"Natural Born Killers" vs "God Bless America"

Happy 39th birthday, Juliette Lewis!

Juliette Lewis as Mallory Knox in "Natural Born Killers" (1994) directed by Oliver Stone

In "Natural Born Killers" (which was considered the director's masterpiece by Victor Bockris, although bashed by some critics and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa) Oliver Stone was undoubtedly well intentioned, but the volume was turned up so high that the film becomes an exercise in alienation, and ultimately as sensationalist as the subject it seeks to address. A dark and ultimately depressing (for reasons good and bad) travel across the contemporary American landscape, the film's technical virtuosity is matched by compelling performances from Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson.

Unfolding as a hallucinogenic nightmare, Stone switches, randomly it seems, between hyperkinetic cinematography, black-and-white documentary verité, surveillance video, garishly coloured psychedelia and even animation in an attempt to mirror the psychosis of the killers and the media-saturated culture that makes them popular heroes. The film's extreme and gory violence required copious edits to secure an R rating in America and became the focus for a heated debate as to whether Natural Born Killers glorified the activities of its protagonists, thus potentially inciting copycat incidents, or whether its shock tactics were an attempt to force the American media to acknowledge its responsibilities.

A frenetic look at the elevation to celebrity status of mass murderers by an unscrupulous and deviant American media, Oliver Stone's controversial film divided critics and audiences with its heady brew of over-the-top violence and bitter cultural satire. Viewed retrospectively, the film, though starting from an interesting premise, only occasionally hits its target, its melange of visual styles proving crude and ineffective at times.

Inspired in previous films such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Badlands (1973), the film sadly spawned a series of copycat variants of killers in and outside USA. Mickey (Harrelson) and Mallory (Lewis) are a young couple united by their desire for each other and their common love of violence. Together, they embark on a record-breaking, exceptionally gory killing spree that captivates the sensation-hungry tabloid media.

Their fame is ensured by one newsman, Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr), who reports on Mickey and Mallory for his show, 'American Maniacs'. Even the duo's eventual capture by the police, led by a twisted and perverted Tom Sizemore, only increases their notoriety, as Gale develops a plan for a Super Bowl Sunday interview that Mickey and Mallory twist to their own advantage.

Juliette Lewis as Bonnie Parker for BlackBook Magazine

Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker and Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow in "Bonnie & Clyde" (1967) directed by Arthur Penn

Stone considered Natural Born Killers his road film, specifically naming Bonnie and Clyde as a source of inspiration. The famous death scene in Bonnie and Clyde used innovative editing techniques provided by multiple cameras shot from different angles at different speeds; this sporadic interchange between fast-paced and slow-motion editing that concludes Arthur Penn's film is used throughout the entirety of Natural Born Killers.

God Bless America is Bobcat Goldthwait’s follow up to his criminally underseen dark comedy World’s Greatest Dad; the bitter middle aged Frank (Joel Murray) loses his job and is told he has inoperable brain cancer. On the verge of sinking into a deep depression while watching late-night television, Frank decides to use the opportunity to rid the world of a rich, snotty, self-entitled reality TV star who throws a fit on camera when her parents buy her the wrong car for her 16th birthday. But when High School outcast Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) sees Frank murder her hateful classmate, she begs him to let her join him, and the two go on a killing spree targeting “jerks,” developing into a kind of hybrid of Bonnie and Clyde meets Super. Source: tonightatthemovies.com

It stars Joel Murray (Freddy Rumsen from Mad Men, and Bill's brother) as a sad-sack angry loner who learns he is dying of a brain tumor, teams up with a sullen, violent teenage girl, and decides, essentially, to kill everyone on his television. The movie takes the form of a Natural Born Killers/Bonnie & Clyde-style road movie —though both killers take pains to point out that they're "platonic spree-killers"—but it's really just an excuse for Goldthwait to use the two characters as mouthpieces to vent his spleen about our rotting culture.

