What is the significance of setting and/or place in your chosen American Films?

From the very first shot of ‘Badlands’ we see Kit, the protagonist as a young male working as a garbage man. This particular occupation implies a very strong meaning to his persona. It suggests that right from the beginning Kit is regarded as trailer trash. On the other hand Holly is presented as being naïve and innocent living the so called ‘American Dream.’ This is portrayed through the mise-en-scene of the film with the white picket fence and the large house with a spacious garden. As Holly was living in the American Dream before Kit came along, it sparks the question of why she fell so far below of what she was before. Love for Kit would seem the obvious answer and so the importance of where she grew up and lived would therefore be meaningless and insignificant. Nonetheless, her relationship with her father was virtually non-existent and the lack of friends she had would also cause her to run away from home with the one who completed who she was as a person. In ‘Natural Born Killers,’ Mickey is seen to be working as a butcher which gives the idea of how much Mickey is linked with death, the murder of animals leads to the murders of many people. The difference in the relationships between ‘Badlands’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’ is that Kit is shown to be the immoral character with Holly acting as the innocent one, whereas, due to Mallory living with an abusive father, both Mickey and herself are shown to be the guilty protagonists.

                Genre theory states that films that fit into a specific genre will have repetition of certain themes throughout the film. This is extremely apparent with ‘Badlands’ and ‘Natural Born Killers.’ Death is the key theme which is portrayed throughout both films. From the moment we see Kit interact with the dead dog lying on the side of the road shows us of where his path may lead, as with Mickey’s appearance in Stone’s satire sitcom, where he is shown to be a butcher covered in blood. The contrast that is so prominent between NBK and Badlands are the places where each couple ends up travelling. We see Kit and Holly desert society and live in the woods just like wild animals, on the other end of the spectrum, Mickey and Mallory stay with society and yet still behave like wild animals. It is this reason why there are so many more killings in NBK than there are in Badlands due to only the mere fact of more people at Mickey’s and Mallory’s ‘pleasure.’

                I believe that Oliver Stone’s ‘Natural Born Killers’ is a way of stating that no matter where you are, what you are doing or how little it is, the media are there, they pick out the weakest and strongest and focus on their lives. For this reason, setting is not the key substance in why Mickey and Mallory behave the way they do after her father’s death. On the contrary Kit was almost destined to be immoral and ruthless due to his job and childish ways, and Holly was always to be cold and emotionless as a result of her lack of human interaction.