PERSPECTIVE ON VIOLENCE : A Natural-Born Mania for Mayhem : A gorefest like Stone’s new film isn’t really more brutal than in the past; it’s just more state of the art.

Emerging--or rather, staggering--from the multiplex after seeing “Natural Born Killers,” Oliver Stone’s brain-bludgeoning attack on America’s “culture of violence,” I was put in mind, strangely enough, of the Bayeux Tapestry. This is not to draw an aesthetic comparison. The Bayeux Tapestry--a 230-foot embroidery depicting William the Conqueror’s invasion of England--is one of the glories of Western art, a work of exquisite design and thrilling narrative power. By comparison, “Natural Born Killers” has all the grace and beauty of an M-1A assault rifle. Dispensing with the razor-edged wit of traditional satire, Stone goes for a more up-to-the-minute approach--he tries to blow you away.

Still, there is a direct line of descent between the medieval masterpiece and Stone’s in-your-face gangster film. The Bayeux Tapestry may be one of the world’s artistic treasures, but it is also a work of sheer popular entertainment. A string of 58 sequential scenes, it is a kind of protomovie, packed with those crowd-pleasing ingredients that the viewing public has apparently always craved--action, adventure and lots of graphic violence. Indeed, with its vivid scenes of warfare--decapitations, disembowelings and assorted mutilations--it is gorier than most R-rated films.

Viewing the tapestry during a visit to Normandy last year, I was struck by the public’s persistent taste for violent, action-packed entertainment. Clearly human beings have always taken delight in certain kinds of sensational stories and have constantly sought new and more exciting ways of bringing those stories to life. If the Bayeux Tapestry is a protomovie, it was the audience that provided the movement. Back in the Middle Ages, the tapestry was strung around the columns of the local cathedral; to get the full impact, the audience had to make a circuit of the church. Nowadays, all we have to do is sit back and let the action (and the killing) occur right before our eyes.

In short, in attacking the American public for its obsession with violence, Stone misses a crucial point. Our pop entertainments aren’t necessarily more brutal than those of the past; they are simply (like our pornography) more state of the art. Between the embroidered bloodshed of the Bayeux Tapestry and the cinematic slaughter of contemporary shoot-’em-ups (including Stone’s), the major difference is technological--the method used to make the mayhem seem real.

A similar point applies to the media’s love affair with lurid crime--another of Stone’s sitting ducks. The sleaziest character in “Natural Born Killers” isn’t Woody Harrelson’s gun-crazy psycho or his sociopathic sweetheart but the unctuous host of a tabloid TV show called “American Maniacs.” To see the commercial exploitation of murder as a uniquely contemporary phenomenon, however, is to suffer from a severe case of historical myopia.

Exactly 100 years ago, for example, our country was riveted by the case of Dr. H. H. Holmes, the most notorious criminal of his day. Holmes (who appears peripherally in Caleb Carr’s current bestseller, “The Alienist”) was a Gilded Age serial killer--or “multimurderer” in the jargon of the age--who confessed to 27 homicides, though certain crime historians believe that the real number may have ranged into the hundreds. In my own research into his life, I was intrigued to discover that every phenomenon associated with our presumably dehumanized era existed a century ago.

Thanks to the frenzied press coverage of his case, Holmes became a national celebrity. Hordes of curiosity-seekers ransacked his Chicago headquarters for souvenirs and mobbed the Philadelphia courtroom where his trial took place. Instant books were rushed into print (“Holmes, the Arch-Fiend” is a typical title). Holmes himself cashed in on his notoriety by publishing an autobiography and peddling his confessions to the papers (he reportedly received $5,000 from William Randolph Hearst, a handsome sum in 1890s dollars).

Even simulated re-creations of his crimes--a staple of contemporary TV “infotainment”--were staged. An enterprising impresario opened an “H. Holmes Museum,” complete with dioramas depicting the “multimurderer” in action. In a move that might put even Stone’s TV schlockmeister to shame, this same gentleman approached the Philadelphia prosecutor and offered to purchase the exhumed skull of one of Holmes’ victims.

In the weeks preceding Holmes’ execution, 4,000 applicants wrote to the warden of Moyamensing Prison, seeking tickets to the hanging. So intense was the public fascination with Holmes--and the media coverage that fed it--that, fearful of having his corpse stolen by some ghoulish huckster, he arranged to be buried in a coffin full of cement.

Following his death, entrepreneurs continued to exploit Holmes mania. The Edison Co., for example, issued a wax recording of Holmes’ confessions for use on its marvelous new invention, the phonograph.

From embroidered cloth to wax cylinders to CNN--we’ve come a long way in technological terms. But the public craving for violent diversion hasn’t altered in a thousand years. Stone’s film is a case in point. For all its righteous indignation, “Natural Born Killers” is another cinematic gorefest, distinguished by its pyrotechnics: old wine (blood-red, of course) in a new bottle.