Are We All Natural Born Killers?

KillersSaturday, 27 August, 1994
RE: Natural Born Killers
TO: THE OREGONIAN
1320 SW Broadway
PORTLAND, OR 97201

Dear Oregonian,

I mostly agree with your August 26 review of Oliver Stone's new movie.

Natural Born Killers is probably the best, most sustained, most plot-driven, piece of MTV-style film yet mass-marketed by Hollywood. Of course as your review points out, that doesn't save the movie from being "shallow, exploitative and even repugnant."

But - in spite of the more-than-a-message-per-minute pace of NBK - I don't think that the main message Stone is sending in this film is that public fascination with the likes of Mickey and Mallory is destroying our national spirit.

Here's what I think he's saying:

  • Humans are natural born killers. It's genetic. How else, after all, could we have come to dominate this planet so completely? Human's aren't natural born industrial workers, good citizens, or corporate cogs. Mickey's Superbowl Sunday, live, televised, coast-to-coast epiphany pretty clearly hammers this theme home.
  • In late-20th-century-America we sublimate our naturally occurring blood-lust into a competitive corporate/business culture. The reporter, Robert Downey Jr.'s Gale character, is Stone's symbol for this. He's so ambitious that (among other things) he uses marriage as an instrument to boost his career. - And he's decidedly liberated when, during the prison breakout, he's given the chance to resort to more "natural" aggression.
  • To further satisfy our bloodthirsty humanness, the market-driven mass-media supplies us with what we crave and demand. - A steady diet of violent images.
  • For the sin of giving us what we want, we blame and "crucify" the media. (Remember reporter Gale's not-so-subtle death stance?)
  • Is all violence bad? After all, the pain and violence of childbirth brings forth the beauty of a new life.

As for answers? Solutions? Recommendations? Stone prescribes what even Dan Quayle knows: Adults must properly love and guide the children that they bring into this world - lest those children revert to their natural born instincts. I think this is probably Stone's core theme.

All in all, this makes a lot more sense than, say, trying to hold the U.S. Government accountable for JFK's death.

FlagOllie's making progress.

And the film is stunning to sit through.

Text © 1994 Bill Frick (All Rights Reserved)

Back to Bill's World

. . . or more of my Really Deep Thoughts?

You can reach me by e-mail at: william@winstonsmith.us