martin scorsese

Scorsese Our society that we live in can be classified as non-violent. From a distance, it is argued that our culture is built on war and hate but in reality, the average person has probably never physically hit someone. Children sometime enjoy a good wrestle here and there but the average adult tends to avoid getting into a physical fight with another person. So why is it that so many of us flock to the movies to see someone get their head blown to bits over and over again, usually more men than women. One reason can be tied to our primordial instincts. We, as humans, still carry with us that animal side, that joy of the hunt, that rush of the kill. And also we, as humans, understand that killing is bad and that going to work everyday is good. The only way one can relive the feelings that their ancestors once experienced is to watch it happen on the silver screen. It's the same reason why people always slow down on the highway when ever there is an accident. They really don't want to see a dead body but curiosity takes over and they end up slowing down to satisfy their urge. Another reason people demand violence in movies is so that they can experience a feeling that they themselves would never act on in real life. Watching movies can become a magical experience that takes the viewer off into a world outside of their own. Movies help people cope with real life by taking them away from their problem. At some point in ones life, they got so mad at someone that they just wanted to destroy them. Of course they came to their senses and held their rage back. But in a movie, they can live out that experience and get even with all those that have hurt them. In it's own way, movies can be therapeutic, a place to relieve all tension. That is why violence continues to grown in movies, to keep the public in order. Several times though, there have been discussions over too much violence in the media and in games. This argument has only come about in a way of protecting our children; they simply cannot tell the difference between make-believe and reality. This is why there are ratings for movies, so adults can feel safe that their kids aren't watching the same violent material that they seek after. However, this is a down side to violent movies. Sometimes, a movie will create a copycat; a person who acts out what they see in the theatre. This was the case in the attempted assassination of Ronald Ragen, where the criminal got the idea after from Scorsese's Taxi Driver. In one seen, Travis Bickle straps on a total of three guns and a knife, with the intention to assassinate a Senator. It is here that the famous line, "You talking to me are you talking to me?" derives from. However, it is argued that movies don't kill people, people kill people. Violence for entertainment is not something new; it has been around since the Shakespearean time. During a performance, if there was not a good fight scene with real blood, the audience would feel cheated and become rowdy, even more then they already were. One could even go as far back as ancient Greek and the Coliseums. It is not that violence is trying to be avoided; it is how it is portrayed. In some films, is appears as if the director is glorifying violence by showing all the details of what happens to the body when it is injured. One early example of glorified violence can be found in the movie Bonny and Clyde, 1967, by director Arthur Penn. At the end of the movie, Bonny and Clyde have been set up and lead into an ambush. Before the two criminals even had a chance to surrender, the police open a flood of bullets. During this seen the audience witnesses what happens to the body as both actor shake violently in slow motion and real time. At one point, a piece of Bonny's head flies off, with blood going everywhere. With mixed reviews, Penn states that he was trying to express how real death actually is, and that it is not something you can walk away from. The whole point of the movie was to create a type of sympathy with the two criminals and to get the audience feel sorry for they way they were massacred, even thought the couple had killed a total of fifteen people themselves. A similar type of expression of death being bad can be found in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, 1969. Thought this movie was famous for it's extremely violent, innovative blood squirting techniques, and it's slow motion action sequence, Sam was not in it for the glorification. Thought the hero's of the movie are criminals, Sam is quoted by saying, "Listen, killing is no fun, I was just trying to show what the hell it's like to be shot."(Bouzereau 13). From then on after, Sam set the standard for the violence level in movies. If someone were to get shot, the audience would expect to see blood squirt out of them. It is not a surprise that such crude acts of violence came about around the sixties, the public was being exposed to violence nearly everyday via TV. America was fighting a war in Viet Nam throughout the sixties and because of all the new technologies; the public could now see what war was really like. Everyday, Americans were brought the number of people who had died that day, and every day they were able to see them being killed on the five o'clock news. Violence already existed in the world, it was not like film makers opened this idea of killing people, all they did was record it. One director who is known for the violence levels in his films is Martin Scorsese. From an early age, Martin Scorsese was a student of the classic westerns of director John Ford. The outlaw gangs of the old west evolved into the modern-day underworld gangsters and Scorsese has remained in constant study of the dark sides of human nature. Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942, to second-generation Sicilian-American parents in Flushing, Long Island. The family later moved to an almost exclusively Sicilian section of Little Italy in New York. There, two forces dominated Scorsese's; life; that of the street and that of the Church. The tension between the sensualist machismo of the one group and the spirit of the other impressed itself forever on Scorsese and later became a prominent theme in his body of work. Since Scorsese was ill suited to ever join the world of gangsters, he turned to his other interest, religion, and planned to become a priest. Even at the peak of his religious ambitions, Scorsese could never escape the influences of his other interests. The sensuality that Scorsese had partly inherited from the streets made it's way out with his discovery of exotic women at NYU. One of the many women that he discovered while in school became his wife and marked the end of his priestly aspirations. Luckily for Scorsese, who had initially studied English at NYU, film quickly filled the void left by the dream of priesthood. The event that convinced Scorsese that his obsession with film was no mere hobby was in the class of Haig Manoogian. An advocate of personal filmmaking, Manoogian helped Scorsese conceive his goals and would remain a major influence throughout Martin's career. From the first class onward, Scorsese was determined to become a director, and the several films he made while still a student proved his ability. Following these initial films, Scorsese made a Bonnie and Clyde knockoff called Boxcar Bertha (1972). Although it was not a terrible picture, Boxcar Bertha was neither a personal nor an artistic film. In the aftermath of its completion, it was described by a one of Scorsese's friends in the industry as a piece of shit not worthy of Scorsese's talent. In some sense, the comment was both insulting and complimenting. Whatever the case, it was exactly what Scorsese needed to hear to undertake a project, Mean Streets, about which he cared deeply about. The script, initially called Season of the Witch, was Scorsese's first masterpiece. Despite its favorable critical reception, Mean Streets was not a box office success. As a result, the director had to wait until his next picture, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), won Ellen Burstyn the Best Actress Oscar before acquiring sufficient influence to make his next great movie, Taxi Driver (1975). From his first reading of Paul Schrader's script, Scorsese passionately desired to make the film. Robert De Niro's initial reaction to the script was equally profound, as he decided to abandon a thematically similar script that he had been working on to become the picture's star. Even with an Academy Award winning actor, the film was only given a small budget of 6.5 million dollars. The main goal of the film was not to make money, but to be a personal expression. This intense personal involvement by director, star, and screenwriter came through in the passion of the finished product. Moreover, the cocaine-fueled shoot took place in the midst of a sweltering summer during a time when New York seemed to be self-destructing. All of these elements combined to create a perfect environment for the film's investigation into loneliness, paranoia, obsession, and violence. The resulting work seared itself into the American consciousness, even going so far as to influence John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate President Reagan. Taxi Driver is about lonely ex-marine who somewhere along the lines looses it goes on a killing spree in an attempt to clean the dirty city streets. Again the influence of Viet Nam is brought into the film, were the ex-marine does not know what to do with himself. For five years this man has been trained to kill and now he has to come back to society and live amongst people. Naturally he withdraws from society becoming a taxi driver who works the night shift. Slowly he drifts further from reality and becomes more sickened by the trashy people he encounters every night. No longer able to stand the filth any longer, he straps himself up with as many guns as he can hold in a vain attempt to rid all the evil of the world. The twist is that this cold-blooded killer is actually trying to save a twelve-year-old prostitute. In the end, Travis is commended for his killing spree as the newspapers describe him as "a hero." Travis takes on two completely different roles in the movie that deal with his gender. As a male, he is expected to act a certain way, but in this case, Travis ends up playing both sides of the game. In one scene Travis attempt to take a girl he just met out on a romantic date to the movies. What the movie ends up being is not some sappy love story but a hard-core porn flick. The girl, putting two and two together, figure that Travis is giving the implication that he's going to want hard core sex after the movie. The real story is that Travis meant nothing behind the movie, it just so happens that he like to look at pornographic material. In reality, Travis had no clue what he was doing. He is totally isolated and alone in the world and does not understand how people interact with each other In another instance, were Travis is confronted with porn again, this time in the shape of a prostitute, he wants only to see that the girl stops selling her body and to go back to her mother were she belongs. Here one can see were Scorsese came up with this character simply by looking back of his past history. We know the Scorsese was very religious and that at one time he wanted to be a good priest but it was the temptation of women were he got distracted and lost his virginity. On side, Scorsese wants to do the right thing, and on the other side, he just wants to do it. Back to the violence in the film, one of the most violent scene was at the very end of the film were Travis unleashes his rage. After his first attempt to kill a senator went south, he went on to his next plan to help save Iris, the twelve-year-old hooker. As Travis steps out of his cab to start his resque, it is if he has stepped into a one of the porn movies that he has obsessed over and over again. He knows all the lines and he has rehearsed all the parts, the next thing to due is to follow through with it. Taking no time at all, Travis quickly fire point blank into Sport's (Iris's pimp) stomach after he told him to take a hike. Travis than proceeds up to Iris's apartment were he shoots at the manager and blows off his hand. In this scene, Scorsese was forced to make the blood appear less so that the massacre would turn into a sea of color and not a pool of blood. . director who is known for the violence levels in his films is Martin Scorsese. From an early age, Martin Scorsese was a student of the classic westerns of director. Manoogian helped Scorsese conceive his goals and would remain a major influence throughout Martin& apos;s career. From the first class onward, Scorsese was