Jolie Rouge

Sin City violence
Brent Bozell

Violence in the movies is something that's usually well-advertised. Whether it's "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," the ticket-buyer usually knows what's in store. The title of the latest weekend box-office champ, "Sin City," might give you a clue (as would the R rating), but viewers are leaving the theater shocked at the gratuitous level of violence and sexual depravity in the film.

One stunned friend guessed that if the filmmakers didn't reduce the shock a little by filming in black and white, "there's no way it would be an R-rated movie instead of an NC-17." They even change the color of blood, making it black, white or yellow to "suit the mood."

On one Web site where average Joes rate the flicks, you can sense the revulsion. One wrote, "It relishes in the violence to the point that it becomes sadistic mayhem for the sake of sadistic mayhem." But the show's target audience had a different, disgusting reaction: "I laughed when I should have been gasping in horror -- sicko that I am -- two severed limbs up for me."

It's depressing to think of Hollywood executives in a business meeting trying to calculate how to please people like this, when they should be hustling them off to therapy.


"Gore City" might be a better title if advertising were the only goal. The film is hailed as a faithful recreation of the dark comic-book series "Sin City" by Frank Miller. Since there's nothing comical about mass murder, the purveyors prefer the more serious-sounding term "graphic novel," with the emphasis here on "graphic." The director at the helm of this boat, steering his way through the blood flood, is Robert Rodriguez, who leads a whiplash-inducing double life, creating gory adult movies as well as the wildly popular "Spy Kids" trilogy.

The list of violent acts goes on and on: in addition to many fatal shootings, including the crooked priest shot in the confessional, there's people struck in the head with sledgehammers and hatchets, decapitations with a head that is used like a ball, a dog chewing on a corpse, corpses cut into pieces for disposal, an electrocution. Did I forget the cannibal who keeps chopped-off heads on his wall? Or the pedophile who gets his penis ripped off?

Even some movie critics -- who have a habit of praising to the skies the whirling-dervish decapitations of your average Quentin Tarantino gorefest -- are choking on this spectacle. Joe MacLeod of Baltimore's City Paper weekly warned that "there's so much blood flying around Sin City you're gonna feel like donning lab goggles and a raincoat." He concluded that once you've seen it, "you'll never, never get the stain out of your soul."

William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer argued the film's "pornography of brutality" suggests we're sitting "like Romans at the Coliseum, watching people being decapitated, disemboweled, dismembered, castrated and humiliated." Lawrence Toppman of the Charlotte Observer even protested that the movie shows the failure of the movie ratings system: "Talking bluntly about sex for five minutes will earn an NC-17. Showing it frankly for one minute will do the same. Maiming and slaying people in close-up for two hours -- and delighting in it -- will get you only an R."


But from the Two Severed Limbs Up school of film criticism, there's always David Edelstein of Slate.com, who found "the most relentless display of torture and sadism I've encountered in a mainstream movie. ... I loved it. Or, to put it another way, I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. I loved every gorgeous, sick, disgusting, ravishing, overbaked, blood-spurting, artificial frame of it." He concluded the review: "It seems pointless to tut-tut over the depravity. 'Sin City' is like a must-have coffee-table book for your interior torture chamber."

Slate.com should never be allowed to lecture anyone ever again about morality of any kind.

Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post bluntly declared the film "a pure product of the American death cult ... and dam, it's really good. So do you say: This film is perverse and should be banned for it will fascinate all too many of the impressionable young with its aggressive nihilism? Or do you say: It's so gorgeous and seductive and such a mesmerizing experience, you just have to let it be what it is and not apply the laws of taste and society to it. ... I have no idea."


There's one huge problem with film critics. It's fine to appreciate the art of something, but not to the utter exclusion of a social conscience. Film is not just entertaining, it can be intoxicating. It can be a very malignant influence. Can you sit on the fence as this cinematic disease spreads? Just wait until the "Sin City" DVD starts traveling around in teenager backpacks.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

delSol

I saw it sunday with my 17 yo - odd odd odd. In the review that i read before I went it said rating: "R for sustained strong stylized violence, nudity and sexual content including dialogue. " So I knew going in what to expect - I did find it an odd movie but was not shocked/appalled. I guess what I am trying to say is this goes back to the Howard Stern crap - if you don't like, turn it off/don't go - don't feel the need to decide for someone else whether they should see/hear it.

janelle

I guess some would sit through anything instead of being accused of being judgemental or heaven forbid, wanting something banned. This isn't for you DelSol, it's for anyone who sits through it.

You know some film makers can be crazy too just like anyone else. They make a crazy film about being sadistic and the critics drool all over it. I think the author of the article has the right idea. Recommend counseling for the film maker and all who revel in the movie.

Maybe if everyone who comes out of the movie smiling can be identified we would catch a lot of mass murderers in the future. Not alowed in our society but it would be a help for our police departments.

I know if gore and sadism isn't for me then don't go. I won't but how do we stop others from going and getting ideas?

Njean31

advocates say people (and YOUTH ) don't learn sex, violence, and the like from tv, movies, video games, music... i've never understood that. abandon a child out in the woods to be raised with the wildlife, if they survive, they BECOME wildlife

janelle

I agree---we learn what we live. And I don't think people will become sadism loving robots but in Rome when they had killing as a sport and life had no meaning suicide was the most common way to die. Our kids deserve better from us.

delSol

but did watching grizzly adams make you move up on a mountain? do you watch finding nemo and think you are a fish? I'm not trying to start a fight here but how come the watching thing only works if it is something you don't like?

and the million dollar question is:
Rocky Horror Picture Show made how many bazillions of people transvestites?

Njean31

no, and i didn't want to get stranded on an island after watching Gilligan's Island. the watching thing works for kids because it's exciting and fun-looking. sex, drugs, violence. i'm talking about the overall climate/influence of sex, drugs, and violence in media. it looks fun, they are making all kinds of money, everybody's doing it, why not do it?

to kids, it looks like much more fun to be sittin in the back of a hummer smoking a blunt with a bunch of half naked women than it would be mimicking charles ingalls on little house on the prarie.

Jolie Rouge

It depends on if you dressed as Columbia, Magenta, Frank, Eddie, Brad or Janet ....

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

silvermist

I thought it wasn't that great of a movie. Too much crap in it I thought. And did you notice how they must have said like 10 times or more I need a cigarette? it's like what are you trying to do? Give us subliminal messages that we need a cigarette? lol Not worth watching.

barky586

My opinion - It is the sucka**est movie I have seen in a long, long, long time. Save your money. People were getting up and walking out in our theatre when we saw it.

janelle

GOOD. At least people know when they see humans being treated like so much garbage it's sickening. I hope they demanded their money back.

We all know what violence is so making a comparison to Grizzley Adams is silly. Even if people don't go out and do the things they have just seen it still affects them internally. Teens especially. Why do you think we have so much depression in teens when society treats others like so much garbage.

When I was a teen rape seemed to be in every show on TV that I saw. That was before they knew the horrid ramifications to the victim and it was put on as more entertainment then this is the worse thing one can do to another's personhood. I started to get depressed. Teens are sensitive to such things even though they swagger aroung and don't show it. Anyone with a teen knows this. OUR KIDS DESERVE BETTER FROM US.