Oliver Stone’s 1994 classic, Natural Born Killers, excited and traumatized its audiences while also causing controversy. The tale of white trash lovers caught up in a realm of chaos that includes a continuous murderous rampage from state to state, draws in audiences with its graphic violence and riveting pulse inducing music. Yet, the message of this film seems to be much deeper than just exposing audiences to yet another chaotic action movie filled with guns, blood and mayhem. Stone’s Natural Born Killers examines the subject of media’s investment in serial murder very thoroughly, and so it seems likely that it has the potential to offer a more rigorous interrogation of the nature of the American public’s fascination with the serial killer superstar (Schmid 123). Natural Born Killers is a film that exposes modern society’s obsession with serial killers and how the media aids in the glorifying of these notorious icons. The film also plays into the fact that society while finding murder repulsive are just as sick as the serial killers because the enjoy watching such films.
In Natural Born Killers, Mickey and Mallory the main characters kill 52 people before being caught and imprisoned. Prior to the arrest, the manhunt for them has gained them celebrity and half of the country if not the world are rooting for their triumphant escape form the law. Though their clean getaway is shattered by imprisonment their celebrity persists. When they do break out of prison, in the midst of a riot, their escape is filmed live by the host of a true-crime program.
Naturally Born Killers gets most of its message across visually as all films do. By making use of animation, colored filters, a variety of different types of film stock, in both col...
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... the satisfaction of a dual and related curiosity on the part of the spectator about celebrities and killers, but this satisfaction can come about only if these films can discipline effectively the unstable structures of identification they generate (Shmid 113). While it seems that Oliver Stone’s mission is to bring a satirical eye-opener to the its audience while exploring an underlying theme of obsession with murder, the audience looks their own inner demons, while examining their own morals as well. And just as an obsession with murder would exude, it has been found that Natural Born Killers has been implicated in 15 murder cases, with the most infamous being the murders of four people in Paris by Florence Ray and Audry Maupin, and in the United States the killing of William Savage and injury of Patsy Ann Byers by Sarah Edmondson and Benjamin Darras (Young 6).
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it. Unfortunately, such acts of rampage have become a prevalent factor in the Canadian culture. As a result of endless media coverage, Canadians now are constantly bombarded with numerous images of violence. Many of which often portray a victim avenging their opponent by means of force. Thus, indoctrinating a nation of individuals to believe that it is only through aggression that problems can be resolved. Rather than being punished for acts of violence, those who commit such offenses are often praised for their “heroism”. In addition, the success of films like The Godfather, Gladiator, and Troy further aid in reinstating the fact that we live in a society that praises violence. Furthermore, this ideology allows for individuals to partake in violent acts with little or no backlash from ones community. However, when an individual strays away from the “norm”, they are likely to then be viewed as a deviant. Such cases of rejection within a society, are often seen in the portrayal of serial killers. Although our society tends to condone violence when it is directed towards a specific individual(s), it does not allow the killing of innocent bystanders. Instead, crimes that are targeted against a number of people over a long period of time, entail the harshest forms punishments under the law. Sadly, in executing the law for said crimes, those in charge often face much public scrutiny. Such occurrences were apparent in the faulty murder investigations of Canada's most notorious serial killer Robert Pickton. This is due to the ...
Daily, the public is bombarded with violence, not only on television, but also in other media, such as newspapers and tabloids. Natural Born Killers, a prime example of violence in the media, is a movie about two lovers, Mickey and Mallory Knox, who go on a killing spree across the Southwest. The movie takes a satirical look at how the media romanticizes violent crimes. Natural Born Killers has sparked a lot of controversy, as seen in the opposing views of Richard Corliss and Richard A. Blake.
Music and Murder follows Vernon Kronk who killed an infant because it wet the bed, Geoffrey Websdale who shot dead two people and injured one and Daniel Miles who stabbed his girlfriend. All three prisoners are serving sentences in prison for their crimes and all three with the help of the prison teachers have found an interest in music.
Richard Wright’s novel Native Son and Oliver Stone’s film Natural Born Killers are works that focus on the act of murder. Native Son deals with the large impact that race has on the way society sees both white and black communities. Natural Born Killers shows how one’s past and the media one is exposed to can affect ones view of violence. Throughout both the novel and film killing becomes natural to the characters due to the way society has conditioned them.
Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, the Boston Strangler, Jeffrey Dahmer. Despite the years of history that separate these names, they remain indelibly preserved within our collective societal consciousness because of the massively violent and calculated nature of their crimes. Serial killers, both men and women, represent social monstrosities of the most terrifying variety. They are human predators, cannibals in a figurative and, often, literal sense, and are therefore uniquely subversive to society's carefully constructed behavioral tenets. They frighten because they are human in form but without the social conscience that, for many, defines humanity. They capture the public eye because they terrify, but also because they elicit a sort of gruesome curiosity about the human potential for evil; as Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alleges, wickedness lies within each heart, waiting only for the proper time and impetus to break free.
