The Violent Effect of Bonnie and Clyde

The film of this week was Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and I enjoyed the videography production of the film. The intro zooming in on Bonnie nude and miserable in her room showed that the camera angles were going to be set to bring the viewer’s emotions to the forefront. However, the storyline, plot and moral of Bonnie and Clyde was pretty disappointing for me because it was overrated and praised for it being mainly violence led as the heroes of the film and the cops as the bad guys. This was my first time seeing this film, but I’ve always heard about Bonnie and Clyde being the perfect ride or die duo as role models. The normalization of violence in films is scary due to people turning movie scenes into reality all around the world from being influenced from movies like this one. Bonnie and Clyde was one of the first movies to be so graphic with blood and guns and received some backlash from the viewers for it. But now there are advanced special effects used in films to make a violent scene look frightfully real and it’s normal for movies to broadcast those scenes.

Bonnie and Clyde used psychological realism which is how “the central character is affected and misled by the social context, displaying how society itself is the cause of human evil and suffering” and poetic realism “dealt with love, destiny, and  the confrontation of good and evil” (Gazetas, 204).  The concept of love and suffering were fatalistic because Bonnie thought going on the run with Clyde would solve her miserable life of being a small town waitress, but their weird love and attraction to one another led to their demise. Bonnie would try to show affection toward Clyde by kissing him, but Clyde couldn’t return the same because he claimed he wasn’t a lover boy, but acknowledged that she was the best girl in all of Texas. Bonnie ends up saying to Clyde that, “You’re just like your brother. Ignorant, uneducated hillbilly, except the only special thing about you is your peculiar ideas about love-making, which is no love-making at all”. These two barely knew one another, but had expectations of treating one another like husband and wife. Clyde would manipulate his way to keeping Bonnie by his side for the unsuccessful bank robbing and Bonnie would listen to everything Clyde would say as if he were the smartest convict and man in the world. This film was pretty chaotic and absurd. 

And speaking of absurdity, this film also reflected the Theatre of Absurd from the work of Albert Camus and he “recognized the dominant characteristics of the human condition… He conceived the universe as being alien to human beings, possessing no inherent value or meaning. Human beings thus are cast into a life of uncertainty and insecurity and forced to seek a balance between the forces of life and death, love and hate, justice and mercy. His novels suggest the frightening premise that each human being can only liberate himself or herself from the tyranny of existence through acceptance of the idea that life is without meaning of any kind” (Gazetas, 205). Bonnie and Clyde exuded in the life of absurdity. Bonnie was trying to balance and process what she got herself into especially when her mother told her they better keep running and don’t live 3 miles away from her or else they’d eventually get caught. She knew it was wrong what they were doing and in Clyde’s mind he didn’t have a balance between life and death because he swore he’d never get caught up. All Clyde thought about was his next moves to robbing and getting money, he couldn’t fathom a life without stealing. Clyde was even freshly out of jail for good behavior and clearly he didn’t learn good enough behavior to stop his sticky fingers.

This film is used heavily in pop culture for decades through music, movies and shows. The idolization of Bonnie and Clyde being the ideal “couple’s goals” is confirmation for me where the film industry took a turn unknowingly to affect the collective and current films that came after it. Are we too far in to make violence abnormal for the media or do you think there’s a chance for substantial change for the film industry and collective as a whole?