Entertainment :: Movies
Natural Born Killers - 15th Anniversary Director’s Cut by Timothy Gabriele
EDGE ContributorMonday Oct 26, 2009 A 15th anniversary for a film is a pretty arbitrary commemorative date. A decade makes sense, since we model our systems of knowledge in base ten and the shifting cultural landscape can be easily understood through the evocation of consensus-derived temporal abstracts about certain periods, such the thoughts one encounters when someone mentions "the eighties" or "the sixties". However, five years ago, when Natural Born Killers, a film that is both wholly a product of "the nineties" and a totemic prophecy on our even further decline into institutionalism and third order simulacrums, was ten years old, DVD was still a toddler, barely acquainted with the possibilites of the medium.
It’s disappointing then that the most welcome new edition to the latest version of Natural Born Killers is a 44 page physical booklet included in the case. The director’s cut of the film, the Stone-introduced deleted scenes, and the rightly avoided alternate ending have all been around since the two tape VHS version released before anyone ever heard of DVDs. To add insult to injury, that video contained additional features that even this volume doesn’t have, such as a brief discussion of the brilliant pastiche Americana soundtrack and the "Burn" video by Nine Inch Nails. The rest of the features are occasionally illuminating, Stone’s interview on Charlie Rose perhaps generating the greatest deal of depth. The latter is at least much better than Stone’s rambling commentary track where Stone sounds... well, stoned.
There’s a feature called "NBK Evolution: How Would it All Go Down Now?" which picks the minds of A Current Affair’s Steve Dunleavy (the model, along with Geraldo Rivera, for Robert Downey Jr’s Wayne Gayle) and Joey Butafuco for their thoughts on and experiences with celebrity and scandal. The featurette goes on to survey representatives from New Media (Flickr, Wikipedia, Boingboing, YouTube, X17) on how Mickey and Mallory would be perceived in today’s media-saturated world. It’s slightly embarrassing seeing all these corporate talking heads salivate at the chance to extol their site’s integral role in the Web 2.0 world. The documentary’s thesis that new media’s role in closing the ontological gap between spectatorship and participation allows for a grassroots interface between the object of spectacle (such as the serial killers) and the consumer of spectacle misses a point that’s central to the film’s core- that it’s audience consent that allows the perpetuation of violence to continue. Mickey and Mallory don’t cheerlead for their own fame. They’ve been instructed by a life lived in haunted cathode ray tubes that simply being on television exaggerates one’s value.
The infatuation of a press loudly disgusted with Mickey and Mallory’s bedlam reads like a defense mechanism. The media’s attraction to the darkness is ongoing. Its very coverage advocates for the continuation of the atrcious acts we’re too afraid to perpetrate ourselves.
The reason Stone’s film is so subversive is because it recognizes violence not as a symptom of alienation from our peers, but as a reinforcement of the institutionalized communities (the prison system, the media, the dysfunctional nuclear family) that make us feel connected to the world. Violence, Stone states, far from being pathological, is the default operation of all current functioning human societies. By failing to recognize this death drive, humanity is inhibited in its ability to properly address it, to evolve beyond bestial instincts and games of dominance. The appearance within 2 years of Natural Born Killers’ release of Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, which spawned a trend of inviting viewers to fawn over the awesome spectacle of mass devastation and catastrophe, was not accompanied by any of the controversy that Natural Born Killers garnered upon its release. Perhaps Emmerich’s central plot, a world brought together by the collective desire to annihilate and destroy an invading species seeking claim on a planet we’d been willfully wiping out ourselves up until their arrival, had a ring of universality to it.
The second documentary on the DVD, "Chaos Rising", claims to tackle the controversy surrounding Natural Born Killers, but it’s tone is wholly dismissive of its critics without much explication. Downey mentions John Grisham’s name in passing, but does not mention the circumstances of the incidents inciting Grisham’s lawsuit against the film on the grounds of "product liability" (a personal friend of Grisham’s was murdered by a young couple "inspired" by the film). Woody Harrelson proclaims at one point that most of us have been mad enough to kill at one point in our lives. "So, where’s the line?" he says. However, later he remarks "I don’t think anybody watches a two hour movie and decides they’re going to become a serial killer", apparently missing how the film could function as "the line" for some people.
Ironically, central to the film’s critique is what those who misinterpret its signals, particularly the misguided children of Columbine, lack; media literacy. J.G. Ballard once stated that the modern media environment is "oversaturated" with "aestheticizing elements," but "impoverished and numb as far as its psychological depth is concerned" (he was speaking particularly of advertising, but nothing remains untarnished by advertising). This makes Stone’s formalist experiments in the detournment of traditional Hollywood blockbuster narratives (the film was released late in the summer of Forrest Gump and the Lion King) difficult to reconcile for viewers accustomed to relishing the frenzied spectacle of cowboy revenge fantasies where one-dimensional villains get their come-uppances.
Stone’s film is disconcerting because it makes the most abhorrent behavior imaginable appealing, even thrilling, thanks the intensive MTV-style editing (which now seems almost sluggish compared to today’s breakneck splicing speeds), acute bubblegum postmodern pastiche style (later co-opted by original NBK script writer Quentin Tarantino in his Kill Bill movies as another one of those revenge fantasies), and scenes of chaotic barbaric action. This use of a familiar language was described by director Michael Haneke (Funny Games), one of the film’s biggest critics, as the use of a "fascist aesthetic to achieve an anti-fascist goal"
It’s hard to disagree with Haneke, and it would have been interesting to see the documentary filmmakers tackle this head-on. A film this viscerally packed, this ideologically loaded, and this uniquely transgressive deserves to be commemorated for both its flaws and its strengths. Its controversies demand to be addressed, not dismissed as the whines of those who can’t appreciate art. Part of what makes the film so compelling is the multiplicity of readings available in such loaded subject matter. As such, the film in any format is still a worthy edition to any library that bares returning to every couple of years.
Timothy Gabriele is currently lives in Philadelphia where he is a freelance writer looking to score big on the boulevard of free thought. He keeps track of things and provides the occasional insight at
555 Enterprises, his blog.
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