The Hateful State

Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers by Quentin Tarantino

This script was, I’ve been told, hacked about a bit in the process of adaptation. And I’m sure that hurt the writer very much. His pride and his body (of work). But I haven’t seen the film and only care what’s on the page. So what’s on the page will have to do.

I suppose we still, to this day, read things in the Catholic magazines about how irredeemably nihilist our culture is and how much hellfire we all need to get our act straight. Most attempted critiques like that aren’t real examples of criticism. They’re instinctive, a pure shudder that says, I don’t like it and I resent being made aware of the fact that other people might think this way or find it entertaining.

A lot of statements about the nihilism and emptiness of modernity are, perhaps ironically, meaningless. What does nihilism mean? Many of its greatest theoretical opponents could not define it. It’s whatever they happen not to like.

But some complaints about modern culture being (at least on its margins), remarkably amoral occasionally land. I suppose quite a lot of that commentary could have been written about this film.

Because, of course, this is a film about murderers and how they go on a murder spree. The murder spree just happens, plays out in all its anarchy with little mitigation. They kill a lot of people, these characters. And those people don’t matter. When people who aren’t our leads are double-crossed, that’s fine. No one cares. The film does not seem to mind. And one or two speeches in the film, again I don’t know how ironically, say that really, all of this is down to me, the viewer, because I’ve enjoyed a burger now and again and I know the sweet, sweet taste of Coca-Cola.

We know, because we’ve seen Tarantino direct his own work, that he finds sickening, pointless violence extremely funny. Most of the time. When it’s meant to shock and upset us it mostly does. But the rest of the time it’s a great laugh. Django gunning down endless slave masters and their fop-class friends. That’s funny. Nazis being torn to bits by the Basterds. Funny. We’re meant to laugh.

But to read this script (and perhaps to see it in Oliver Stone’s hands, though I wouldn’t know) is to gaze into the abyss. To see the void. And to be repulsed by the void’s low rent sensibilities, its cheapo stealing of pop culture, its surprising adoration of terrible Geraldo-type programming (even as our stand-in Geraldo comes to a somewhat unfortunate end).

We know, because we know the writer, that all of this is ironic, and that we’re meant to laugh. But it really is, if you didn’t know that, more like a school shooter’s home movie than an action comedy. At least at first blush.

Why is this?

Some of it is technical. Screenplays are, even in their polished, published form, blueprints. They’re the bones that, with some time in simmering water, might get a stew going. But they need mediating, balancing out. With acting, with direction, with all manner of things. Many screenplays read straight give me, at any rate, a powerfully cold sensation. I can see the film in my mind, but I’m not sure, because the information would have been delivered verbally at a pitch meeting, with how much salt the camera is going to insist I take it all.

And there are personal reasons, too, why I might shiver. For all I pretend otherwise.

It’s possible I’m getting weaker, more susceptible to shock, as I disgracefully age. It shouldn’t bother me. I know that. In the real world, people go on killing sprees all the time, and even though national governments make big, sentimental deals about these events when they happen (there are rallies; there are marches; there are solemn wreaths being laid; we’re told not to look back in anger), they don’t affect me much. These things happen. Such is life.

But in a film, you think (or at least I do), of the creators, you people made that happen! It was your choice to fill this thing up with sadism. Whether or not it served a kind of artistic purpose. You put it in there because you enjoy it, or thought others would.

In the Tarantino canon, as he no doubt thinks of it, massaged by much thought and marketing, where does Natural Born Killers sit? In the same strange half place as True Romance, perhaps, because someone else actually went and made it. Part in, part out of the pantheon. The product of more than one intelligence, more than one idea.

So we’ll never know what the blueprint really meant, in its creator’s mind. But of course, you never know who wanted to do what for which purpose. And whose idea anything really was.

As I re-read the script and my mind floated freely around, I was trying to find order in the chaos, some kind of narrative that, even if it meant nothing, proved a hell of a ride. I think that’s what I found. It was briefly exciting, to be caught up in this world of sociopaths who blame Pespi for all their problems and blame the magazines and TV for why they just cannot stop blowing people away with their big guns. It’s a little funny. Just not naturally.