“Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.” ( Stanley Milgram, 1974 )
It starts out as a class conscious racial drama but quickly expands into a larger tale of authority and the evils of power over those who are weaker unless society and its laws are there to protect. Based on a novel by Peter Dexter called Paris Trout. The central character brutalizes his wife and kills a 12 year old black girl in cold blood. Paris Trout is a demon in human form, however much his behavior, at least publicly, may have fell within the norm as a white male in the South; and all the prerogatives and privileges it bestowed, and the absence of condemnation for his behavior. He has no remorse, no conscience and may be one of the worst villians in the history of cinema.Though, his case in not exceptional, and in slightly different circumstances and contexts, possibly quite generalized.
Dennis Hopper, Frank Booth-Blue Velvet
Paris Trout, chillingly played by Dennis Hopper, who in a racist rage succeeds to kill only one of the two black women who were targeted. The child’s mother survives however, and Paris Trout is eventually brought to trial, which to him is unbelievable, as he cannot possibly conceive he has done anything wrong. Barbara Hershey plays his brutalised wife. The scene with Much of the film’s power derives from Hopper’s uncompromising performance in the title role, as an unapologetically bigoted loan shark who holds himself to be above the law in a small Southern town, He is true to his values.
There also is very little violence. However, when it occurs, it is quite marked.Barbara Hershey is an angry victim of demoralizing abuse in a stifling environment of prejudice and psychosis. Dennis Hopper is the embodiment of this psychosis. .His masochistic wife displays a superficial loyalty that is actually a deep betrayal of him, as well as the little dignity she has of herself. Her voice over at the end of the film voice over tells us that that’s the problem … it’s easier to bury things than forget them…
Is violence of the tangible, shocking, believable sort as violent as casual actions,ambivalent, shadowy behavior festering in the dark recesses of the mind.Or,as playwright Thornton Wilder said, the result of ”life as an unbroken succession of false situations”. A visible monster is easy to identify, but where does the line cross so the aesthetic of violence would be unrecognizeable.Or, in the case of Paris Trout, does the repression of his own suffering, destroy any empathy he may have for others, before destroying himself? Violence sells, and there is a reluctance to turn off the money faucet when so many are drinking at the well.In Paris Trout, shocking, but hardly surprising; as the film shows, the threshold for becoming inured is fairly low. As cinematic archetype, Trout is evil, without any redeeming characteristics. But, is he more ”evil” than an Adolph Eichmann, who was kidnapped from Argentina and hanged in Israel for war crimes. He was an elite bureucrat, responsible for transiting perhaps several million people to death camps , but, crucially, never actually killed anyone; and was, in appearance and cultured manner, the antithesis of our perception of psychotic monster.
After all, faced with the extraordinary horror of the events, many of us find it easier to blame something like the German people or European Anti-Semitism or the pathological Nazis, rather than seeing the cause in the particular actions of ordinary people….For her ( Hannah Arendt) what really matters is how Hitler secured massive compliance with his irrational hatred and the willing cooperation of relative non-entities, like Adolf Eichmann and others, including, most alarmingly, the victims themselves.Her analysis brings out very clearly how such compliance is secured: it comes through something really common to us all, the manipulation of our thinking and our imagination through classification….
Once we have accepted certain labels, then we are well on the way to sanctioning different treatment.That point underlines the importance Arendt gives to stressing Eichmann’s normality. It was of considerable importance to the Jewish people to portray Eichmann as a monster. And we all have a stake in that form of thinking because it’s so reassuring: only monsters are capable of such horrific crimes. But Arendt wants us to see clearly that Eichmann was just like almost everyone else–like many people in our own communities. He became an active agent of horror because, in the last analysis, he didn’t think clearly or feel intelligently. He forgot his human moral responsibility in the pursuit of a career. The classification system and, just as important as that, everyone else’s acceptance of it, made the omission easy.( Ian Johnston )
Most importantly, how valid is the thesis that a filmmaker cannot explore violence without becoming subjected, sympathetic, to the very same violence, as its victim or, more probably, as an abettor, promoter and even perpetuator. There is some likelihood that a film maker cannot avoid duplicating the very violence he seeks to explore in his films. Paris Trout is, the scapegoat sort of violence ; in Hollywood there always has to be a Hitler. someone to do the bidding, and play the devil with horns, to be the statue of Saddam Hussein that can be symbolically toppled. No doubt, the origins of Trout’s hatred lies somewhere within his personality, a zone beyond comprehension. The real issue is how he felt secure enough to carry his acts out , and that must be because there was some form of compliance with the dominant social group based on their system of classification and to some extent, the victims willingness to participate.
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