I might have lost track, but our murderous duo either kills, lambastes, or does both to the following people: anyone involved with reality television, viral Internet sensations, cable television hosts, people who drink energy drinks, people who high five, Glee ("it ruined Rocky Horror forever"), Diablo Cody ("The only stripper who suffers from too much self-esteem"), Woody Allen and his personal life, people who take up two parking spots, and people who say "Namaste" in casual conversation. I'll confess: When they shot a group of teenagers who are texting and talking in a movie theater (insanely, to the strains of Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet"), I found it difficult not to cheer. Source: deadspin.com

Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr play Frank and Roxy in "God Bless America" (2011) directed by Bobcat Goldthwait

God Bless America may well be the defining movie of our generation. It’s not perfect, far from it, but as social commentary on the state of the American empire, it’s the most honest and truthful film in years. God Bless America cribs generously from “outlaw” movies like Bonnie & Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

That’s the amazing thing: despite the horrific acts they commit (and despite Goldthwait’s frantic backpedaling in interviews), Frank and Roxy come off as enormously more human and sympathetic than the people they kill. For example, both are partially motivated to go on their spree after witnessing a mentally retarded kid being humiliated on an American Idol-type show. Source: mattforney.com

Although Natural Born Killers suffered from an overdose of Stone's masturbatory directorial flourishes, it entertained similar themes about the public's entertainment appetite and the media's complicity in satisfying it. With the sense of self-importance stripped away and the application of a traditional filming approach, God Bless America hits more notes than it misses and leaves a stronger impression than Natural Born Killers.

A lot of what God Bless America has to say is on-target and is presented in such a straightforward, unvarnished fashion that it's impossible to miss the honesty beneath the comedy. The movie is funny but it is also at times uncomfortable. It takes the ugliest possible view of today's society, looking at 2012 America through dark-tinted, cracked lenses. Source: www.reelviews.net

Frank: -"It's not nice to laugh at someone who's not all there. It's the same type of freak-show distraction that comes along every time a mighty empire starts collapsing. "American Superstarz" is the new colosseum and I won't participate in watching a show where the weak are torn apart every week for our entertainment. I mean, why have a civilization anymore if we no longer are interested in being civilized?"

In Freud's essay "Civilization and Is Discontents" in which he offers us the question: "why have men created a culture in which they live with such discomfort?"

Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction: "The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” Inverted totalitarianism represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry,” Wolin writes in “Democracy Incorporated.” Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on “American Idol.” Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home."

How Democracy Dies: "The reason why the totalitarian regimes can get so far toward realizing a fictitious, topsy-turvy world is that the outside non-totalitarian world, which always comprises a great part of the population of the totalitarian country itself, indulges in wishful thinking and shirks reality in the face of real insanity...” Our gutless liberal class placates the enemies of democracy, hoping desperately to remain part of the ruling elite, rather than resist. And, in many ways, liberals, because they serve as a cover for these corporate extremists, are our greatest traitors." -"The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress (2011) by Chris Hedges

An important point I want to make is how curious is the fact both films "Natural Born Killers" and "God Bless America", despite their many similarities, they work out almost as a reverse approach to feminist interpretations based on the female characters Mallory (Juliette Lewis) and Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), following their respective arc transitions. Whereas in Natural Born Killers, Mallory's dysfunctional upbringing has made her a bitter victim of patriarchal violence, Roxy is a self-confident student who deliberately ignores the chauvinist pundits that most likely would call her a 'feminazi'.

What makes the audience sympathise with Mallory is the fact they are shown her father in the form of a vicious monster. This does not excuse her appetite for gratuitous violence on scene, however it does give the audience a certain rationale about the source of her hate and misanthropy.

Mickey: You know, the only thing that kills the demon... is love. That's why I know Mallory is my salvation. She was teaching me to love. (Mallory appears in the background whispering: "I forgive you baby"). It was just like being in the garden of Eden." This unreserved declaration of love towards Mallory amidst an opportunistic interview destinated to millions of viewers, gives us an insight into the couple's dynamic and transforms them into romantic killers before our eyes. In shutting down the accomplice media Stone excises the demon, and the violence (predominantly masculine) is redeemed by the couple's love.

In "God Bless America", on the contrary, Roxy is never seen as a victim of a patriarchal system, whilst Frank is presented in the beginning of the film as an emasculated everyman: a victim of modern oppression manifested in a condescending treatment from his ex-wife and profuse female-oriented entertainment media that is re-enforced by nasty TV princesses as Chloe (who'll become his first victim).

In some ways, the gender dynamics in "God Bless America" result even more subversive than in "Natural Born Killers". Victimized somehow by a matriarchal society on the rise, the lead character Frank regains his control as a self-assured man by training a teenage girl to shoot guns. Furthermore, despite some increasing sexual tension between Frank and Roxy, the story denoument couldn't be more evidently anti-Hollywood (besides being anti-establishment).

