Read a lot of good things about SOA, got up to the 5th episode. Sorry, but this show is trivial at best and appalling at worst. If anything works in the show it is the acting, which is excellent, which is to say, believable. It's a bunch of fine actors creating something from nothing - cheesy writing full of cliches. What's offensive is the way it exploits violence.
I'm no prude, I love action movies and shows, but there are all kinds of shades of violence. If you're really going to get down and dirty - disturbing personal violence that can be hard to watch - then it has to be honest, you need to have something to back it up. It has to be part of something bigger, something - not to be pretentious - noble. Important. I recently watched a great factual war film called Kajaki, about a British company stationed in Iraq that got caught in a minefield. It's horrific, graphic violence, but that's part of the point - what these brave people are willing to risk and endure, even after they have experienced it first hand - as well as the disregard they have for their own safety and the support they have for each other in the most dire and terrifying circumstances. The extreme violence is necessary to the realism, to tell their story, anything else would be a lie.
The primary purpose of art is to mirror life, to shed light on the human condition. Natch, most don't even try, or try and fail, and most of these are utterly innocuous. To be expected. Pure entertainment is fine, I love it. But if you're going to try to go further, to say something meaningful, then you have to be honest. Art is about truth and as such there's a lot of fakery out there. SOA, for example.
Quick synopsis of Ep 5 of SOA: There's a former member of the biker gang who ratted on another member who got sent to prison. (Betrayal. Common theme.) This member was supposed to have the gang tattoo covering his back "blacked out" but he has not done so and another member sees it, says something like "That's gotta go", tells his mates who are outraged and offended, the gang chains the guy up, they ask him if he wants the tattoo removed by knife or fire, he chooses fire, they blowtorch the tattoo off. It's lovely night of television. The gang, btw, for those who haven't seen the show, are the guys we're rooting for in SOA.
Soooo, let's consider this nastiness in the context of some of the show's themes - The gang has this code, it's a loyalty thing. Like the Musketeers, one for all and all for so on. The gang, like the Mafia, is a family. So when betrayal guy betrays the family, they quite naturally kick the betraying SOB out of the SOA's. They don't kill him, probably because he's a member and they try to avoid that whenever possible. But the stipulations are that he stay away from the club and he get rid of that damn tattoo. So when he does not they burn it off. With a blowtorch. Can anyone say torture porn?
I suspect the main argument against my argument will be that we're supposed to see SOA as bad guys and this is supposed to show us just how bad they are. Agreed. That's not the problem, the problem is with the internal logic, the justification of the gang for the torture of a former family member and how we in the audience are meant to view them relative to that supposed rationale. The show pretends that the gang doesn't really want to do it, rather they have to do it. That's BS. The tattoo has be removed. Okey dokey. They know where he lives, that's apparent. So why not just say "Remove the tattoo in a week or we're coming for you and we'll burn the damn thing off." (Yeah. Sometimes the most simple solutions are the best.) As a former member, he knows they mean it, he's seen what they can and most certainly will do. Well, sir, I don't know about you but I'd sure as hell get that thing off my back. This scene isn't about any theme at all, it's about violence for the sake of violence. The fact that the writers may actually think it's about something else is not encouraging nor does it validate it.
One of the most offensive things in the torture scene is that some members of the gang are shown turning away - in closeup, so we in the audience can be sure to register their discomfort - as they blah blah hate having to carry out this horror but it must be done because it's part of their code blah blah blah. I call BS again. No, it did not have to be done. SOA - so many macho men, everyone of them cowards. Maybe that's a better theme.
I'm no prude, I love action movies and shows, but there are all kinds of shades of violence. If you're really going to get down and dirty - disturbing personal violence that can be hard to watch - then it has to be honest, you need to have something to back it up. It has to be part of something bigger, something - not to be pretentious - noble. Important. I recently watched a great factual war film called Kajaki, about a British company stationed in Iraq that got caught in a minefield. It's horrific, graphic violence, but that's part of the point - what these brave people are willing to risk and endure, even after they have experienced it first hand - as well as the disregard they have for their own safety and the support they have for each other in the most dire and terrifying circumstances. The extreme violence is necessary to the realism, to tell their story, anything else would be a lie.
The primary purpose of art is to mirror life, to shed light on the human condition. Natch, most don't even try, or try and fail, and most of these are utterly innocuous. To be expected. Pure entertainment is fine, I love it. But if you're going to try to go further, to say something meaningful, then you have to be honest. Art is about truth and as such there's a lot of fakery out there. SOA, for example.
Quick synopsis of Ep 5 of SOA: There's a former member of the biker gang who ratted on another member who got sent to prison. (Betrayal. Common theme.) This member was supposed to have the gang tattoo covering his back "blacked out" but he has not done so and another member sees it, says something like "That's gotta go", tells his mates who are outraged and offended, the gang chains the guy up, they ask him if he wants the tattoo removed by knife or fire, he chooses fire, they blowtorch the tattoo off. It's lovely night of television. The gang, btw, for those who haven't seen the show, are the guys we're rooting for in SOA.
Soooo, let's consider this nastiness in the context of some of the show's themes - The gang has this code, it's a loyalty thing. Like the Musketeers, one for all and all for so on. The gang, like the Mafia, is a family. So when betrayal guy betrays the family, they quite naturally kick the betraying SOB out of the SOA's. They don't kill him, probably because he's a member and they try to avoid that whenever possible. But the stipulations are that he stay away from the club and he get rid of that damn tattoo. So when he does not they burn it off. With a blowtorch. Can anyone say torture porn?
I suspect the main argument against my argument will be that we're supposed to see SOA as bad guys and this is supposed to show us just how bad they are. Agreed. That's not the problem, the problem is with the internal logic, the justification of the gang for the torture of a former family member and how we in the audience are meant to view them relative to that supposed rationale. The show pretends that the gang doesn't really want to do it, rather they have to do it. That's BS. The tattoo has be removed. Okey dokey. They know where he lives, that's apparent. So why not just say "Remove the tattoo in a week or we're coming for you and we'll burn the damn thing off." (Yeah. Sometimes the most simple solutions are the best.) As a former member, he knows they mean it, he's seen what they can and most certainly will do. Well, sir, I don't know about you but I'd sure as hell get that thing off my back. This scene isn't about any theme at all, it's about violence for the sake of violence. The fact that the writers may actually think it's about something else is not encouraging nor does it validate it.
One of the most offensive things in the torture scene is that some members of the gang are shown turning away - in closeup, so we in the audience can be sure to register their discomfort - as they blah blah hate having to carry out this horror but it must be done because it's part of their code blah blah blah. I call BS again. No, it did not have to be done. SOA - so many macho men, everyone of them cowards. Maybe that's a better theme.
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