Yes, Hollywood Is Part of the Gun Problem
I wanted to walk out of Django Unchained. My wife and I saw the film during a trip to Vegas, our first getaway since our son was born, and just weeks after Sandy Hook.
The scene in which Django kills Calvin’s house guests was too much. At one point he shoots a young, unarmed woman with a rifle so powerful she’s sent flying into another room. All I could think about in that scene was what it must have been like inside Sandy Hook. The physics of bullets and small bodies and the horrifying actuality of it.
I understood the parameters of the film — that Django is a former slave, these people are evil slave owners who have captured his wife, and that with Tarantino there is going to be some level of sensational indulgence to the violence, but I wanted to throw up during that scene. 20 children had just been murdered. And this is what we’re entertaining ourselves with? This is what we escaped to after our own child was born?
If the pervasiveness of rape culture in film and television needs to be taken seriously as a contributing factor to our societal issues can we also address the laziness with which “gun violence culture” is used to tell stories where ‘blowing everyone away’ is heroic?
It’s often cited that “violence in the media” is the largest culprit when a shooting occurs, which I find to be extremely myopic. Violence can be as simple as McCauley Culkin swinging a paint bucket into Joe Pesci in Home Alone or as vulgar as an inmate flicking his semen into Clarice Starling’s hair in Silence of the Lambs — but neither of these seem to be epidemics.
Gun violence in particular is often used by bad writers to create the illusion of “action” in film and television. Guns are loud. The barrels flash. It’s an easy way to exploit the audio/visual component of moving pictures much like how local news broadcasts will use the way police lights look at night to give the audience a feeling that “something is happening” during the broadcast even if nothing is.
The problem with all this is that it falls within a consistent, often predictable pattern in which the audience is being messaged that 1) Guns are easy to use, and 2) Gunfire is easy to avoid. Worse, the frequency with which Hollywood relies upon “lone wolf” characters who are rewarded for going rogue as violent gun-wielding vigilantes often scratches an itch for revenge to the degree it borderlines on fetish.
If one studied action films exclusively they might be inclined to believe justice can only be delivered by picking up a gun and playing by your own rules. Who needs a justice system when the path of vengeance is guiding the way? And I’m sure many a shooter felt something similar.
While there are many problematic paradigms that exist within modern storytelling, an artist seeking to use on-screen rape as a story device (which was used in the 70’s with jaw-dropping frequency )must do so with some consideration for context. And even in the most delicate of circumstances it still has a divisive impact on audiences.
The criticism of sexual assault in entertainment has by no means eliminated it from modern media, but it has caused many a producer to think twice about whether or not to go there. The same must be made of gun violence. The promotion of a “gun violence culture” must be identified when it appears and called out by audiences. The fact that we have allowed ourselves to become so flippant with the way in which characters use guns as a plot device cannot continue in an era of mass shootings.
I am by no means attempting to create a causal connection between what happens on film and what happens in real life, but our films and television are a reflection of our espoused beliefs as consumers. They speak to the credibility of our ethics. Yes, we absolutely need stricter gun laws. But it is disingenuous to reject guns and gun violence while embracing mediums which cluttered with the tales of their greatness.