Frank overcomes his sexual impulses when he realises he doesn't want to rob Roxy of her youth years and sends her back home with her conventional parents (oblivious to her plight). When both arrive by separate ways at their inescapable finish line, it's Frank who recovers his lost leadership and pride, leading Roxy (who aspired to become Frank's girlfriend to no avail) to death in their shared demise in the "American Superstaz" finale as an undeniable proof of her loyalty.

Jake Gyllenhaal in "If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet" by Nick Payne (Roundabout Theatre)

"Michelle Gomez and Brían F. O'Byrne will join the previously reported Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal in the Roundabout Theatre Company's Off-Broadway production of Nick Payne's If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet. Michael Longhurst will direct this American premiere at the Laura Pels Theatre, August 24-November 25, with an opening on September 20.

Nick Payne is a graduate of the Royal Court Young Writer's Programme. His first play "If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet" opened at the Bush Theatre in October 2009 and received a very strong response from critics with the Evening Standard calling it "a comic tour de force" and the Financial Times "a knockout".

"If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet" set at Bush Theatre

The play centers on bullied 15-year-old Anna, whose unexpected friendship with her estranged uncle Terry sends her parents' rocky marriage into a tailspin. The design team will include Beowulf Boritt (sets), Susan Hilferty (costumes), Natasha Katz (lights) and Obadiah Eaves (original music & sound).

Hayden Christensen and Jake Gyllenhaal in "This Is Our Youth" (Theater, 2002)

Gyllenhaal, who will play Terry, made his stage debut starring in Kenneth Lonergan's revival of This is Our Youth in London, winning an Evening Standard Theater Award for "Outstanding Newcomer."

He received an Oscar nomination for his work in Brokeback Mountain, and is also known for his performances in films such as Donnie Darko and Love and Other Drugs. Source: www.theatermania.com

Still of Minka Kelly in the film "The Roommate" (2011)

"Us Weekly reports that Jake Gyllenhaal recently enjoyed a brief but ultimately unsuccessful romance with Minka Kelly. "It was never serious," shrugs a source of the pair's handful of dates, "and it's over now."

Too bad, because the actor, 31, had apparently been harboring a crush on the dark-haired looker, 32, for a while. According to the mag, he asked her out last fall, but she gave him the brush-off because of her on-again, off-again three-year romance with New York Yankees star Derek Jeter.

"Minka wasn't into Jake when he first pursued her," sums up an insider. Source: wonderwall.msn.com

Kristen Stewart smokes marijuana in "On The Road" (2012)

In a recent interview, Robert Pattinson's Cosmopolis co-star, Sarah Gadon, talked about her working relationship with the Twilight heart-throb.

She also talked about comparing RPattz to her new co-star Jake Gyllenhaal through their respective fans on Twitter. Sarah Gadon admitted that she didn't know Rob before working with him on Cosmopolis. So what did she really think of Kristen Stewart's man, who "unintentionally became an icon after all the madness from Twilight?"

He's a great guy," replied Gadon without a moment's hesitation. "Of course he has a crazy life, but he deals with it very well. I don't know how he does that. I knew he had done Twilight, but I've never even watched it, I didn't know how famous he was. All I can tell you is that he's very nice and down-to-earth."

"It's interesting," Sarah mused, "every time I get a new co-star, I sign up for Twitter and I get all their fans. And so it's kind of interesting to compare Pattinson fans and Gyllenhaal fans. You get to see what kind of fans they draw."

Unfortunately, Sarah kept discreetly mum about whether she was a bigger fan of Robert Pattinson or Jake Gyllenhaal. That was extremely classy of her. Or not. Maybe she was just afraid of Kristen Stewart. Source: celebs.gather.com


Kristen Stewart in Vanity Fair – July 2012 – Behind the Scenes

"Kristen Stewart may be a huge A-list star, but she still lives life as a “weirdo, creative Valley Girl who smokes pot.”

In the July 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, the 22-year-old actress opens up about how her life changed upon the release of Twilight in 2008.

“You can Google my name and one of the first things that comes up is images of me sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe with my ex-boyfriend and my dog,” she says. “It was taken the day the movie came out. I was no one. I was a kid. I had just turned 18.”


