Natural Born Killers
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[edit] Warning
This film, because it shows a hell realm populated with demons, is extraordinarily violent. Being forewarned may not forearm you. Take care.
[edit] Blurb
While lost in the desert, Mickey and Mallory are taken in by a Navajo man (known as "Old Indian") and his grandson. After the duo fall asleep, the Old Indian begins chanting beside the fire, invoking nightmares in Mickey about his abusive father and mother. Mickey wakes up in a rage and shoots Old Indian before he realizes what he is doing. Mallory and Mickey are both traumatized, marking the first time the couple feel guilty for a murder. Mallory exclaims, "You killed life!" implying Old Indian was more worthy of living than their previous victims. While running from the scene through the desert, the two are bitten repeatedly by rattlesnakes.[1]
Stone's far more nuanced treatment of demons in Natural Born Killers has been noted by Wills: the Shaman whom Mickey and Mallory meet in the desert "has conquered his demons" and "tries to drive the demons from Mallory," but he is killed by Mickey who is clearly possessed. When Mickey later denounces violence during his live " TV interview, "the devils go out of him," only to take possession of Mickey's fellow prisoners. The ensuing "apocalyptic riot . . . is a cleansing destruction of the system, like the healing ordeal that Dostoyevsky envisioned for his Russia" in The Demons (Wills 97). In short, Stone portrays "a world given over to demons, and the demons inhabit the media" (98). [2]
[edit] View from Nowhere
[edit] Other Views from Nowhere
For the first time in the movie Mallory takes responsibility for what she and Mickey have done and they are both compelled to wrestle with regret. The shaman, too, takes full responsibility for his own death. Mickey and Mallory encounter the shaman after they have run out of gas and are wandering (symbolically enough) in the desert. The shaman sees the demon in Mickey (the word "demon" is projected across his chest), but he welcomes the couple into his home, where he keeps an uncaged rattle snake in the corner. The shaman then goes on to tell the parable of a woman who finds a frozen snake and nurses it back to health. When the snake strikes and mortally wounds her, she asks him how he could have bitten the hand that tended him. The snake replies simply. "You stupid bitch- I'm a snake." The shaman's point is simple: it is in the very nature of a snake to strike. If the woman in this parable did not know what kind of behavior to expect from her patient, she should have. The fact that the shaman tells this parable indicates that he is quite aware of the danger he is in, but unlike the woman in the parable, he welcomes it. (Significantly, Mickey and Mallory represent themselves to each other as snakes. Their wedding rings are formed in the shape of two snakes intertwined.) His desire to "pet" the two outlaws (like he pets the snake in the corner) is based on the fact that he knows they are as deadly as venomous snakes. The shaman symbolizes Jesus, the willing victim, crucified like a lamb at the slaughter. Like Jesus, he is both a victim and a prophet of his own death. Just before he dies he tells Mickey: "Twenty years ago I saw the demon in my dreams. I was waiting for you." For Mickey, the demon, which can also be understood in terms of Nietzsche's " will to power, " lives in all people. It is much more visible in Mickey than in most people because he is true to his nature, refusing to succumb to the demands of the social herd. MK: Everyone got the demon in here, O.K. The demon lives in here. It feeds on your hate. It cuts, kills, rapes. It uses your weakness and fears. Only the vicious survive.
Although the demon lives in Mickey, so does love. Appropriately, the Yin and Yang symbol is tattooed on his arm, signifying the duality of his nature. He tells Gayle: "...I'm extreme, dark and light. You know that, I'm light with Mall. " Although Mickey is a fatalist, he feels a need to be redeemed, and forgiven. For him the only means of salvation from the demon and the misery of existence, is love. The redemptive power of love, is symbolized for Mickey by Mallory. MK: You know the only thing that kills the demon- love. That's why I know Mallory is my salvation. (Mallory in the background: I forgive you baby.) She was teaching me to love. It was just like being in the garden of Eden.
MK: Same dream I've had since I was a kid I guess. Running with the animals in the darkness. Mr. Rabbit, bloody fangs, Christmas hat. I don't know, just running. I'm just Mr. Rabbit afraid of every other animal in the forest. Death just sort of becomes what you are, after a while, you begin to like it. You know about realization Wayne? This is just illusion. Mr. Rabbit says a moment of realization is worth a thousand prayers.
This dream describes Mickey's childhood fears and his metamorphosis into a "natural born killer." Mickey, the child is symbolized by Mr. Rabbit, who is weak and vulnerable to everything in his environment. His vision of the world from the perspective of fear makes him become a sort of living death. He is like the people he describes earlier in the interview, already dead and needing to be put out of their misery. Later the fear turns to rage, which is more pleasurable because it allows him to express himself through violence. This is a decisive point in his development because it represents the emergence of the demon or the will to power. The realization that he can choose whether to be afraid or angry and that the value of the world around him is dependends on the value he attributes to it, is liberating. This is the moment of realization. His awareness that life and death are part of a never ending cycle and that death is a necessary component of rebirth, allows him to see death from a different perspective, free of fear. "If a kernel of wheat falls to the earth, it abideth alone, but it bringeth forth much fruit." This, I think, is the central message of the film. [3]
