Many of us lead lives of quiet fretfulness. Our only outlet for the pent up frustration at the hostilities we endure, our only recourse to justice, and only a fantasy justice at that, is in the media. And now, the government, in its desire to maintain us as squirrely fearful frustrated creatures prone to doing what it says, wants to remove that option, as usual in all violation of the first amendment, an article of law that has more or less been fought against since its ratification. In light of the new war on violence, and given that the author is in his view a representative of a significant cross-section of American life, he offers up this reflections on violence in the media. I Just as the blow job is more cinematic than cunnilingus, violence is more cinematic than conversation.
Cinema is motion.
The strip of 35mm film moves through the camera so that movement in the real world can be recorded. Not to use cinema to record motion is to misunderstand the nature of the popular art form. Sure, there is a certain beauty in films by those filmmakers who resist the natural purpose of film. But these movies acquire their beauty because they go against the grain of cinema, like David Hemmings bopping against the rhythm of the music in Blowup. They provide the thrill of contrariness, of rebellion against the logical marriage of form and function.