J. HOBERMAN

To posit sexual display and violent action as the two most universal
"attractions" of Hollywood movies is merely to state the obvious. In a
practical sense, success for American movies may be gauged by the de-
gree to which they are able to mass-produce audience excitement. There
have, however, been instances in which that mass excitement has itself
been deemed dangerously overstimulating.

Initially characterized as "tasteless" and "grisly" ( Time, Aug. 25,
1967); as "stomach-turning" ( Newsweek, Aug. 21, 1967); as "reprehen-
sible," "gross and demeaning," featuring "some of the most gruesome
carnage since Verdun" ( Newsweek, Aug. 28, 1967); as "dementia prae-
cox of the most pointless sort" ( Films in Review, Oct. 1967), Arthur
Penn's 1967 release Bonnie and Clyde served, more than any commercial
movie made in America before or since, to redefine the nature of ac-
ceptable on-screen violence. "A test for the individual viewer for his own
threshhold," per one early reviewer, Bonnie and Clyde encouraged
laughing "at sadism and murder [but] eventually repels you, and makes
you angry or ashamed at having had your emotions manipulated"
( Newsday, Aug. 14, 1967).

American mass culture may be considered a form of spectacular
political theater that also functions as a feedback system. It is within
this public space--which overlaps the arena of electoral politics--that
rival scenarios and contending abstractions struggle for existence, defi-
nition, and acceptance. Thus, at once highly popular and extremely po-

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