Stephen Hunter: Less Park's "Oldboy" than Woo's "The Killer:" The Washington Post's Pulitzer-winning film critic Stephen Hunter analyzes my guess that the Virginia Tech mass murderer was influenced by the South Korean film "Oldboy." Maybe, he says, but:
Many of Cho's pictures -- 11 out of 43 -- featured guns. And when I looked at them, another name struck me as far more relevant than Park Chan Wook. That's John Woo.
Hunter definitely knows his guns! I reviewed for VDARE Hunter's nonfiction book, American Gunfight, about the 1950 terrorist assault by Puerto Rican nationalists that nearly succeeded in assassinating President Truman.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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15 comments:
I've never seen The Killer but that scene Hunter talks about in the church was clearly replicated exactly in Face/Off, complete with doves and double guns.
Woo is clearly obsessed with holding two guns, apparently he got the idea from the final scene in Butch Cassidy.
I'm sure someone of Cho's temperament was also really into The Matrix, where characters regularly held double guns as well. The Seraph, played by the Asian Collin Chou, enters the Merovingian's lair and shoots up the place with double guns. Check it out
In fact the more I think about it he more I realise - double guns are everywhere! Not only in Woo movies and The Matrix, but in rap videos, video games (the hold two guns at once option is now a staple of most action games), cowboy movies.
Remember playing cowboys as a child? The cowboy belt would always contain two guns, one on either side.
Woo-hoo, Steve got another mention in the MSM.
Oh, I read the WP link. Steve doesn't rate a mention. Life is so unfair.
A blog directory listing on American Gunfight Add your blog site to the collection.
I had already considered he possible influence of Woo's films but think Oldboy is likely much more relevant for two reasons. 1) The age of the killer. Woo's better films were made a decade and a half ago and Cho's familiarity w/ them would be through video only and likely less visceral given that more recent films w/ ultra-violence are worse than what Woo did. 2) Woo's films like Hard Bolied and THe Killer clearly frame the violence in a moral universe, Woo lacks the nihilism of many other depictors of violence, like in the Saw movie series or (apparently) many popular South Korean films.
Nah, Steve's intuition is more correct. "Oldboy" all the way. Double guns have been Hollywood standard for over a decade, but only "Oldboy" has featured a hammer-wielding (Korean) psycho.
I think Sailer has a non-sexual crush on Stephen Hunter.
There was also a picture of him looking rather Lara Croft-ish, which is kind of funny when you think about it.
I think we can just call it 'violent movies', chalk the Korean influence up to the fact that, being Korean, he saw a few more Korean movies than average in addition to all the American ones, and call it a day.
What sfg said. There was just a really violent cultural melange in Cho's head, that happened to involve one more Korean movie than what most people have seen (most people have seen 0, I'm guessing) and he didn't have any way to ignore any of it, being rather mental and all.
Garbage in, garbage out.
I think we can just call it 'violent movies', chalk the Korean influence up to the fact that, being Korean, he saw a few more Korean movies than average in addition to all the American ones, and call it a day.
Not even Korean-American. No Anglicizing of his first name, no application for American citizenship. Another case of the melting pot not melting.
Most spree killers are white. There are a thousand cases of insufficient assimilation and they have been well documented on this blog, but this ain't one of them.
I dont know,SFG. I googled and at least one researcher says thats a typical load of anti-white male horseshit. Spree killers are NOT disprop. white. I havent gone all Steve Sailer and actually "worked" on this topic,but I think its safe to say that the default position for the idiot-journalist is to bash white men whenever possible;so I am going on record as saying yer wrong! :) Nobody mentions Cho's inability to get laid,BTW. Aint no way an Asian girl is gonna sleep with him,and his efforts to find a "sensitive" white girl to give him pity sex,well sir,that didnt turn out so well,either!
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