Natural Born Killers Essay -- Film Review, Classic, Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone’s 1994 classic, Natural Born Killers, excited and traumatized its audiences while also causing controversy. The tale of white trash lovers caught up in a realm of chaos that includes a continuous murderous rampage from state to state, draws in audiences with its graphic violence and riveting pulse inducing music. Yet, the message of this film seems to be much deeper than just exposing audiences to yet another chaotic action movie filled with guns, blood and mayhem. Stone’s Natural Born Killers examines the subject of media’s investment in serial murder very thoroughly, and so it seems likely that it has the potential to offer a more rigorous interrogation of the nature of the American public’s fascination with the serial killer superstar (Schmid 123). Natural Born Killers is a film that exposes modern society’s obsession with serial killers and how the media aids in the glorifying of these notorious icons. The film also plays into the f act that society while finding murder repulsive are just as sick as the serial killers because the enjoy watching such films. In Natural Born Killers, Mickey and Mallory the main characters kill 52 people before being caught and imprisoned. Prior to the arrest, the manhunt for them has gained them celebrity and half of the country if not the world are rooting for their triumphant escape form the law. Though their clean getaway is shattered by imprisonment their celebrity persists. When they do break out of prison, in the midst of a riot, their escape is filmed live by the host of a true-crime program. Naturally Born Killers gets most of its message across visually as all films do. By making use of animation, colored filters, a variety of different types of film stock, in both col... ... the satisfaction of a dual and related curiosity on the part of the spectator about celebrities and killers, but this satisfaction can come about only if these films can discipline effectively the unstable structures of identification they generate (Shmid 113). While it seems that Oliver Stone’s mission is to bring a satirical eye-opener to the its audience while exploring an underlying theme of obsession with murder, the audience looks their own inner demons, while examining their own morals as well. And just as an obsession with murder would exude, it has been found that Natural Born Killers has been implicated in 15 murder cases, with the most infamous being the murders of four people in Paris by Florence Ray and Audry Maupin, and in the United States the killing of William Savage and injury of Patsy Ann Byers by Sarah Edmondson and Benjamin Darras (Young 6). Natural Born Killers Essay -- Film Review, Classic, Oliver Stone Oliver Stone’s 1994 classic, Natural Born Killers, excited and traumatized its audiences while also causing controversy. The tale of white trash lovers caught up in a realm of chaos that includes a continuous murderous rampage from state to state, draws in audiences with its graphic violence and riveting pulse inducing music. Yet, the message of this film seems to be much deeper than just exposing audiences to yet another chaotic action movie filled with guns, blood and mayhem. Stone’s Natural Born Killers examines the subject of media’s investment in serial murder very thoroughly, and so it seems likely that it has the potential to offer a more rigorous interrogation of the nature of the American public’s fascination with the serial killer superstar (Schmid 123). Natural Born Killers is a film that exposes modern society’s obsession with serial killers and how the media aids in the glorifying of these notorious icons. The film also plays into the f act that society while finding murder repulsive are just as sick as the serial killers because the enjoy watching such films. In Natural Born Killers, Mickey and Mallory the main characters kill 52 people before being caught and imprisoned. Prior to the arrest, the manhunt for them has gained them celebrity and half of the country if not the world are rooting for their triumphant escape form the law. Though their clean getaway is shattered by imprisonment their celebrity persists. When they do break out of prison, in the midst of a riot, their escape is filmed live by the host of a true-crime program. Naturally Born Killers gets most of its message across visually as all films do. By making use of animation, colored filters, a variety of different types of film stock, in both col... ... the satisfaction of a dual and related curiosity on the part of the spectator about celebrities and killers, but this satisfaction can come about only if these films can discipline effectively the unstable structures of identification they generate (Shmid 113). While it seems that Oliver Stone’s mission is to bring a satirical eye-opener to the its audience while exploring an underlying theme of obsession with murder, the audience looks their own inner demons, while examining their own morals as well. And just as an obsession with murder would exude, it has been found that Natural Born Killers has been implicated in 15 murder cases, with the most infamous being the murders of four people in Paris by Florence Ray and Audry Maupin, and in the United States the killing of William Savage and injury of Patsy Ann Byers by Sarah Edmondson and Benjamin Darras (Young 6).