Cinema and the Gun
I’m sure much more learned and eloquent movie-nerds than me have written must-read theses on the cinematic language of violence, but I was thinking today how so much of our shared movie-love centers around the image of the gun. When I think back to my own favorite movies, and to the characters and scenes that I love, there are so many of them that involve guns that is sort of makes me question my own nature a little bit. I’m not a violent man, by any means. I have never been in a fight. I haven’t punched or slapped a person since I was in short pants. But I practically require violence, and especially gun violence, in my film entertainment, and I am not alone, especially here in America.
Our film culture is so wrapped up with guns and gunmen that even the movie that is considered the first narrative feature in the history of the format ends with a cowboy shooting his gun into the camera. I don’t own a gun, and odds are I never will, but it never stops being fun watching the sort of people who do. Cowboys, cops, gangsters and bank-robbers. If there weren’t movies about these types of people, what would we have left? I know that my DVD collection would certainly be a lot smaller.
Think about your favorite movie images. Is there a gun in them? Why is that?
