After discussing the John Grisham article "Unnatural Killers", we discussed the idea of culture and blame, of who holds responsibility--the individual or the culture he or she inhabits. After reaching our "verdict" today, I asked you to read Stone's response "Memo to John Grisham..."
In a thoughtful, well-crafted and proofread response, capture how Stone's response has helped your thinking evolve. How does it change your thinking? Reinforce it? Point to particular evidence in Stone's article to defend your thinking.
This article reinforces my thinking because I think that it was a combination of the two (the movie and the flawed thought process) that cause Ben and Sarah to commit murder. The movie did influence them, but they didn't process the movie and realize that it was completely unrealistic. When Oliver Stone said that their circumstances affected them, I completely agreed with him. After what the two had been through in their life, they weren't strong individuals and were persuaded to do a horrible crime very easily.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading John Grisham's article, "Unnatural Killers" last night, I couldn't help but to disagree with Grisham's whole argument. He argued that Hollywood somehow "brainwashed" Ben and Sarah into embarking on a killing spree. He basically said that the movie Natural Born Killers convinced these two young, confused, drug-using teenagers to attempt to kill two innocent people,killing one and making the other a quadriplegic for life. So when I read Oliver Stone's article " What's Next- 'A Movie Made Me Do It'",an article he wrote in response to Grisham's article, I was relieved to see that I was not the only one who thought the bulk of Grisham's article was false, and bias.
ReplyDeleteStone's article argued that "parents, school, and peers shape children from their earliest days, not films". I completely agree with this statement because Hollywood has made several films that involve murdering people just for the sake of it, and Grisham is saying that pretty much every teen with a history of psychiatric problems who watches these films will go out and copy what they have seen in the film.
But Stone says that your environment and culture you are raised in affects your outcome in life, not Hollywood. For example, I was watching a Dateline program the other night in which cameras and doctors examined the minds of killers. The segment was called the Mind of a Killer, and one of the people profiled was a successful doctor in California whose mind was found to be pre-wired for killing. He never killed anyone, and he never had any intentions of it, indicating that he was raised in a loving environment. If he were raised any other way, his mind could have developed those killing thoughts and his life would have turned out very differently. So, in conclusion, I liked Stone's article much more than Grisham's article, and I feel that he portrayed our culture much better than Grisham.
After reading Oliver Stone's response to John Girsham's article, my thinking has been greatly reinforced. My opinion is that Sarah and Ben were the ones to blame for the murders because they are able to make their own decisions. This is supported in many ways throughout the article. In the opening paragraph it states that our society looks for scapegoats, which I think is what was occurring in Ben and Sarah's situation. They didn't want to take responsibility for the murders because it truly was their fault and their own personal decision. They were under the influence and on drugs which numbed their senses and thinking. By saying the movie was what made them commit the crime, it's using it as a scapegoat for their actions. Another reason why I believe that Sarah and Ben are at fault versus culture is that fact that even though Girshon says the two have no history of violence, Oliver Stone clearly reminds us that Sarah packed a gun in her suitcase before either of them had seen the movie. This shows both of them are violent. Sarah because she packed the gun to use against Ben if needed, and Ben because Sarah obviously thought an altercation of some sort was likely to happen. I agree with Stone when he asks: "Does it reveal a truth about the media's obsession with the senseless sensational?". I think the media tries to feed into the culture, and that culture is one that craves violence and movies like Natural Born killers. When people see movies like this, they become desensitized to the effects that violence can have. Obviously the movie effected Ben and Sarah in this way to a certain extent, but it is not possible for them to be swayed that easily into committing the murders unless it was their own decision. Stone's memo greatly reinforced my beliefs that it is not culture that is to blame, but it is that of the people's decisions.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading and annotating Unnatural Killers, my perspective towards culture's effectiveness on Ben and Sarah's minds stayed the same. I completly agree with what Oliver Stone said when he commented that the movie industry has nothing to do with the cause and effect of the crimes Sarah and Ben committed. Culture widely effects the choices Ben and Sarah made. They were raised from a harsh family environment and as Oliver wrote are therefore, "responsible for their own actions." Oliver and his movie crew could not possibly have caused the outbursts Sarah and Ben performed. People do things that happen in movies all the time. People steal, people cheat, and people commit murder. But, just like Oliver wrote, you don't see Shakespeare or any other famous artist going to court for their artistic creations. Hollywood isn't the reasoning behind Ben and Sarah's committed crimes, but culture is and what the two went through as children.
