Graphic Violence In Quentin Tarantino

In “Violent Media Is Good for Kids” the author Gerard Jones tries persuading his readers on violent media and the reasons

From the time we are born, we are immediately introduced to influences that will shape and develop our character for the rest of our lives. Our character can be affected in a positive or a negative way by various influences that we encounter on a daily basis. We need to be aware of how much we absorb and let those influences change our behavior. External influences, such as video games, movies, and television shows impact our everyday lives, even when we are not conscious of them.

4. Irony and Satire do contribute to the desensitizing of audiences due to the fact that the meaning of violence is completely abandoned and viewers see only the comedic side of the scene. For example, in Pulp Fiction Jules recites from the Bible before killing his victim, completely turning the attention of viewers from the meaning of the young man’s impending death, and in the scene entitled “The Bonnie Situation,” the cleanup of the killing is focused on more than the senseless, meaningless act itself. Modern violence in movies, in Sobchack’s words, have become “excessive” in violence and that when they elicit screams, they also elicit laughter. Too much violence becomes so outrageous and “over the top” that gore and the quantity of death are expected, and that is considered funny by audiences (432). As a result, violence does not seem real anymore.

Society has been subjected to many violent acts over the course of its history. Although violence is immoral and wrong, somehow people everyday condone and commit violence for countless reasons. Many Hollywood films glorify mindless violence to their advantage and captivate audiences through its entertaining shock value and rake large box office profits. Car chases, crashes and glorified gladiator sword fights are all familiar scenes in which violence is portrayed in an unrealistic glamorised manner.

In his book, More Than a Movie: Ethics in Entertainment, F. Miguel Valenti examines nine “hot buttons” of violence – “creative elements that filmmakers use to manipulate viewers’ reactions to onscreen violence.” (99) These elements, posited by researchers conducting The National Television Violence Study (Valenti, 99) are “choice of perpetrator, choice of victim, presence of consequences, rewards and punishments, the reason for the violence, weapons, realism, use of humor, and prolonged exposure” (Valenti, 100) .

Quentin Tarantino is well known and often criticized for his depiction of violence in his films. Although at times graphic, Tarantino’s violence holds a purpose. This paper will look at two films, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, and their depiction of violence and the aesthetics used. It will also look at classic film conventions and ultraviolence aesthetics used by Tarantino.

Being or doing something violent is often one’s way of getting out of a situation or turning to as a last resort. In action movies, there is usually a main character trying to achieve their goal and they revert to violence to advance to it . Violence can be used to achieve what they need or to fulfill their emotions. The characters in All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erica Remarque, The Odyssey, by Homer, and Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, exemplify using violence as a last resort. In All Quiet in the Western Front, Paul Baumer is put in the detrimental position of becoming a soldier. He uses violence to try to achieve a piece of mind. Additionally in The Odyssey, Odysseus faces a cannibal monster, who makes Odysseus fear for his life

In the article, “Violent Media Is Good for Kids”, the author, Gerard Jones, begins by providing background information about himself. As a child, Jones was taught that violence was wrong, and as he grew up, he learned that violent comics and stories aided him to become an action movies and comic book writer. In his article, the author addresses why violent media are good for children. He points out that it helps them transform better socially, explore and conquer their feelings, and improves self-knowledge. Jones purpose is to inform readers about the positive use of violent media on children. The author uses rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, and stylistic techniques such as allusions and repetitions to create his argument.

Graphic violence is today a rather common and somewhat natural characteristic of modern cinema, but before Bonnie and Clyde, it certainly was not. Arthur Penn introduced it in 1967. Before Bonnie and Clyde violence in film was hinted at or just implied through various sorts of acting techniques. Arthur Penn decided to show the audience the real, brutal and raw side to violence, using brilliant camerawork but more importantly, top-notch special effects and masterful visual skills. In Bonnie and Clyde the violence never feels fake, but terrifyingly real. Take for example the first graphic scene of the film, in which Clyde shoots a store owner’s face clean off, as he tries jump aboard the robbers’ getaway car. The man’s head basically explodes, splattering blood and pieces of brain all over the car window, and Penn shows us, the audience, this (although not in a Tarantinto-splasher-like way, but nevertheless) in a quite unromantic but very powerful and dramatic way. The scene is almost reminiscent of the famous scene from Battleship Potemkin 3 where the mother is shot in the face, and her

