Over the past year we’ve been hearing a lot about the theme of redemption in current movies. Actually the seeds of this trend were probably sown back in 1980, when Raging Bull came out, but now “redemption” is becoming something of a buzzword. I recall being taken slightly aback when I heard Harvey Keitel, speaking at the 1992 Toronto film festival, employ the term without any trace of irony in regard to Reservoir Dogs. And since then I’ve been hearing it more and more, mainly in relation to movies associated with Quentin Tarantino (not only Reservoir Dogs but also True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Killing Zoe, and Pulp Fiction) and such varied films as Cape Fear, Cliffhanger, Forrest Gump, The Professional, and even Heavenly Creatures.
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It would appear that a willingness to kill people without compunction–presumably shared even by sweet-tempered simpleton Forrest Gump when he goes off to Vietnam–is the main qualification for being “redemption-ready.” A taste for cocaine and heroin and a command of pop-culture references help but are less important. Theoretically the HIV-positive hero of Savage Nights, who glories in unsafe sex and snorts a lot of coke, is a prime candidate, but the fact that he’s French and bisexual seems to make him more problematic. National, ethnic, and sexual identities play a significant role in determining who is elected for redemption.
I imagine that if the characters in Satantango came across a motorcycle, or a Japanese sword for that matter, they’d steal it too. But because they’re living not in Los Angeles but in a godforsaken hillbilly section of Hungary, they’re denied this option. None of them even has access to a working TV, so they can’t be redeemed by making any passing references to the Fonz or any other American standby. And, assuming that they came across a motorcycle or sword labeled “Grace,” it would still be in Hungarian, and what could be more nihilistic than that?
Still, there’s some cause for hope. If we move beyond movies to the recent elections (assuming that there’s an epistemological difference between the two), it would appear that Bill Clinton–unlike Forrest Gump, the characters played by Stallone, Slater, Willis, Travolta, and Samuel L. Jackson, the teenage girls in Heavenly Creatures, and the murderous couple in Natural Born Killers–has been beyond redemption for some time. Fortunately that’s no longer true, thanks to some recent statements by Newt Gingrich. According to him, Clinton is personally responsible for Susan Smith’s killing her two small children in South Carolina, and a full quarter of Clinton’s staff is hooked on drugs. These two facts alone make him a potential double winner in the redemptive sweepstakes; add the fact that he’s a relatively young, currently living American male who comes from the working class and supports the slaughter of third-world civilians and he seems to have nearly all the credentials. He may not have the right kind of customized license plates yet, but like Slater in True Romance he certainly knows when to make reverential allusions to Elvis. So if people believe either or both of Gingrich’s assertions, maybe our own president will finally have the same crack at transcendence currently enjoyed by half-wits, drug dealers, and killers.
