Spare a thought for Miss Sloane, a liberal political thriller that dared to wade unarmed into cinemas just after the US election. Starring Jessica Chastain in the title role, the film risked the wrath of an emboldened “alt-right” and a resurgent National Rifle Association (NRA) with its tale of a Washington lobbyist who pushes for increased gun control. But reviews were lukewarm and the punters stayed away, in the US at least. Miss Sloane preached its lonesome liberal message to rows of empty seats.
I would like to file Miss Sloane as that rarest of things – an anti-gun Hollywood blockbuster – except that is not quite the case. One, because the film was bankrolled by a French company (EuropaCorp). And two, because even the film’s makers seem at pains to downplay its politics. “The issue of gun legislation isn’t itself the film’s subject,” cautions producer Kris Thykier. “[Screenwriter Jonathan Perera] placed an emotive issue at the heart of it, but it perhaps could have been one of a number of others.” Far safer, then, to view Miss Sloane as a study in compromise: a tentative shuffle-step on the road to redemption. On those few occasions when cinema finds itself at odds with the gun, it seems that it can not bring itself to disown the thing altogether.
One might even go as far as to think of this as film’s defining love affair; more glamorous than Bogart and Bacall, more tempestuous than Burton and Taylor. According to the documentary film-maker Abigail Disney: “The gun is the leading character in the blockbuster Hollywood film.” Out of the 100 top-grossing pictures of 2015, no fewer than 18 featured a firearm on the poster. And while Hollywood (as an entity) is broadly supportive of gun control, this stance is belied by the movies it makes. This is an ambivalent relationship, hopelessly confused at the core. Any attempt at separation carries with it the constant risk of backsliding.
Turns out it was not Jean-Luc Godard who first said: “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” That was DW Griffith, the father of film, right back when the medium was still finding its feet. The Great Train Robbery (1903), billed as the first movie western, showcased a pistol being pointed and discharged right into the screen. In the decades that followed, the genre would effectively “print the legend” of the second amendment and the NRA, celebrating the notion of a US made safe and maintained by the judicious use of firepower. Except that the gun – like Hemingway’s Paris – is a moveable feast. It is equally at home in gangster flicks and film noir, road movies and political thrillers. Increasingly, it is cropping up in kids’ pictures, too. A 2013 study found that there is now more gun violence in PG-13 productions than in films that are rated R.
“It used to be that gun violence was at least grounded in extreme life experiences – the second world war or the western,” says Steven Gaydos, executive editor of Variety magazine. “Fantasy violence didn’t dominate the box office the way it does now, post George Lucas and Star Wars. The movies took us into outer space and we’re still out there.”
Or to put it another way, the industry went global. About 70% of Hollywood revenue is now generated overseas. Gaydos blames the requirements of an international market that favours spectacle over drama, action over dialogue, homogenous fantasy over localised reality. He feels that PG-13 gun violence is just the natural byproduct. “And remember that these movies are made by gigantic global conglomerates, sometimes with defence contracts, so they’re making movies and weapons at the same time. And their basic ideology is not one I agree with. It’s the ideology of anti-intellectualism in the American tradition. Anti-experts. The primacy of taking power. And the solving of every problem with a massive show of force.”
Assuming this is a trend, we should all know where it ends – in a mammoth, gun-blazing, U-certificate bloodbath, conceivably enacted by superheroes and Smurfs. But maybe, even at this late stage, there remains a way back, a means by which Hollywood can begin to cool – or at least regulate – its abiding love of firearms. The opportunity is there; it simply needs to be taken. When Miss Sloane lobbies for stricter gun control, she could be addressing the film industry itself.
Here, inevitably, we risk blundering into the quagmire of artistic responsibility; the notion of a direct causal link between screen violence and real violence. The issue is vexed, impossible to conclusively prove or disprove. Yes, cinema is guilty of fetishising firearms, but does that automatically make it an accessory to a crime? According to the Congressional Research Service, there are more that 300m firearms owned in the US. That’s approximately one for every person; three times as many as there were 50 years ago. So what is more significant factor? Access to guns or access to movies about guns?
Erika Soto Lamb is the chief communications officer at Everytown, the largest US organisation for gun violence prevention. She says: “We know American movies are watched by people around the world, but only in America does the problem of gun violence exist on this scale. Instances of gun homicide are 25 times that of other developed countries. So the problem is not the entertainment industry; it’s access to firearms.”
Lamb feels that, if anything, Hollywood stars have been a help not a hindrance. She points out that Julianne Moore is the chair of Everytown’s “creative council”, monitoring the depiction of firearms in the film industry; that the group’s other members include Steve Carell, Amy Schumer and JJ Abrams. “I’ll take the help of any American – but particularly those with a big public voice,” Lamb says. “Those in the entertainment industry have a huge cultural influence in how we talk about gun violence.”
No doubt they do – but these people risk sending mixed messages, too. There is something rum about the sight of Sylvester Stallone earnestly calling for an assault weapons ban while simultaneously plugging a movie called Bullet to the Head. Or Liam Neeson calling for the repeal of the second amendment at a press conference for Taken 3. A few years back, rocked by the mass shootings in Aurora and Sandy Hook, Harvey Weinstein was sounding positively Damascene. “I have to choose films that aren’t violent, or aren’t as violent as they used to be,” he said. “The change starts here.” He then went on to produce Jane Got a Gun and The Hateful Eight.
I am not sure these men are hypocrites. I think it is more complicated than that. More likely, their tensions reflect the ambivalent nature of the average film-goer; even the contradictory nature of the US as a whole. These people are spooked by the glint of a gun on the street and seduced by the sight of a gun on the screen. They are torn between what is right for their conscience and what is right for their bank balance. In trying to have it both ways, however, they further muddy the waters.
“The tragic irony is that Hollywood is full of good, well-meaning people,” says Gaydos. “I like these people. I agree with their politics. But it’s like they don’t see the gunplay in film and TV as being within their control. It’s a kind of cognitive dissonance. Maybe they don’t want to think too deeply about what they have become. Which is basically the advertising arm of the NRA.”
It is almost enough to make you cherish Miss Sloane for at least pushing back against the prevailing tide, despite the fact that the film itself is a muddle; too slick in some places, too soft-headed in others. And yet the US, by and large, did not want to hear what it has say. The film opened on a limited run on 25 November, Black Friday, and was promptly written off as a box-office dud. The same day, incidentally, saw the nation’s gun dealers reporting record business. If you want some sense of the scale of Hollywood’s challenge, consider this statistic. More Americans bought a gun on Black Friday than a ticket to see Miss Sloane.
Miss Sloane is out in the UK on 24 February
