Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Hollywood and Firearm Fetishism in North America

My bloodpressure is low, due to my habit of Living Clean, so I listen to NPR in the car to keep at normal levels.

The other day I heard an interview with Debra Granik, the director of Winter's Bone, a new movie set in the Ozarks. During the back and forth, Granik describes how hard it was to shoot a scene where the main character teaches her younger siblings to shoot.
NORRIS: This scene, I understand, was a difficult day of shooting. Why was it hard to get that scene just right?

Ms. GRANIK: Firearms for an East Coast person, such as myself, urban person, a person who has no hunting experience, they are already complicated. You know, I have a relationship to those issues that are so much a product of my upbringing and where I live geographically. And to make this scene work, I had to really get in the mind frame that this is something very important that people and families have to pass on to each other. And when children are involved, it has to be taught really well and really carefully.

And the idea that people can imbue children with a very great respect for something was also something that moved me. 
If you had to distill the difference between urban gun-fearing leftists and, well, the rest of us into one or two sentences, you couldn't do much better than that. I'm not sure whether to be happy that she saw that millions of people shoot responsibly and teach their kids the same, or irritated that she and so many other like her see firearms as so "complicated."

3 comments:

Ed Rasimus said...

It sounds as though the folks in the Ozarks might have taught her something about life, family, values and firearms. Amazing that NPR would let such reactionary views go without more pithy comment about clinging to their guns and religion...

Julie said...

Um, i think firearms are complicated ... if you've never encountered one before. I mean the simple bits - don't point this end at yourself or anyone else and this is the trigger - isn't.

But, loading it, holding it right, sighting it and firing it smoothly isn't a natural skill (well, not in any newbies i've come across).

THEN you get to the complicated bits :)

At least she didn't run screaming from the sight of them!

Anonymous said...

I also heard the bit. Was intrigued by her total
unfamiliarity with firearms, or that they might be
considered a normal part of life. But was ...
heartened? ... encouraged? ... that she didn't
immediately go into the "how could those people
live with such evil" rant. There's hope.
Anon, Don

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