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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 181 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 181, December 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Natural Born Killers
Dir: Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone’s new film about violence in US society goes well beyond a predictable moral indictment of television and the media.
Instead Stone parodies the role of the media in a way that brilliantly reflects the pent up anger against the system felt by US workers today.
‘The whole world is coming apart’, Stone has his main character say early in the film. ‘This is the 1990s and a man has got to have choices.’
But the film’s two ‘heroes’, psychotic mass murderers Mickey and Mallory Nash, are given no choices. As their story develops, Stone makes it clear that society’s killers are ‘made’, not ‘born’.
The film delivers a devastating criticism of so called ‘family values’. But its main targets are the media, the cops and the prison system.
As Mickey and Mallory race down Highway 666 in a killing spree which leaves 52 dead, the tabloids and television talk shows can’t get enough of them. All of this misplaced glorification of violence is shown to be the result of a cynical and profit hungry industry.
The film also draws an important distinction between kinds of violence. Some of Mickey and Mallory’s murders are rightly portrayed as unjustified and brutal. But viewers understand why Mickey and Mallory’s first victims are her sexually abusive father and complicit mother, and many applaud when Mallory kills Jack Scagnetti, the psychotic cop who hunts the couple down and who wants to rape Mallory in her jail cell.
A visual reminder of the Rodney King beating by the Los Angeles police occurs when Mickey and Mallory are finally arrested. This scene introduces the last segment of the movie, which is an allegory of the LA rebellion and offers a distorted image of revolution in general.
When a riot breaks out in the prison where they are held, the audience cheers on Mickey and Mallory’s escape. But viewers are not allowed to identify uncritically with Mickey and Mallory.
Stone’s film forces the audience to attempt to understand cause and effect in society at a deeper level.
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