“The next day it was like I was a delinquent slimy idiot, whereas I’m kind of a weirdo, creative Valley Girl who smokes pot,” she continues. “Big deal.” Source: www.hollywoodlife.com

Garret Hedlund, Kristen Stewart and Tom Sturridge at the premiere of "On The Road" in Cannes, May 2012

Kristen Stewart as MaryLou in "On The Road" (2012) directed by Walter Salles

In the film Kristen's character is seen topless, smoking marijuana and indulging in group sex – but the 22-year-old relished the challenges of the role. Speaking of the sex scenes, she said: 'Obviously everyone who does scenes like that the first thing you say is: "Oh I felt so safe." Source: www.metro.co.uk

In 2001, researchers identified 122 compounds used in mainstream medicine which were derived from "ethnomedical" plant sources;80% of these have had an ethnomedical use identical or related to the current use of the active elements of the plant.Modern practitioners - called Phytotherapists - attempt to explain herb actions in terms of their chemical constituents. In 2002 the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health began funding clinical trials into the effectiveness of herbal medicine.

Many of the herbs and spices used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds. Synthetic Marijuana is gaining popularity: Fake weed products are legal, and their use has grown since they were first introduced in 2002. They don't trigger a positive result on a urine drug test and are marketed as being "100% organic herbs".

Specialisation is an important issue for herbal treatments in Herbal City LLC and also their dosage necessary to determine the most effective (especially in relation to things like body weight, drug interactions, etc). Several methods of standardization may be applied to herbs. One is the ratio of raw materials to solvent. However different specimens of even the same plant species may vary in chemical content.

The Context of Mad Men (and Mad Women)

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) in "Mad Men" (Season 5, Episode 13 "The Phantom")

"What happens to Peggy after she joins Cutler Gleason and Chaough?" Responding to the first question, creator Matthew Weiner said, "You have to watch." However, the writer made sure that fans will see more of Peggy as he told New York Times, "She's still part of the show. So far. We want to know where she is in this world." He coyly added, "I can't tell you what's planned for her, but there she was." Source: www.aceshowbiz.com

"The Fifties were hypocritical and secretive ... on the surface it was such a happy, lovely time, but it wasn’t like that at all, it was what we pretended, and underneath was exactly what’s happening today : the broken hearts, the looking for love, the lies, the fears." -Jaffe cited in Montagne, 2005. While author Rona Jaffe is here recalling the historical context for her first novel, The Best of Everything, published in 1958, her words have resonance for viewers of Matthew Weiner’s hit show, Mad Men, despite the show’s storyline beginning in 1960. “The Fifties” lasted longer than the decade from 1950 to 1959, and are not bound by those end-dates.

January Jones and Jon Hamm as Betty and Don Draper in "Mad Men".

Mad Men is a cultural phenomenon that reflects upon a past era, and exposes a time thought glamorous in its innocent sophistication. It celebrates a time when American consumer capitalism dominated the world discourse through brute strength. With unemployment nearly as high as it was during the Depression, with a bitter war being fought in a distant land, with a country split between conservative aggression and liberal paralysis, Mad Men allows us to pause and reflect on how the ebb and flow of history affects us and how change, no matter how small, is both frighteningly unnerving and assuredly inevitable.

Peggy makes a successful bid for Freddy’s office, she is earlier seen exploring the open-plan secretarial floor late one night. A close-up reveals Peggy searching through someone’s desk drawer ; she filches a cigarette, lights it and exhales happily. Then a longer shot shows her stretch luxuriously and sensuously, before wandering off across the office space, usually public, but at night her own private playground. When she inherits Freddy’s former office, Peggy’s pleasure is even greater. She enjoys moving in, having an office boy carry her things, hav ing the other male creatives envy her. She also inherits Freddy’s bar, and is found later by Pete enjoying a solo whiskey. See Elisabeth Moss & Joel Murray in "Mad Men": http://youtu.be/YqU-2QAYWYk

Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway in "Mad Men"

Gloria Steinem writes in her biography Marilyn/Norma Jean: “She personified many of the secret hopes of men and many secret fears of women”. In the episodes “Maidenform” and “Six Month Leave”, Joan is read by men as a Marilyn-figure and associates herself with the ’50’s screen star and, now, cultural icon. In “Maidenform,” Paul Kinsey pitches an idea to Don on marketing Play tex bras, pleading a case that all women are either a “Jackie” Kennedy or a “Marilyn” Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe in 1950's

If Joan is Marilyn, then Betty can be read as a “Jackie”: the wife-and mother who looks after the house and the children. In the same episode he pitches the Play tex campaign Don tells Betty that he doesn’t like her new bright yellow bikini. Betty’s swim gear covers as much if not more than the underwear the Playtex model poses in for the campaign’s image, but Don tells her that the bikini makes her appear desperate.

