily lives, these manifestations of violence always confront us with an unfathomable abyss of fear and misunderstanding. Lips flapping hysterically before pinching to suit in unison with theinhumanity of their managers. But this is to forget that everything that is the work of men is human, no offense to syrupy humanists. The worst criminals are made of the same mud as you and me. And it is this truth that the filmmakers restore, because by ousting any categorical moral judgment, they reveal the complex mechanics of events that can lead a soul lost and ignored by everyone to take blind revenge on men. Because “hate, [est] a struggle to the death against oneself, with others as a pretext” (Anything, Spoke Orchestra). These films, symptomatic of the ills of society and of the era to which they refer, illustrate, by looking at the gestation of the disaster, the theory of Siegfried Kracauer, who saw in the medium of cinema a form of “redemption of reality”. It would be a mistake to interpret it as a justification for violent acts, but rather as an attempt to put the human being at the heart of his acts, however “monstrous” they may be.
To understand this, a sequence of Elephant is better than all the psycho-sociological analyzes in the world. When Alex, one of the two juvenile killers, crashes into the middle of the crowded dining hall to set up his murderous plan, he is overwhelmed with angst. A quick backward tracking widens the field, the soundscape grows until it becomes deafening, he takes his face in his hands… A superposition of simple elements that translate without a word his irrevocable break with his environment. And later, in a petrifying sequence of beauty where the same Alex successively performs Letter to Elise and the Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven, Gus Van Sant evacuates one by one the clichés with which the young perpetrators of the Columbine massacre were decked out by the so-called experts on the question. It’s still damn good, the movie!
cinematic catharsis
Catharsis is a very pretty word whose meaning is no less attractive. It is neither a flower nor an oriental stringed instrument, but a principle defined by Aristotle as the “purgation of the passions” by means of dramatic representation. Basically, it’s what makes us happy with the mediocrity of our existence at the cost of a few hours spent in the company of Mozart, Tolkien or Leone. Naturally, catharsis holds a prominent place in our love of cinema, a place of representation of all fantasies – even the most shameful. Thus, the viewer will see his desire for murder fly away after watching on the big screen Angst, by Gerald Kargl; all will to power dissolve after that of Salò or the 120 days of Sodom, by Pasolini; and his hypochondriac tendencies evaporate after seeing the trying Stop on the open road (For him, in French), by Andreas Dresen. And we can see how pornography does not escape this concept, since it is above all a wonderful means of purifying the frustrations of millions of males trapped in their affective loneliness.
The cathartic aspect of the 7th art therefore renders any condemnation of fictional violence obsolete. Whether it is outrageous and grand-guignolesque, psychological or clinical, perfectly gratuitous or the expression of a long mature reflection, it is always a salutary way for the spectator to ritualize the violence which is in him, following the example of that practiced in music, literature, video games or sports. Human life is a matter of violence, and a very healthy way not to give in to it in turn is to find outlets to channel one’s impulses. Are you feeling the seasonal depression? Alone against all just might be the boost you need to get pumped up again! Do you constantly feel surrounded by idiots? God Bless America will undoubtedly be the stress relief you dream of in front of your television set.
2023-08-04 23:23:35
#God #Bless #America #favor #kill
