Sling the guns

Published on 18/01/2013 00:00

I don’t think I’m the only Scotsman reader to be feeling somewhat queasy about the paper’s reviews of Quentin Tarantino’s latest foray into the spaghetti western genre, Django Unchained (Arts, 17 January).

First there was a still from the film of the hero pointing a gun at the camera, and Thursday’s review refers to the film as “all guns blazing”.

The massacre at Sandy Hook has rightly devastated people all over the world and exposed – if it needed more exposure – the American love affair with the gun.

Obama is not going to be able to get sufficient Americans on side for an all-out ban on weaponry – if attitudes do change it’s going to take a generation or two, given current American paranoia about not being able to “defend themselves” by carrying deadly weapons.

But maybe a start needs to be made, and ignoring films which promote the cult of the gun-
slinger would go some way to removing this horrible archetype from the public mind.

(Dr) Mary Brown

Dalvenie Road

Banchory