Phillips, D. (1983). The Impact of Mass Media Violence on U.S. Homicides. American Sociological Review, Vol. 48. Published by: American Sociological Association. Retrieved March 1, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2117722
Gina Marchetti, in her essay "Action-Adventure as Ideology," argues that action- adventure films implicitly convey complex cultural messages regarding American values and the "white American status quo." She continues to say that all action-adventure movies have the same basic structure, including plot, theme, characterization, and iconography. As ideology, this film genre tacitly expresses social norms, values, and morals of its time. Marchetti's essay, written in 1989, applies to films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Rambo: First Blood II. However, action-adventure films today seem to be straying farther away from her generalizations about structure, reflecting new and different cultural norms in America. This changing ideology is depicted best in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), which defies nearly every concept Marchetti proposes about action-adventure films; and it sets the stage for a whole new viewpoint of action in the '90's.
On March 3, 1915 the movie The Birth of a Nation was released at the Liberty Theatre in New York City. This film was financed, filmed, and released by the Epoch Producing Corporation of D.W. Griffith and Harry T. Aitken. It was one of the first films to ever use deep-focus shots, night photography, and to be explicitly controversial with the derogatory view of blacks.
Serial murder, which is defined as “the unlawful killing of two or more victims, by the same offenders, in separate events”(Lubaszka & Shon, 2013, p. 1), is a term that American society has become quite familiar with. At a ripe age, parents begin teaching their children not to talk to strangers in hopes of shielding them from the potential evil our world has to offer, but what if I told you the serial killer may not always be the scary man driving a van and offering candy? Our society, like it does most things, has placed a stigma upon serial killers. Although not all implied labels are untrue, this stigma makes us vulnerable to the hidden deviance lurking behind us, dressed in sheep’s clothing. Over the course of this analysis, I will discuss and elaborate on Christine Lubaszka and Phillip Shon’s work, “The notion of victim selection, risk, and offender behavior in healthcare serial murders”. My evaluation will consists of a thorough description of Lubaszka and Shon’s article, followed by a brief critic explaining how their work relates to other forms of deviance, social control, and the material studied in this course, as well as stating a few of the drawbacks and benefits of the authors’ work and suggestions for future researchers.
Sapolsky, Barry S., and Fred Molitor. Sex and Violence in Slasher Films. Mass Media and
Whether appearing on breaking news headlines, or vividly depicted in mainstream contemporary entertainment, murder and the act of murdering are no foreign concept to the public. But, one thought still perplexes our mind: “How can someone ever think of committing such a heinous act?”. In The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill by David M. Buss, he explains the mind’s inner workings that can compel us to find murder as actually, a rational thing to do. He breaks the preconceived idea and definition of what it takes to be a murderer, such as only the mentally insane can be murders (brought on by only shocking/”news-worthy” depictions of serial killers/ psychopaths in today’s movies, games , or news) or that today’s mainstream media
In Natural Born Killers Oliver Stone backs up the assumptions that violence in the media such as music videos, movies, cartoons, and newspapers are cause the violence in society today. To portray his beliefs he uses cinematic techniques such as camera angles, shadows, lighting, and sound. And maybe most importantly characters the audience can identify with. The story line follows two serial killers in love named Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis), who go on a shooting spree throughout the country. The couple is a product of all ‘bad’ influences of society. Mallory was a child that watched too much te...
There are thousands of crimes that have been committed throughout history, even millions. Some are real, while others are far from reality. One way a crime can be fabricated is in a book. There are many instances when what occurs in a book cannot possibly happen in real life. The author tends to put real-life characteristics in it, but what makes it interesting is the actual fiction part of it. In I Hunt Killers, the main character, a seventeen year old boy named Jazz, is involved in solving the recent serial killer case. The author portrays many exaggerated situations that clearly prove to be unrealistic circumstances.
In John Grisham’s essay “Unnatural Killers” he weaves a story of two love-struck teens (Sarah Edmondson and Benjamin Darras) on a killing spree that claimed the lives of one of Grisham’s close personal friends (Bill Savage) and the mobility of another woman (Patsy Byers). Grisham claims that these teens were influenced by Oliver Stone’s film Natural Born Killers and that “there exists a direct causal link between the movie Natural Born Killers and the death of Bill Savage”(577). Even though I must concede some of Grisham’s points, I still think that, whether the movie (Natural Born Killers) had an influence on the two teens or not it’s still their personal choices to shoot those people. The blame should be laid on Darras and Edmondson because of their decisions, not Oliver Stone because of his movie’s possible influence.
"Tarantino has lifted up the dark rock of crime cliche and found a brilliantly colorful world thriving undern...