Carr, Steven Alan. From "Fucking Cops!" to "Fucking Media!": Bonnie and Clyde for a Sixties America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000

Steven Alan Carr’s essay From Fucking Cops to Fucking Media: Bonnie and Clyde for a Sixties America focuses on the cultural changes leading to and coming from Bonnie and Clyde. The article begins by outlining recent politician Bob Dole’s public outcry against media and its violent tendencies that deface “family values” (70). However, Carr compares Bob Dole’s deviant media (rappers, Murphy Brown, Natural Born Killers, etc) to Bonnie and Clyde, arguing that media now doesn’t represent a “mainstreaming of deviancy” but more of a debasement of media itself.
Carr then moves from the present to Bonnie and Clyde’s era, the birth of the counterculture in the 60s. Carr reminds us of the civil turmoil and transformation America as whole was undergoing. Vietnam, the civil rights movement and police brutality all excited the public’s mistrust of the state and authority as a whole. The American film industry was also undergoing a transformation of its own at the time with the demise of the studio system and the production code and the rise of influential foreign films from movements such as the French New Wave.
The 60s saw the birth of the counterculture, young adults who considered themselves on the margins of society. Many of the most influential voices of the time, such as Allan Ginsberg, were arrested for protesting the government. The government, in turn, reacted by “spying” on hundreds of thousands of citizens in an attempt to crack down on civil unrest and dissatisfaction with their government. This attempt, however, only served to solidify the defining aspect of the counterculture: their hatred of authority and control.
Carr uses these historical examples of 60s culture to place Bonnie and Clyde as the most influential film to date, and as a turning point in American cinema and consumerism. The film reflected the feelings and idealizations of the counterculture through its glorification of two criminals fight against authority and societal norms. The film was immensely popular, but received heavy criticism from film critics and public opinion groups, eventually leading to its withdrawal from theatres within the U.S. This, just like the government’s attempt to control dissent through spying, only served to bring the film to further prominence as a cult icon of sorts. The film, however, did more than just reflect the turmoil of the times and gave birth to the consumerization of the counterculture. The film helped present the counterculture, mostly young adults and teenagers, as the target audience for a new genre of film tailored directly to their desires. Bonnie and Clyde allowed the marginal, outcasts of society (as they saw themselves) to achieve consumerist prominence in America.

Gerbner, George and Larry Gross. "Telvision Violence, Victimization, and Power." American Behavioral Scientist JUN 1980 705-716 

 

 

The 1980 communications article Television Violence, Victimization and Power by Georger Gerbner and Larry Gross discusses the influence of violence in media on its viewers. The article studies television programs between 1967 and 1968 and catalogues their use of violence. The study shows that within those years, 80% of all primetime and weekend programs contain violence in some form. This clearly shows the prominence of media violence in this period and the concern of the public on this topic.
The essay states, “violence is the key to the rule of power” (708) and shows how mostly men and white characters use violence to capture their dominance. The research in the essay shows that heavy television viewing results in a fear of violence along with a misjudgment of the amount of violence around us. The essay concludes by saying that violence has become the easiest way for television creators to create drama due to censorship laws.
Although this essay has nothing to do with Bonnie and Clyde, the study on the consequences of violence through 1960s television is important in understanding the films plentiful use of violence. There was no doubt that violence was prominent in the 1960s with images of the Vietnam War and civil rights movements dominating the screens of the American people. Bonnie and Clyde took advantage of the American obsession with visual violence, but did so in a way that justified and glamorized violence. Although the effects that the essay claims appear from watching excessive television, Bonnie and Clyde appealed to an audience that was already overwhelmed with violence, and was eager to welcome the camp portrayal of murder and death. And the essay’s assertion that power arises from violence, Bonnie and Clyde is the supreme example because of the overwhelming pop culture influence that the original pair and film had on the cinema as a whole as well as the public’s expectations of violence and censorship.

Steele, Robert. The Good-Bad and Bad-Good in Movies: Bonnie and Clyde and In Cold Blood. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc., 1973 

 

 

Robert Steele’s essay in John G. Cawelti’s Focus on Bonnie and Clyde discusses two of the most important film critics’ opinions of the violence in the film regarding Bonnie and Clyde. A conversation between Richard Schickel, a critic for Time magazine, and Bosley Crowther, a former critic for The New York Times becomes the basis for the article regarding violence in cinema and the moral obligations of both the filmmakers and critics alike. Schickel adopts the opinion that it is a filmmaker’s responsibility to reflect the times, which would of course include portraying violence. Crowther, however, agrees with that statement, but believes that Bonnie & Clyde, “had gone beyond the bounds of good taste and judgment in the way it presented these killers” (115).
Steele’s follows the conversation with a critique of the two critics’ views by examining how and for what reason violence is used in the film. Steele’s main argument revolves around the difference between art and entertainment, “art is entertainment, and some entertainment may be art” (117). He believes that Schickel’s claim that films should represent society would be true should it apply to documentaries, but Arthur Penn’s film strives to be art, and not simply a truthful depiction.
Steele, while defending the use of violence to a certain extent, finds complaints with the film from an artistic viewpoint instead. Slow motion and fast paced editing in the final shootout separate the deaths of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow from every other death in the film elevating them to a heroic status, but for what purpose? He classifies the film as taking, “a tragic stance without giving us a tragedy” (119). Steele feels that Penn’s use of artistic editing and cinematic devices become “shenanigans” (120) because they are meant simply to disguise the underlying unpleasantness of a story where the two beautiful heroes die. In this sense, Penn’s stunning and artistic use of violence adds nothing to the film other than making it entertainment genius.