ReplyDeleteI believe that it is a shared blame between culture and the individual’s choices. For one, there are way too many factors, in my point of view, for one person to be able to sit on one side of an argument without having statements to back up the opposing side. With that in mind I have decided to not choose one certain side but to instead represent each side’s point of view. The most obvious argument for it is the individual’s choice is that each person has their own brain to act and do as they please, not as others tell them to do. Of course the counter to this is that culture makes up who a person is. It creates their morals, and develops what choices they will make. The main argument for culture is that culture is followed, and that movies can dictate what a person will do. The counter is that “The hunt for witches to explain society’s ills is ancient in our blood…” this is saying that culture is just another victim subjected to the blame that it is the cause to all evil things that occur. Even though I truly do believe that the blame should be shared, if I had to pick a side to fight for I would choose culture. Even though a person is capable of making their own decisions, when they are insecure and have grown up with no role models, they search for anyone like them. This just happened to occur with Ben and Sarah and they connected to the characters in the movie Natural Born Killers, and with no other people to look up to they tried to mirror their lives as of that of the two characters.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading John Grisham's article on the murder of two innocent people, I completely disagreed with all that he said. However Oliver Stone's rebuke to John Grisham's article, on how the movie Natural Born Killers did not influenced two young people to murder the innocent, I agree with. People are influenced by many things other than media: i.e. friends, peers, family, and teachers. Many things could have convinced them to murder two people but in the end it was all their choice. No one was controlling them. Although they did come from harsh backgrounds each person has the power to become whatever they want. These two murderers simply did not want to take the fall for the crimes they convicted and blamed something else. Stone's says, "It is likely that, whether they had seen Natural Born Killers, or The Green Berets or a Tom and Jerry cartoon the night before their first crime, Ben and Sarah would have behaved the same way they did....And at the crucial moment when the carefully twisted springs of their psyches finally uncoiled, as they were bound to do, not I nor Newt Gingrich nor Father Sullivan of Boys Town could or did influence them." and with this I completely agree. Each person thinks for themselves. In the discussion today, someone brought up how in The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls goes on to lead a successful life despite her background. Whereas her sister Maureen becomes mentally unstable, it is the same as Sarah and Ben. They could have gone on to be successful but simply choose not.
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading John Grisham's article i was actually driven to the point of aggravation by his unfounded statements. He made it seem like Ben and Sarah, were perfectly normal children who by viewing one movie were pushed into being mindless killers. Although Grisham noted the heavy drug abuse, psychiatric treatments and horrible upbringing, in Ben's case, he resumed his article as if these facts weren't important to the decision making of Sarah and Ben to go out into the world to kill innocent people. What Grisham failed to recognize in his paper is that at any time, either of these two young adults could have made a conscience decision to stop what they were doing and not kill the people who ended up dead or quadriplegic. "An elementary principle of our civilization is that people are responsible for their own actions." This couldn't be more true, there was no point where the two couldn't have said "I don't want to do this" all along they could have, but Grisham makes the argument that the movie was telling them that they HAD to kill people for no reason. Im sure that many many people have seen Natural Killers yet did not feel the need to go out and kill senselessly.
ReplyDeleteOliver Stone helped me realize a few things. First off, no one person can be shaped by a single movie or single show. As he says, "It is likely that wheter they had seen Natural Born Killers or the Green Berets, or a Tom and Jerry cartoon the night before their first crime, Ben and Sarah would have acted exactly the same." ALso, he tells us that the two figures already had problems that they were living with beofre anyway. As such the idea of killing someone doesn't just pop into a persons mind after they have seen a movie. "But Ben and Sarah had 'never hurt anyone.' But, even by his own admission, Ben and Sarah are deeply disturved youths with histories of drug and/or alcohol abuse and psychiatric treatment." Stone states here that no one can just randomly decide to wake up and kill someone one day without previous ills in their life.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Oliver Stone's response to John Grisham's "Unnatural Born Killers" article, it really helped clarify my thinking that most individuals actions are influenced by themselves with an undermining factor from the culture they are surrounded by. Stone presents the argument that many people have been exposed to medias that show violence and have not been affected by it at all. Instead, he proposes that people are affected by the culture that had occurred in the earlier stage of their lives. He claims that is why Ben and Sarah committed those murders. It was not because they watched a movie with a violent plot, it was because of their background. They both were drug abusers that had psychiatric treatment. This would prove that there is more to the murders than just a movie, and previous occurrences in life are the underlying factor for individuals actions. Ultimately agree with Stone's clarifying response to Grisham's somewhat bias article.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Oliver Stone's "Memo To John Grisham" I believe that although humans are shaped to a certain degree by the events and people around them I do not on any level think one event can in any way cause a person to take a specific action. Although to a small degree Sarah and Ben were influenced by the movie to kill those people there is no way it was the sole factor in there decsion. Did it give them an idea as to how to do it, or even a way to cope with it, yes probubly. At the same time they did not just watch the movie and in that singular moment when the movie was done have an epiphany to kill people for the fun of it. Not only that but they both knew it was wrong to do even the movie itself showed it was wrong and illegal but they still made the conscience decision to go out with the weapon and take peoples lives.
