Description: Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action.
Brief description: Michael Bliss teaches writing, literature, and film at Virginia Tech. He is the author of Laurel and Hardy's Comic Catastrophes: Laughter and Darkness in the Features and Short Films, Dreams within a Dream: The Films of Peter Weir, and Justified Lives: Morality and Narrative in the Films of Sam Peckinpah, among others.