Adding Up a Tally on Violent Movies

I am a writer-director, and I left “Pulp Fiction” ashamed to have anything to do with the motion-picture industry. While I think Quentin Tarantino is a man of formidable talent, I am sorry he serves up nasty, mean-spirited and socially irresponsible film.

Allow me to clarify the notion of a socially irresponsible film. There has been much chicken-and-egg debate as to whether entertainment reflects or contributes to societal violence. I suggest that entertainment contributes to violence because of the nature of the creative process.

A screenwriter’s craft is to take life, which is amorphous and diffuse, and distill and crystallize it into compelling dramatic moments. The screenwriter always seeks to put a spin on a given scene, to push the envelope.

If the writer’s milieu is violence, his craft dictates that he push the envelope of violence. Let’s take Tarantino: As he sits down to write “Pulp Fiction,” perhaps society is operating at a violence level of 5. Tarantino pushes the envelope to create a screenplay that operates at a violence level of 6.

Assume that the overwhelming majority of moviegoers who see “Pulp Fiction” won’t engage in violence, but they will be increasingly desensitized to a higher level of violence. Maybe the societal violence level has escalated to 5.01. When the next screenwriter sits down to work in the milieu of violence, he must push the envelope again.

After 75 years of violent cinema, after 45 years of increasingly violent TV, these microscopic increments become visible to the naked eye. This is not to say that entertainment is solely responsible for societal violence. However, I believe the creative process behind such films as “Pulp Fiction” is also part of the lethal brew.

DUANE CLARK

West Hollywood

Re “Pulp Fiction,” “Natural Born Killers,” “Interview With the Vampire” and all other films ever attacked for their violent content:

I am a 25-year-old male. I have never tortured or killed an animal in my life, and, beyond childhood fights with siblings, I have never hit a person. I am, by all accounts, a physically restrained, calm, rational human being.

Despite this, I am fascinated by violence, and I am not ashamed to admit it. Even though my favorite movies have contained no violence, I have seen my share of bloodshed courtesy of Arnold, Sly and the others, and I have enjoyed it.

We may be human, but we are still animals. In trying to deny, ignore, suppress or forget our aggressive, violent roots and heritage, we only foster a legacy of self-righteous illegitimacy. Maybe if we weren’t so uptight about admiring violence, it would lose its fascination. Or is that too radical a concept?

I have never seen a movie and been encouraged to kill someone (“Killers”) or bite their neck (“Interview”). In fact, even though violent movies act on me more as a purgative than as an incentive, the uplifting movies I see do incite me. After seeing such films as “Forrest Gump” and “Sirens,” I leave the theater with an unbounded love of mankind.

Let us not be afraid to embrace both sides of the human coin. You can’t have one without the other.

MICHAEL WOLFFE

Los Angeles

Jack Mathews’ comment that USA Today’s Joe Urschel badly misreads the potential social harmfulness of “Pulp Fiction” proves Urschel’s point exactly, especially when Mathews says the ability to enjoy this film is an acquired taste (“Can 200 Critics Be Wrong? (Maybe),” Dec. 26).

Of course it’s an acquired taste. A society puts its children and adults in darkened rooms for hours and hours of violence, mayhem and sadism and keeps showing it to them until they think it’s funny.

These films influence society. They take away dreams and heroes. They drive some to violence, and they push the rest of us into believing that this is the way the world is and into the apathy of believing we have to accept it.

KAREN ROBINS SODIKOFF

Del Mar

I can’t believe that The Times would lend credence to Urschel’s charge that “Pulp Fiction” is basically critically acclaimed filth. “Pulp Fiction’s” mix of violence and humor is not some bad-taste ground breaker. The so-called sick scenes have been done before in such movies as “Deliverance” and countless others.

“Pulp Fiction” is clearly rated R, and anyone who takes children to R-movies is looking for trouble. At least “Pulp Fiction” isn’t a mixture of violence and humor that’s directed at children, like “Batman” and “Jurassic Park.”

BOB SCHALLAUcq

Rancho Palos Verdes