ReplyDeleteI believe that both articles are right to some extent. The culture Sarah and Ben grew up in, a culture of drugs and rebellion and brokenness, laid the framework for their actions later in life. However, seeing the movie "Natural Born Killers" was the tipping point for Ben, and in turn Sarah, who suddenly saw murder as a way to feel powerful. If they hadn't seen the movie, they probably still would've found a way to get into trouble. But "Natural Born Killers" was what drew them to murder, as opposed to getting deeper into drugs or something else. Most people who saw the movie were not crazy enough to take it seriously because the culture they were raised in was more stable than Ben and Sarah's. Unfortunately, some did come from difficult backgrounds, making the movies values seem logical and reasonable.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Grisham's article and reading the response to it in an article by Oliver Stone, my opinion has stayed the same. I still strongly believe that both Sarah and Ben were responsible for the murders they committed and they were not influenced by their culture to do so. The main examples given that were given to explain why they would have commited murder were how they both had alcohol/drug problems within their families and Ben's father committed suicide when he was younger. However these were not issued created for them from their culture. This was based out of their personal close family, and not everyone in their families culture would have had the exact same experiences happen to them. Also I happened to like the idea in Stone's perception how had they not watched "Natural Born Killers" on their trip they still may have committed those murders sounds pretty accurate to me. If they were already pretty unstable in their decision-making process, if they knew about the fire-arm, they were probably going to consider using it anyway. Therefore my opinion stayed the same, that neither the culture that Ben and Sarah's families belonged to, or the movie could have changed their opinon. It was what they as individuals were raised to do in the end made them make the decision to commit the murders.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the article written by Oliver Stone, actually reinforced my previous notion that the movie, “Natural Born Killers,” may have been a cause of the murders committed by Ben and Sarah. However, Oliver Stone also brings up a valid point that states that there are many other sources of terror in America's modern society. Such sources include the 15,000 hours of television watched per year by children. As he stated, a large portion of this television viewing is violence, seldom showing the effects of the tragedy they created. What Stone fails to mention is that although other sources such as television may have contributed to the thoughts about murder, the person also needs a factor such as "Natural Born Killers" to push them over the edge. The reasoning in America's mind isn't what brought them to that state of thinking, but is really the question what caused them to pull the trigger and fire the first shot? This also brings up a point about American culture. Although Grisham may have been wrong to blame Stone for the multitude of murders that may have taken place because of his movie, Stone is not taking any responsibility for the actions caused by his movie. Like many Americans, Stone wants to blame someone else for something he may be partially responsible for. He says it is in his First Amendment right to make a movie such as "Natural Born Killers," however, he goes on to blame television programming for causing all the murders. What Oliver Stone doesn't say is that those television programs also fall under the First Amendment right to show the violent programs, just as he was in his rights to create his movie. Oliver Stone may not be fully responsible for the murderous acts of Sarah, Ben and others, however it most likely plays a role in their decisions to commit the final act.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Evan in the sense that both articles were right to some extent. Grisham's article supported the idea that society "made" Sarah and Ben murder those people. Perhaps it nudged them in the wrong direction but people always have a choice in their actions. Unless seeing that movie planted eggs in their brains, it did not make them do it. However, Grishham's article does point strongly in the direction of the movie influencing Sarah and Ben's choice to murder the two people. The movie glorified killing and neglected to show the repercussions of such behavior. From Sarah's testimony it is clear that it was only after the movie that Ben became obsessed with the notion of killing people. Society has an affect on our choices, but when it comes down to it, it's still our own decision.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading "Memo to John Grisham", by Oliver Stone, following reading "Unnatural Killers", my view on the murders has not really changed, but my over all thinking has. Stone's article changed my thinking to show that you cannot blame the media for anything really, because if you are susceptible to the ideals they are portraying then you might not be in the right mind set. I feel that it also demonstrates how a person can say anything affects them to do something, just to fuel a desire they already have. For examples Stone says "it was only a matter of time before they externalized their anger." This is definitely true based on how they grew up and the mental instability both of them possessed combined with the powers of alcohol. Personally I also feel that Sarah might have just been rebelling against her rule following family just to prove a point as a long of young adults always try to do to show that they are something. Going back to Grisham's article and how Sarah said she saw a demon might also just represent that her mind is still unstable and she was just hallucinating and may not have anything to do with why she was going to shoot her. Another point from Stone's article that I found interesting is why Grisham focused his attack on the movie and the freedom of speech exercised in it, and did not question the second amendment about the right to bear arms, which is a liability for people and their actions. I think that it is safer to allow violent movies and to not allow anyone to have a gun, then just to let every drunk or mentally unstable person near something that can harm others. It is safe to say that Stone's article reinforced ideas I already had and helped bring to mind other ideas that helped to support some of my ideas and provide me with newer ones.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading “Unnatural Killers” by John Grisham and “A Movie Made Me Do It” by Oliver Stone, my overall perception of culture did not change. Both writers bring up valid thought provoking arguments about the influence of culture. These articles back up my original ideas that culture can inflict great influence upon your decisions but could not make the decision for you. For example, in “Unnatural Killers”, their bad childhood is to blame for the killings, not a movie. Situations that occur at home are dealt with your entire life, whereas a movie is a mere two hours of that time. Therefore, preexisting conditions, such as family life, have a much greater impact on your actions. Oliver Stone explains this idea of media not having as big of an influence when he says, “our society scours them for scapegoats, in the process ignoring Shakespeare, who reminds us that artists do not invent nature but merely hold up to it a mirror”. Stone focuses on the idea that artists and filmmakers do not have control of situations such as this and only use what they see in their work. Stone does a great job depicting my original thoughts of culture and leads to the main concept of which people must take responsibility of their own actions because culture is never to blame.
