The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery, 1958-1999

(Paperback)

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Why do people feel the need to create images of violence, and why do audiences continually watch them This work brings together the multiple disciplines of psychology, criminology, censorship and anthropology in a study of 40 years of violent American cinema. The 40 years are divided between two volumes. The first volume looks at "American Chaos" from the films "Touch of Evil" to "Brazil". This second volume covers "Millenial Blues" between the films "Apocalypse Now" and "The Edge". Jake Horsley raises a dialogue between scholars and movie buffs as readers struggle to find their own answers to the connection between the need to portray and the need to watch violent films. The study shows the readers how to use violent film as a text with which to analyze society, but without losing touch with the aesthetic qualities of the films themselves. The author uses films such as "Psycho", "A Clockwork Orange", "M.A.S.H." and "Blade Runner". Together, the volumes aim to provide both a critical overview of the films themselves and a cultural study of the social and psychological factors relating to the demand for screen violence.

Reviews

Jake Horsley seems to arrive from out of nowhere, yet here he isan almost fully-developed and only slightly stoned sensibility. This hothead fantasist offers the excitement of a wild, paranoid style. he lives in the movies, explodes them from the inside, and shares his fevered trance with us. But he doesn't lose his analytic good sense. he's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too. Maybe he could use more humor, but couldn't we all (Intelligent movie criticism is being swamped in seriousness.) He's a marvelous critic. Tackling a new movie, he'll hang in there until he's balanced and sound. It's always a surprise. -- Pauline Kael
Freelance film critic Horsley aspires to bridge the gap between academic cultural studies and popular movie reviews in a two-volume analysis of Hollywood's love-hate relationship with brutality in all its forms. * Reference and Research Book News *
The debate about whether movie violence causes real-life violence (an argument I've never bought) has hijacked any exploration of how violence is actually used in the movies, how audiences experience it and when violence does or doesn't qualify as art. Those are the questions that preoccupy critic Jake Horsley in his mammoth two-volume The Blood Poets...Horsley arrives on the scene with a combination of articulate analysis and a provocateur's punch... The Blood Poets is the first work of criticism to talk at any length about how the exploitation impulse has crossed over into the work of respected filmmakers. * Salon.Com *

Author Bio

Jake Horsley is a digital filmmaker, who has written three books on film. His latest, Matrix Warrior: Being the One, was published in 2003.