Watching ‘Natural Born Killers’ in the Age of the Mass Shooter
On Lunar New Year, a 72-year-old man entered a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, and opened fire, killing 11 people. Two days later, the predominantly Asian American community in the Los Angeles suburb gathered to honor and mourn the victims with a candlelight vigil, a ritual that has become heartbreakingly all too common. As flickers of light cast shadows across grief-stricken faces, throngs of reporters and photographers shoved their way through the crowd to get soundbites and images. I, too, had come to document the vigil in an attempt to try to understand why mass shootings have been plaguing the country. When I raised my camera, however, many of the mourners narrowed their eyes at me before turning away. It was a reminder that there is often a fine line between reporting and committing voyeurism, as America’s ever-shifting brutal acts of violence, routinely re-packaged as spectacle for public consumption, can attest.
Oliver Stone’s controversial film Natural Born Killers explores our media’s exploitation of violence. The film follows serial killers Mickey (played by Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (played by Juliette Lewis) as they murder their way into becoming media darling anti-heroes. Based on a story by Quentin Tarantino, the 1994 film is a kaleidoscope of horror and comedy, culminating in a satirical take on our obsession with homegrown acts of brutality. In the thirty years since the film’s release, and countless mass shootings later, violence has presented itself as a shapeshifter, transforming from serial killer to mass shooter. And at the heart of Stone’s film, and very much apparent in our present-day gun violence culture, is the exploration of not only media sensationalism but how historical and intergenerational trauma shapes American violence.
When Natural Born Killers was released in the 1990s, the serial killer was our homegrown boogeyman. Newspapers and the six o’clock news detailed the horrific murders committed by the likes of Milwaukee Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer (who was murdered in prison the same year the film was released) and co-ed killer Ted Bundy (who met his fate with old sparky just five years prior), among countless others. Television shows like Cops and Hard Copy served up large helpings of serial killer panic into the living rooms of Americans eager to consume. Natural Born Killers satirized the dehumanizing reporting of violence on repeat. “It’s all about repetition,” T.V. crime reporter Wayne Gale, played by Robert Downy, Jr, proclaims.
While presenting violence ad nauseum, the media routinely mythologies serial killers as “evil” and “monsters.” Mickey explains his violent tendencies by internalizing the “evil” label as if it will explain and justify the brutality he inflicted on his victims. In a jailhouse interview with Gale, they engage in a debate about the origins of evil. “I come from violence,” Mickey tells Gale. “It’s in my blood. My dad had it, I have it. It’s fate.” Gale challenges this assumption, arguing, “No one is born evil, Mickey. It’s something you learn.”
Mickey and Mallory’s origin stories challenge the mythologizing of “evil” that the media routinely promulgates and that Mickey ascribes to himself. In perhaps one of the most underrated scenes of the film, the couple stumbles upon an Indian reservation where they are taken in by a Navajo shaman named Red Cloud (played by Russell Means), who feeds them and gives them shelter. He quickly sees them for what they are. Mallory, Red Cloud says, is afflicted with “a sad sickness, lost in a world of ghosts.” Mallory’s childhood is shown in flashbacks and portrayed as a 1950s television horror show, replete with canned studio audience laughter. We learn her father (played by legendary comic Rodney Dangerfield) repeatedly raped her until she ran away with Mickey, trading in one abusive man for another. While in the shaman’s hut, Mickey falls asleep and dreams of the terror and abuse he endured at the hands of his own parents. Upon waking and in a state of confusion, Mickey shoots and kills Red Cloud. Mallory flies into anger, the only time she expresses remorse, and screams, “He fed us! He took us in!”
Stone cast well-known Native rights activist and Oglala Lakota tribal member Russell Means as Red Cloud. Means was one of the leaders of the American Indian Movement and participated in the occupation of the Pine Ridge reservation in 1973. Casting Means was, in many ways, an acknowledgment of America’s own origin story of violence and trauma it inflicted on Indigenous peoples. Pine Ridge’s legacy in America’s brutal genocide of Native peoples was solidified at Wounded Knee in 1890 when federal troops opened fire, killing 300 Lakota Native men, women, children, and infants. It remains America’s largest mass shooting. Newspapers at the time recounted lurid details of soldiers taking body parts and other artifacts as souvenirs, anecdotes the likes of which Jeffrey Dahmer would salivate over.
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In the present day, the specter of the mass shooter has replaced the serial killer. It proliferates through news feeds, in elementary school’s active shooter drills, and through the horrific statistics of the dead that rise each week. This year alone, in a nation that has more guns than people the U.S. has had more mass shootings than days. Unlike the elusive serial killer that killed in anonymity, most mass shooters seek notoriety, adapting to a culture that promotes self-aggrandizement. The mass shooter has morphed into the spectacle of sinister self-glorification. They gun down men, women, and children in places where the victims should be safest, in their school, church, local grocery store, their dance studio. While Mickey and Mallory left survivors to tell their tale, mass shooters today record their own footage in public places, like the Buffalo Tops supermarket shooter who live-streamed his shooting.
Media, talking heads, and politicians alike will often refer to mass shooters as “evil” and “monsters.” But many mass shooters have origin stories that mirror Mickey and Mallory’s. According to a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) report, 31 percent of mass shooters were found to have suffered severe childhood trauma, 39 percent were suicidal at the time of their shooting, and 80 percent were in a state of crisis. The connection between mental illness and mental health is complicated, the report noted. Mental health issues were common among those who engaged in mass shootings, with psychosis playing a minor role in nearly one-third of the cases but a primary role 10% of the time. It’s important to note that people who experience mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence, not perpetrators. While mass shooters are predominately men, most of whom are white, some are people of color, like the Monterey Park shooter. And many mass shooters have committed racist and homophobic hate crimes against people of color, like the Tops supermarket shooting and LGBTQ+ communities, as we saw with the Pulse nightclub shooting, embodying hate and racism that has plagued America since its founding. Understanding the motivations of mass shooters challenges how we routinely speak of them. The authors of the NIH report explained that reducing the actions of mass shooters to “evil” or “monsters” does not get at the root cause of their violence. It merely slaps a label on them that purports to explain their actions.
On the eve of Natural Born Killers theatrical release, Stone said in an interview, “We’re all part of the same planet,” adding, “We are, more or less, the murderer, too.” American violence is shaped largely by how we respond to it. Whether it’s a carnage-hungry sensationalist media, refusing to acknowledge a violent historical legacy, or failing to address intergenerational trauma and mental health issues, we all bear a responsibility to each other and seek to understand and address the violence that comes with each generation.
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