ReplyDeleteAter reading and annotating "Unnatural Killers", my opinion on culture has not changed much. I have consistently believed that culture has a great deal of influence upon an individual, but cannot be blamed alone. Several people are exposed to rough culture, it just depends on how this person decides to react to it. In the excerpt, the movie planted the idea into the couple's head, however, fact of the matter THEY made a choice based upon this. The two were previously hostile, and chose to interpret the movie into their own lives. The way I see it, the culture is simply a seed, or idea, planted, but it will not develope without YOUR choice and input to make it do so.
ReplyDeleteThe writers of these pieces argued their points very well, and I could see both points of view. I feel that Stone's retort to Grisham's article only stressed my belief that although culture has a definite impact on the development of values and morals, in the end it is the individual's choice. They become who they want to be and can decide to rise above their past or be overshadowed by events in their life. As the daughter of such empowered and respected individuals, Sarah had a chance to become better than, or as good as, they were and instead she chose to fall bellow the standard that they had set.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading and contemplating both John Grisham's article about the influence of the movie Natural Born Killers as well as the rebuttal from movie director Oliver Stone, my opinion on culture has shifted minimally. Overall, I believe that culture does not and has not ever defined an individual that did not want it to. I also believe that the individual is responsible for their actions, not a movie, and certainly not its director. In his response to Mr. Grisham, Oliver Stone writes the following lines: "The difference is that now we do not blame the village hag and her black cat, but the writer and the photographer and the filmmaker. Increasingly indicted by art and fearful of technology, our society scours them for scapegoats, in the process ignoring Shakespeare, who reminds us that artists do not invent nature but merely hold it up to a mirror." I think that these lines capture the essence of my beliefs in this case perfectly. Natural Born Killers was made to be satire, and so Oliver Stone was the one simply "holding [society] up to a mirror." Despite the number of "copycat killers" out there (which is insane; I casually Wikipedia'd it last night), the director is not responsible for highlighting the faults of society. The individual has a choice to make in all cases, and even if that individual comes from a tough background, or has psychiatric problems, the blame should never fall on the artist, nor on the culture.
ReplyDeleteStone's response to Grisham does not change my thinking at all - it merely enforces it. I actually got a little mad during Grisham's article because it seemed ridiculous to blame the movie for two unstable people's actions. Culture is influential - but NOT necessarily brain wash. Stone didn't really say this, but culture is supposed to influence. It is supposed to change someone's life and make them reassess their minds and actions. But it comes down to the individual to allow themselves to be so affected. It's like what Eleanor Roosevelt said - "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent", well, no one can get into your head and make you do things without your consent. With Ben and Sarah, I'm not about to say it is their fault that they were mentally unstable and it was their fault they needed psychiatric treatment... but it is their fault that they gave in so easily to the movie; it is their fault they committed murder and no one else's. If every time someone did something wrong and it was acceptable to blame culture, then EVERYONE would get away with their crimes. I also agree with Stone's mentioning of suing every time some "copycat" came along or every time someone acted on culture. Culture is such a huge concept and there is a little bit of everything in it that someone could scapegoat for every thing they do, and that to me sounds just like an easy way out. I believe in taking responsibilities for your actions!
ReplyDeleteI still stand by what I was saying during the debate. It was culture who was at fault I really don't have more let to say other than culture defines people as a group and individuals. culture is really to blame in this situation.
ReplyDelete