That's exactly right. But I don't find that this happens to me very often -- that (b) happens, but (a) remains. If I derive a lot of pleasure from a movie, I trust my gut reaction, and I don't consider it "exploitive and/or immoral and/or irresponsible" any more, if I had at first. This may seem odd, but usually if a movie is to me "exploitive and/or immoral and/or irresponsible" I know that instinctively at once, and I derive little or no pleasure from it. The evaluation, "exploitive and/or immoral and/or irresponsible," is probably out there, but not necessarily mine. I have to base my sense of the quality, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic, of a movie on my own gut reaction to it -- not on an external, received set of values or critical assessments. For me, (a) and (b) coming together and remaining together on repeated viewings is as rare as a solar eclipse.As defined by you, Taxi Driver and City of God (and Natural Born Killers) qualify as my "guilty pleasures" because: a) I consider them exploitative and/or immoral and/or irresponsible, and b) I derive enormous pleasure from them, having watched Taxi and Killers several times and planning to watch City again when the dvd is released. I experience guilt watching them.
My evaluations of movies aren't purely a matter of gut reactions, but of the interplay between those and the whole context -- which ideally our discussions enlarge. Our discussions hopefully enrich our point of view and may cause modifications in how we evaluate and respond to movies. Otherwise we'd just be spinning out a web of self centeredness, talking to hear ourselves talk.
I don't see, myself, how Taxi Driver "promotes revenge as a desirable course of action." I don't read the narrative that way at all. Travis Bickle isn't a character I identify with. He is pathological; a psychopath; not a free agent but the pawn of his own inarticulate complexes. His revenge doesn't seem in any sense a "desirable" solution. If he becomes a "community hero," that's by accident. He deserves no credit for it and therefore is not to be emulated. If you find the finale "morally vacant," as we do, how can we say that the movie "promotes revenge"?TAXI DRIVER is perhaps the best film ever made that promotes revenge as a desirable course of action and that presents the avenger as a community hero in that beautifully shot, morally vacant finale.
P.s. I notice that the U.S. DVD of Henry Bean's The Believer (starring Ryan Gosling) is finally out, and I hope more people will see this bold and powerful movie.
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