The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery, 1958-1999

by Jake Horsley

Overview

Increasingly, society questions the connection between violence in entertainment and violence in life. Moralists and censors would reply resoundingly that media violence and social violence are directly linked, but others ask the deeper question: Why do people feel the need to create images of violence, and why do audiences continually watch them? In this thought-provoking and insightful study of American violent cinema, author Jake Horsley attempts to answer these questions by tying together the multiple disciplines of psychology, criminology, censorship, and anthropology. Horsley divides the forty years of his study into two volumes: American Chaos: From Touch of Evil to The Terminator, and Millennial Blues: From Apocalypse Now to The Matrix. These volumes aim to provide both a critical overview of the films themselves and a cultural study of the social and psychological factors relating to the demand for screen violence. By doing so, Horsley raises a new dialogue between scholars and movie buffs to examine the need to portray and the need to watch violent films.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810836709
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/03/1999
Series:	Millennial Blues, from "Apocalypse Now" Series
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	7.18(w) x 8.14(h) x 1.46(d)

About the Author

Jake Horsley is a digital filmmaker, who has written three books on film. His latest, Matrix Warrior: Being the One, was published in 2003.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Acknowledgments Part 2 Foreword Part 3 CHAPTER 1: Pulp Culture—Brute Expressions of Rage Part 4 CHAPTER 2: Return of the Id—The Suburbia of Corruption Part 5 CHAPTER 3: Hollywood Über Alles—Here Comes the Designer Fascists Part 6 CHAPTER 4: Everything is Permitted —The Comedy of Nihilism Part 7 CHAPTER 5: Murder in the Millennium—The Metaphysical Strain towards Darkness Part 8 EPILOGUE: Beyond Apocalypse—Yesterday's Hero Part 9 Bibliography Part 10 Index Part 11 About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Pauline Kael

Jake Horsley seems to arrive from out of nowhere, yet here he is—an almost fully-developed and only slightly stoned sensibility. This hothead fantasist offers the excitement of a wild, paranoid style. he lives in the movies, explodes them from the inside, and shares his fevered trance with us. But he doesn't lose his analytic good sense. he's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too. Maybe he could use more humor, but couldn't we all? (Intelligent movie criticism is being swamped in seriousness.) He's a marvelous critic. Tackling a new movie, he'll hang in there until he's balanced and sound. It's always a surprise.

Editorial Reviews

Freelance film critic Horsley aspires to bridge the gap between academic cultural studies and popular movie reviews in a two-volume analysis of Hollywood's love-hate relationship with brutality in all its forms.

Reference and Research Book News

Jake Horsley seems to arrive from out of nowhere, yet here he is—an almost fully-developed and only slightly stoned sensibility. This hothead fantasist offers the excitement of a wild, paranoid style. he lives in the movies, explodes them from the inside, and shares his fevered trance with us. But he doesn't lose his analytic good sense. he's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too. Maybe he could use more humor, but couldn't we all? (Intelligent movie criticism is being swamped in seriousness.) He's a marvelous critic. Tackling a new movie, he'll hang in there until he's balanced and sound. It's always a surprise.

Pauline Kael

The debate about whether movie violence causes real-life violence (an argument I've never bought) has hijacked any exploration of how violence is actually used in the movies, how audiences experience it and when violence does or doesn't qualify as art. Those are the questions that preoccupy critic Jake Horsley in his mammoth two-volume The Blood Poets...Horsley arrives on the scene with a combination of articulate analysis and a provocateur's punch... The Blood Poets is the first work of criticism to talk at any length about how the exploitation impulse has crossed over into the work of respected filmmakers.

Salon.Com

Jake Horsley seems to arrive from out of nowhere, yet here he is--an almost fully-developed and only slightly stoned sensibility. This hothead fantasist offers the excitement of a wild, paranoid style. he lives in the movies, explodes them from the inside, and shares his fevered trance with us. But he doesn't lose his analytic good sense. he's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too. Maybe he could use more humor, but couldn't we all? (Intelligent movie criticism is being swamped in seriousness.) He's a marvelous critic. Tackling a new movie, he'll hang in there until he's balanced and sound. It's always a surprise.--Pauline Kael

Freelance film critic Horsley aspires to bridge the gap between academic cultural studies and popular movie reviews in a two-volume analysis of Hollywood's love-hate relationship with brutality in all its forms.--Reference and Research Book News

The debate about whether movie violence causes real-life violence (an argument I've never bought) has hijacked any exploration of how violence is actually used in the movies, how audiences experience it and when violence does or doesn't qualify as art. Those are the questions that preoccupy critic Jake Horsley in his mammoth two-volume The Blood Poets...Horsley arrives on the scene with a combination of articulate analysis and a provocateur's punch... The Blood Poets is the first work of criticism to talk at any length about how the exploitation impulse has crossed over into the work of respected filmmakers.--Salon.Com

From the Publisher