A summertime question for Ray Young.

A loaded question, to be sure (sorry, I couldn't resist). Since motion pictures can sway opinion and shape thought, if not shoot down a preexisting belief, the medium in general could be interpreted as a weapon. And if a film manipulates its viewer into thinking a certain way, one normally at odds with the spectator's reason or values, couldn't we consider that an act of violence or aggression?

The "trick" Don Siegel uses in Dirty Harry (1971) is a good example. On the surface, we're watching Harry fight the bleeding heart liberals at City Hall who berate him for his violent tactics in tracking down a serial killer. But rather than remain focused on Harry, Siegel shows the killer toiling away (he's a giggling, sweaty madman fresh from central casting), thereby manipulating the audience into applauding the fascist killer cop. Harry's a lunatic, determining the law as he sees fit. And Siegel's a fraud - at least here, in his rightwing glory - by duping us into cheering the Nazi on.

After seeing Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie (1995), I felt that it seamlessly assaulted the bourgeoisie, on a par with anything by Luis Buñuel. (Yes, Buñuel is obviously responsible for a great deal of cinematic weaponry; but I demur his inclusion here on the grounds that Don Luis was just too playful.) Surely the rich family got what it deserved; surely the maid was a metaphor for generations of downtrodden workers beaten (in her case, into illiteracy) by the fat cats in control. But discussing it with others afterward, I was shocked to discover they were sympathetic to the family, and, as they interpreted it, the scenario served as an attack against blue collar miscreants. Go figure...

My admiration for Chabrol's film prompted a friend to lend me a few movies about duos of crazy women in feverish situations. Most of them were dross, but Fernando Di Leo's humorless and sadistic Avere vent'anni (1978) was particularly offensive. Here, the film became a weapon against women, tenderness and pleasure - to say nothing of (what's left of) my own morals. The women are self-serving and abrasive cockteasers, overwritten and overacted to the extreme, eventually meeting their fate at the hands of angry, repressed and closeted gay men who cram tree trunks into their vaginas. (It was the first time I'd ever taken a video from the player and threw it directly into the trashcan.) It sent me into a depressed state for days, a case of homevideo warfare.

Whether cinematic weaponry can have any viable impact on society as a whole is doubtful. The Catholic church never fell from Buñuel, and Bush got reelected after Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). Therefore, with this being more of a subjective arena, the two films that worked best as a weapon against my own sense and sensibility were Myriam Alaux and Victor Schonfeld's documentary about animal abuse, The Animals Film (1981); and Pasolini's Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Pasolini's is a rough picture, insane even. While watching folks dine on excrement, I felt that humanity had been reduced to its lowest ebb, where the beauty of life vaporized as a vague memory. I had trouble eating for weeks. After The Animals Film, I was vegetarian for nearly a decade.

Posted by dwhudson at August 4, 2006 2:05 AM