Don firmly separates motherhood and sexual desirability in his own life — going outside his marriage to fulfill his sexual needs. So, while the men at Sterling Cooper may say they want both a “Jackie” and a “Marilyn” we are shown that they want them in different women, not as two sides of the same, as the Play tex campaign implies. “Six Month Leave” positions Joan with Marilyn Monroe, and specifically, with Monroe’s tragic death.

Joan and Peggy both grow significantly throughout the first two seasons of "Mad Men." From the first episode, when Joan instructs Peggy on how to use her sexuality to get ahead, to later, when Peggy’s realization that her intelligence is all she needs, both women achieve a personal growth that makes them exciting to watch. “A Night to Remember” ends with Joan rubbing her shoulders where her bra strap has dug in, symbolizing the weight she carries on her shoulders as a woman in a patriarchal society.

Episode one of "Mad Men": “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” immediately introduces viewers to the women in Don’s life, juxtaposing Betty as the model suburban wife and mother with counterpart Midge Daniels, the first in a series of mistresses, as well as a bevy of Sterling Cooper secretaries, most with marital ambitions as pointed as their brassieres. Medically speaking, the notorious Victorian “madwoman” is an umbrella figure that runs the gamut from the psychotic murderess to the stifled woman with a nervous cough. She is Betty Draper with her numb hands, or Betty’s gal-pal, Francine, who fantasizes postpartum about poisoning herself and her family as vindication for her husband’s presumed infidelity.

In the nineteenth century she is most commonly the “hysterical” woman, like Peggy Olson protecting her respectability by mentally repressing her full-term pregnancy with a complete psychotic break. Pedestrian rhetoric, however, is apt loosely to brand any woman who deviates from the norm as “mad.” Madness, therefore, is a label that envelopes any woman who moves beyond that realm of femininity that is familiar and, thus, viewed as “natural.”

Just how natural this learned femininity is, however, extremely suspect, as argued famously by John Stuart Mill in The Subjection of Women: “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing — the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others”. Mill argues that women’s (and presumably men’s) nature can not truly be known since it is manipulated and distorted from infancy into becoming the socialized, gendered creature we recognize, yet the product is so pervasive that we attribute the result to God’s design instead of our own making.

The fallen woman is a familiar warning to the Victorian reader, but the plight of this figure is much farther reaching. Peggy, for example, is merely another in a long literary tradition of fallen women. British letters alone gave rise to infamous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century examples of fallenness: Clarissa, Moll Flanders, Lady Dedlock, Tess Durbeyfield, Ruth, Esther Waters, and the Lady of Shalott. Beyond England, European authors contribute Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Hedda Gabler. Given our shared literary heritage, America also demonstrates a clear preoccupation with women’s virtue and the fallen woman: Charlotte Temple, Hester Prynne, Crane’s Maggie, Ellen Olenska, Edna Pontelier, Carrie Meeber and Jennie Gerhardt, Daisy Miller, and Lena Grove.

Consequently, most of the women of Mad Men are “fallen” if held to a Victorian standard, and, if not, are at least sexually loose if held to the acknowledged sexual standard of their day. Even if women in 1960 are on the brink of sexual revolution, remnant feelings about female respectability — being the type of girl you marry rather than the type of girl you “date”— nevertheless linger, and this tightrope walk is evident in the struggles of Mad Men’s women.

Interestingly, when these images metaphorically depict the fragility of domestic harmony — as implied through subtle icons like the house of cards — this usually implies that the responsibility lies with the woman since it is her indiscretion alone that will tear the family asunder. In the Drapers’ case, the threat is twofold: aside from Betty’s infidelity, the second threat is that Betty might not take Don back which, again, would result in the collapse of the family structure.

This scenario, in fact, plays out at the end of Season Three when Betty blames Don for ruining every thing (“The Grown-Ups”). Don, as usual, deflects responsibility, recognizing only that it is Betty who seeks to “break up” the family when she hires a divorce attorney (“Shut the Door. Sit Down.”) -from "Analyzing Mad Men: Critical Essays" by Scott F. Stoddart