Killer Rampage

Over at Guardian, David Cox posts a piece against not only the depicted violence of Michael Winterbottom's movie 'The Killer Inside Me', but also, it would seem, against violence in movies in general:

...serial killer movies aren't supposed to be educational. They're supposed to thrill, and some have defended the violence in The Killer Inside Me as essential to its plot. Well, it isn't. Psycho manages to do its job without being obliged to show the knife penetrate the flesh.

This is a ridiculous point. Cox is suggesting two patently unsupportable notions:

1) 'Psycho' could have contained depictions of extremely graphic violence had Hitchcock decide to include it.

2) Because 'Psycho' does not have depictions of extremely graphic violence, such depictions need not be included in 'The Killer Inside Me' (or, by extension, any movie) in order to support the plot.

Alfred Hitchcock could not have included graphic violence, such as showing a knife entering a body, in 'Psycho'. It was an impossibility in 1960. America was far more conservative at the time. Hitchcock had issues with censors that, today, would seem laughable. From Wikipedia:

According to the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the censors in charge of enforcing the Production Code for the MPAA wrangled with Hitchcock because some censors insisted they could see one of Leigh's breasts.

and

Another cause of concern for the censors^[93] was that Marion was shown flushing a toilet, with its contents (torn-up note paper) fully visible. Up until that time in mainstream film and television in the U.S., a toilet flushing was never heard, let alone seen.

Clearly, citing the fact that 'Psycho' does not include graphic violence to support the contention that a movie today, such as 'The Killer Inside Me', does not need such depictions to make its plot understandable, or that such depictions are wrong or to be avoided, is ludicrous. We simply live in radically different times.

Additionally, Cox intimates that Hitchcock would not use (extremely) graphic depictions if he were making movies today. This logic is just as far-fetched. It's far more credible to suggest Hitchcock, indeed, would.

Further, how does one compare the plot of one movie to another? Simply because a female character in 'Psycho' is depicted as being killed with a knife, and a female character in 'The Killer Inside Me' is depicted as being killed in a similar fashion does not mean the two plots are similar or that the plot of 'The Killer Inside Me' would not suffer if such a depiction were excluded.

Cox is comparing 1960 apples to 2010 oranges.

He continues:

Even No Country For Old Men, perhaps the current film's closest recent analogue, showed relative restraint in its depiction of violence.

'No Country For Old Men' depicts two killings that are extremely graphic. In one, a man is shot point-blank with a shotgun, with tissue blown through the back of the chair he is sitting in and splattered on the wall behind him. In another, a man is killed by having his brain destroyed with an air gun fired against his forehead.

And, in something of a drawn-out sequence in the same movie, a man is strangled with the chain of a set of handcuffs -- his shoes leaving numerous long, black scuff marks on the linoleum floor as he kicks and struggles for air -- while the killer sneers in something of a sexual expression of gratification.

This is graphic and violent. I'm not sure how Mr. Cox can suggest it isn't. Perhaps it's the inclusion of the term 'relative restraint' that makes it possible. Anything may be considered 'relatively' restrained when compared to another thing. It's subjective, and makes for a poor argument. Cox may as well have said 'a starling is a pretty bird relative to a crow'. Could be true, but might not be. Depends who you ask. Difficult to assess, and impossible to prove.

Cox then shifts gears, condemning the audience:

Some just find it too distasteful to contemplate, but some people enjoy watching violence; some enjoy watching violence against women; and some of these enjoy it even more if the women are shown to collude in what's being done to them.

Isn't this a bit cheap? Doesn't Cox coerce the reader to side with him by making it too disagreeable not to? The broad generalization that 'some people like watching violence against women' is totally unsupported and stupefying in its rudeness. Cox seeks your approval lest you be considered someone who gets off watching women beaten and killed on the big screen.

For all we know, this film may inspire some to imitate its hero. It may convince others that women they know wish to be hurt. It could desensitise yet others to violence in general. It could also help to degrade women in some people's eyes. It's perhaps even more likely to degrade men in the eyes of others.

I'm sorry, but 'The Killer Inside Me' may make killers out of us, while 'No Country For Old Men' will not? Hardly a sound conclusion. Cox hints that we ban movies which depict a given level of violence. This is called censorship.

Besides, this is a hackneyed argument: Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? 'Someone might imitate what they see in a movie and run out a kill people'. Please. What about imitating what is seen everyday in the news? This is an off the cuff shot that completely disregards the violent society we live in.

No one really knows whether the net effect of films like The Killer Inside Me is socially negative or even positive.

This contradicts the determination of the previous paragraph. The movie may convince some to kill in 'imitation of a hero', however, 'no one really knows' whether this would be the case or not. Cox has his cake, and he eats it too -- to what purpose I don't know.

This means that arguments like the present one are really just hot air. So, when the next "misogynist shocker" hits the screen, suppose that we all agree to skip the rumpus?

Is this a call to boycott violent movies? Should we check with Mr. Cox to make sure the movie we're planning to avoid is violent enough?

With this, Cox makes a second overture of censorship and reiterates his true agenda, no matter how well hidden it may be in the guise of a movie review.

Cox's thinking is that of an old fogy who admonishes us for watching (or wanting to watch) certain types of movies. He utilizes half-baked logic and the politics of guilt to support his stance.