Censorship, heroes and gun culture.

On the broad theme of censorship, I’m often baffled by its pervading double standards, particularly in American cinema. As I’m sure you’re aware, this all-encompassing medium envelops much of the known universe.

Interestingly, ultra-violence isn’t just tolerated but appears to be celebrated - whereas sex is so often merely alluded to. This begs the question that if sex is so intolerable, why is violence considered any less corrupting? To what extent are the malleable hearts and minds of young people adversely influenced by onscreen violence?

I looked at homicide rates in the US. In 2007 alone, 10,086 citizens were murdered by firearm-wielding sociopaths. That’s almost equivalent to the entire population of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire (or Milwaukee in the US). Surely this orgy of bloodletting makes a lusty romp on the silver screen look like a vicar’s tea party?

So how did the gun become so embedded in the brooding collective psyche of American (and increasingly English) culture? I don’t think it would be an enormous feat of deduction to point the finger of suspicion at film, television and certain types of urban music.

Take ‘westerns’, for instance. Cowboys are so often portrayed the ‘heroes’ of the piece. But if you suspend belief for a moment…if you ignore the macho posturing and rousing, brassy music, what are you left with? Essentially, gun-toting cow farmers who’ve invaded a foreign land in order to plunder its natural resources and massacre the primitive indigenous peoples. In another context, could this not be viewed as genocide? Are these really the kind of ‘role-models’, ‘heroes’ or ‘templates’ western civilisation needs to place on a pedestal? Hmmm, I wonder…?

I was recently ‘spammed’ a new release from an urban music label that I’ll refrain from naming (for legal reasons). The album cover featured a sneering rapper aiming a smoking gun at the onlooker. The photo was taken from ground level, i.e. the angle of someone who’d be on the sprawled on he ground with the ‘iconic’ gun looming large in the foreground. I can’t comment on the music since I’m more of a Chet Baker fan myself, but as an image, I found it chilling. What might a more impressionable person make of it I wondered? Does the gun have some Freudian significance perhaps…? Yunno…compensation for a bit of a peashooter in the underpants department?

Am I arguing for censorship of violence you may ask? No. At least I don’t think I am. I’m posing a question; why can’t more movies reflect the full gamut of human experience (like French cinema) rather than obsess over some phallo-centric weapon envy? I’m suggesting that, though violence is sadly part of life, it is only a part of life’s rich (and somewhat bloodstained) tapestry. Filmmakers might do well to consider this. There are cinemagoers that hope for a less violent, more humane and better-enlightened world where the more sublime aspects of human nature are portrayed. The real heroes, celebrated or unsung are still out there aren’t they?

Okay, rant over. As for me, I think it must be cocktail hour by now. In the next steaming dollop of rot, I’ll talk about my influences in writing (don’t yawn). Have fun and try to be nice, eh?

Tears of Liberty (a sonnet).

Shall I compare thee to a mad tempest?
An icon more pitiless than death row:
A storm that rips child from a mother’s breast.
In the hail of bullets, what hope may grow?
In brutal cultures, gun and gang obsessed:
False prophets, parade as gangster heroes.
Though death’s chill hand reaps bitter harvest,
The cult of the firearm never slows.
A ‘right to bare arms’ - lobbyists protest:
Guarding this rite, politicians in tow.
If this were the ‘freedom’ they would suggest:
Go tell the victim…the grieving widow.

A mother’s tears upon a blood red sea:
Figurehead of a nation, Liberty.

© Edwin Black

(Apologies for the dodgy iambic pentameter...).

Thanks for reading.
Edwin B.