The Dark Side

I was glad to see Kenneth Turan’s article shaking us awake to the very cynical trend of cultural darkness that pervades much of recent film (and much popular literature, as well) (“Fade to Pitch-Black,” Nov. 22). It does seem to threaten “to take over the intellectual soul of an entire medium” and for that reason it is dangerous. I also agree that its dark clouds threaten to block out what is missing: a positive view.

But I don’t agree that it represents the swing of the pendulum toward an infatuation with evil and that the pendulum must swing back. I see it more as a downward spiral: Our intellectual sights are spiraling from negative to more negative--not unlike the swirling around the toilet bowl before the final plunge.

So the situation is not in need of a new swing toward “the positive.” Rather, we must get out of the whole toilet that has been so filled with evil and violence since the advent of Tarantino. It’s not funny and it’s not interesting anymore (if it really ever was).

DAVID BORDEN

Venice

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Perhaps the darkness of vision that Turan decries stems from the need of our society for an antidote to the relentless sunniness of the American disposition. Maybe we are at last discovering the underside of life, the “dark that is gleaming like a fire opal or a black pearl” that John Huston spoke of and that European culture has been aware of for centuries.

The purpose of the artist is to present these difficult truths. The bleak people in films like “Your Friends and Neighbors” do not differ substantially from the people I encounter, and recognizing the sourness in them turns my eyes back to myself. I worried about my teenagers’ addiction to gory films like “Scream” until I recognized that they were seeking a hangover remedy from the Disney dextrose they had been fed by the media throughout their childhoods.

The human psyche has a natural tendency to balance and the taboo-breaking that is currently occurring in film is a healthy sign of a society growing up.

VICTORIA E. THOMPSON

Sherman Oaks

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Reality check: Unlike Turan, I have been to the deep dark depths of 9 to 5 hell and have mixed with the unhip masses. Believe me, come Saturday night, most people cruise over their disturbing inner truths to see the next Brad Pitt movie.

Yes, the dark-side trend is pervasive in some L.A. circles, but (unfortunately) there is no danger that average Jo will ever care much about anything other than the film industry’s main product: youth, celebrity and happy endings. Now that’s menacing.

ANNE SILVER

Los Angeles

*

Turan missed one important point--the largely Gen-X crowd who make these dark films do it not only for the sheer shock value but because it is their one-note gimmick, since they have nothing to say.

The wider culture is rich with other pitch-black sources of art and entertainment. Even Hulk Hogan has gone dark, becoming a bad guy in the staged world of pro wrestling because bad guys sell more tickets these days.

But Turan should be hopeful. Once a movement is identified and talked about, it usually means it is on the wane. The light is coming.

JEFF SOFTLEY

West Hollywood

*

I am a young independent filmmaker. My film “Blossom Time” premiered at Slamdance and went on to win a few awards on the festival circuit including the top prize at the Florida Film Festival. The film is about finding the light when everything around you seems dark and hopeless. Its tag line is “some flowers bloom in the dark.” I have been told by many distributors that my film is beautiful and affecting, but just isn’t dark enough.

DAVID ORR

Possumtown Pictures

Burbank

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Turan’s piece on the perverse and twisted trends displayed in so many contemporary films brings to mind one of my favorite stories about that most revered of American directors, John Ford.

Late in Ford’s career, his agent sent him a best-selling novel about a Catholic nun, thinking that it would make a perfect Ford-style film. Ford paraphrased the book’s plot as, “Nun is seduced by a pimp. She’s going to have the pimp’s child so she asks him to meet her at midnight near this bridge. She’s there at 12, no pimp. One, no pimp. Two o’clock, still no pimp. So she throws herself off the bridge. The next time I saw my agent, I threw the book at him.”

If Ford were alive today to experience the dismal depths of nihilistic subject matter than many American filmmakers have sunken to so proudly, he would probably wind up atop the water tower at Warners with an assault rifle in his hands.

DAN GAGLIASSO

Sherman Oaks