Being tortured by children in Unturned, a knockoff Sim Survival Game. (One of my favorites)
On the subject of Horror and its inherent entertainment value we often find ourselves, like Tarantino, in the position of justification. I have often heard the argument that Art does not need to justify its presence. It simply is and our Outrage to the Shock of the New is a priori.
Certainly outrage has consequence. For example, the collapse of public funding of the National Endowment of the Arts. As long as no crime has taken place then Jake and Dinos Chapman can fix as many cunts and dildos on their child sculptures as they like. Chris Burden had himself shot in a gallery, and did not press charges. So there is no crime and the Outrage exists only as a thing in itself to be examined. Why we are perturbed is then only an existential question.
Though perhaps we could make an argument that Art and Science serve notice to our potential hypocrisy. And, that hypocrisy could have policy implications. For example, that murder facilitated by the State in a death penalty or wartime context is fine. Murder done outside of the bounds of Justice is wrong. So the State dictates, based on our agreed on public policy, where murder is justifiable.
Chris Burden Crucified on a Volkswagen 1971
Video game developers spend a great deal of effort contorting themselves into a position to escape conundrums of guilt and conscience. A young man taught to obey, to be continent, and to respect his female classmates is seduced by an opportunity to be violent. This is a release, finally, for the young man. Bound in by all sides and suppressed. As with American football, the boy is allowed to be ecstatically violent (Here against the evil, loathed, and hated neighboring town’s pathetic offspring for example) and yet still there are parameters.
He could in a simpler time shoot squirrels and things. Here in the suburbs, no. He is swaddled from one activity to the next in what in America is called a Sport Utility Vehicle, though in India would be perceived as a tank and rightly so. He sees his opportunity in this virtual world to Kill. What polite hypocrisy, what contortions must the developer make to allow the killing to commence? Now, for those of you reading at home, who deserves death and state sanctioned murder? Nazis of course. Nazis and the evil undead.
Demons too. Quaking anti-Christian beasts. All these endless fodder for the young suburban vigilante.
But, what about Grand Theft Auto? And Red Dead Redemption? What contortion does Rock Star Games take to solve this conundrum.. that nameless blameless citizens are beaten, killed, and stolen from? Finally after decades of very troubling press they introduced an honor bar. It is something of real importance to our society really. They have established consequence. Solving the game humanely and with compassion means respect and resolution for RDR2’s protagonist Arthur Morgan. Killing in the name of..
On the Steam gaming platform (where on the splash screen a man with a valve imbedded in his skull literally has compressed air released) we have the game Unturned. This first person shooter is quite a bit like Minecraft. It is also a construction sandlot game, but with more killing. I like this game, for one, because the definition and details are so reduced. The elements of the game feel so bleached and packed in that I feel contained psychologically. It is not unlike the Japanese term Ma 間
Ma is the gap between things. It is the suggestion of an interval or as Miles Davis puts it: Music is the space between sounds. So in this game I feel the space between objects so keenly that I also feel its life more intensely. There is no death quite like Unturned death. A death is Unturned is a loss of personality.
As your uniqueness is the hard earned acquired costume which is stolen immediately by the child who kills you. Your skills, very passionately built up and “grinded out” are also eroded in death. If this death occurs in the midst of a raid on one’s base where all of one’s possessions are stored then Death is eternal. There is no more restacking of Self as you might see in the Netflix show Alterned Carbon. It is real death. Given these circumstances I have “rage quit.” in the past, I am ashamed to say.. I left the Universe where these gamers play. A kind of moving on away from the relentless cycle of acquisition and loss, birth and death of the Server.
Though, It is also where I have begged my other friends to assist in an honor killing and revenge raid on a fellow gamer. We sought Justice for the killing. But really, Justice was sought for the theft of identity and the emasculation of self. (This is not unlike real life for the White American Middle Class and their paramilitary honor guard. Do not mistake me. This is not Justice. This is Just Us.*[1])
Tarantino understands our irrational contortions. Death is death. There can be no true justice for assault as the wound can never be erased. We cannot be made whole as long as we can remember the event in the first. So revenge is not a satisfaction. Revenge, like the death penalty, is a rationalization for maintaining Samsara.
Sometimes Buddhism is dismissed as morally vacuous. As there is no sin to this philosophical modality., and, there is no reckoning where Justice is administered ultimately by a Creator. Still, Right Resolve asks us to do no more harm. In this there is Freedom.
[1] The Genius Richard Pryor
Red Circle on Black - Jiro Yoshihara, 1965 OIL ON CANVAS
As well as being essentially a funny person Tarantino is also, I believe, truly terrified of horror. I believe he must, in the quick of the night, have held his breath imagining a young woman torn apart by dogs. A dog, in this case, that was in one moment gracious and then in the next an explosion of fury. (Quite like Hans Landa that, as he choked out Mattershchorn) The Pitbull, or perhaps a Staffordshire, must have terrified him and he must have sought, as a true artist (like Ingres said) to copy nature and reproduce this figment into reality. But how to do it? How to not be indulgent or gratuitous?
(Too gratuitous is though a value of Taste. And Taste immediately connotes a hierarchy of value)
This is the End with Michael Cera. Do you think this is Good or Bad? Is it too much?
How could Tarantino create a tension where we might weep at his gift?
His film ouerve seeks to solve the conundrum of representing violence; that which film does best, but which can offend the audience most. And as we know Outrage can impact your Return on Investment, for good or bad.
On the face of it what he seeks as a filmmaker is to replicate a young girl getting her face ripped off by a terrier. How to accomplish this? Who can do this act for him? What is hated and dehumanized and loathed more than any other creature? Can he do an Evil Undead? A Nazi? Ah… here we go. The serial killer. We will hate that.
The unholy name Charles Manson still rankles in us. Manson looms in our national consciousness as an inhuman monster. (That he no longer contains personhood or human beingness is critical to our sensibility.) The injustice of the California Penal Code is that he was free to live. This policy decision irks still. If we could only see his torture could we be resolved! (No matter that the criminal justice system decrees life imprisonment just punishment. No matter that death or hanging does little to resolve our wound.)
Manson is though, for the fantasist, an ideal vessel for Tarantino to pour his blood. So.. what is even worse than Manson? How about the archetype of The Dirty Hippie that betrayed the hippie ideal Sharon Tate’s hip, youthful, and female beauty? The Dirty Hippy who sold her autonomy to Manson.
Sharon was an ethereal River Goddess fertile and full. Tragically, like some classical myth it was ripped from her. Quite literally. Where is the Justice for this act? What can we rip from Manson like some enraged mob? We are left with Nothing, emptiness.
For two and a half hours though, Tarantino contorted me into a position where I finally cheered and shrieked at the wanton murder of these fucking dirty hippy children.
I was in tears. I walked out of the theatre proud and facewet that Tate lived. And that she had lived.
This is such a wondrous mental illusion.
For H.