The Magnificent Seven does its share to keep up that trend. Basically, the movie spends the whole time building up to the climatic and the epic fight between Chisolm, and Bogue. The fight does not disappoint in any way, shape or form either. It can feel a tad bit too violent, but it will keep you on the edge of your seat. Aside from the final fight scene, there are plenty of other action packed, and violent scenes to keep you interested like appetizers before the big feast. You could include the early scene where one of Rose Creek is brutally killed by one of Bogue’s henchmen with a tomahawk. It’s a scene that sets the tone for the violence that is to come. This movie isn’t as much about the depth of its story as it is about action and straddling the line of too much violence. It might be best described as one movie critic for Rolling Stone writes “It’s two hours of hardcore, shoot-em-up pow and it’s entertaining as hell.”

In the present world, violence is considered to be Cinematographic Enchantment which has no relation to the real world without making any effect on the common life. In his article “The Postmorbid Condition”, Vivian C. Sobchack considers this aspect as a global carelessness and insensible desire for violence on the human flesh and environment. Furthermore, the absence of criticism against the violence on television or any other kinds of violence develops wrong stereotypes and social impressions on the common life. Form this ideology, Sobchack coins the term “senseless violence”, which is used as a fulfillment of the scene. In the most relevant cases, violence is used as block of behavioral establishment or emotionally manipulative reasons.

Violence is one of the most necessary elements to life. It can be as vital as water, and as regenerating as a long deserved sleep. It is the ultimate balance to the human life. Violence is possibly one of the most perverted and tainted virtues that exists today. Like all values, there is a time and place for them. The hardest part of any virtue is its proper administration.

By the age of 18, the average American television viewer has witnessed over 32,000 murders and 40,000 attempted murders on television alone (American Psychological Association). These statistics do not include such violence seen in movies or heard in music. To witness such an amount of violence is clearly unrealistic and exploitative. Violence is being used by television programs as a superficial way of grabbing and holding an audience's attention. Producers of television programs that show violence must take the responsibility of showing a realistic amount of violence on their shows. That is, they must not use gratuitous violence to appeal to male viewers, or else the violent crime rate in the United States will rise.

Most violence in Tarantino’s movies is of shootings, but not in all cases. In Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction the violence consists of graphic, detailed, hard-to-watch gun scenes. These are exceptionally gory, and are usually on-screen. In his Kill Bill series, it is mostly death-by-sword, the weapon of choice for the main character. Inglourious Basterds is a whole different ball field. No pun intended, since a man is beaten to death with a baseball bat in this particular movie. The deaths vary from graphic shootings, with lots of blood splatter, to carving swastikas into men’s heads, to shooting an already-dead man’s face apart in explicit, extremely life-like detail. The twisted mind of Quentin Tarantino allows him to write, direct, and watch these scenes with no sort of cringe, but

Pulp Fiction is an iconic early 1990s film directed by the unparalleled Quentin Tarantino. The title of the film pays homage to mid-20th century crime novels. In this way and others, the title is revealing of the content of the film. The film follows a very postmodern style that often distracts the plot to focus instead on developing the characters. The cinematography of Tarantino further highlights the characters, at times not allowing the viewer to focus on the context due to the intensity of the moment. Two elements that play key roles in the tone of the film are real violence and race. Real violence is used throughout the film both to create and release tension. The element of race is used through stereotypes that allow the characters and the way they interact to provide social commentary about racial perceptions in America at the time of its release in 1994. The elements of violence and race are used to entice the audience to remain invested in an incredibly complicated and interwoven story with no particular plot. It is these elements that allow the movie to have no single central plot and yet still captivate its audience as the artful masterpiece it is.