Tarantino's masterful social comedy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood should be compulsory watching for all those who believe that the portrayal of violence in movies or on the stage somehow has the effect of promoting violence in real life. Tarantino deliberately plays with the issue in the second half of the film where he balances the viewers emotional feelings of horror at the Manson killings and Sharon Tate's murder against the cinematographic violence involving the two protagonists. The balance is powerfully done where you see the actor playing the very pregnant Tate welcome in her neighbor. The screen violence, graphic and horrific, emotionally borders on the comic. These are two different and separate emotional reactions.

Shakespeare's plays also have some of the most horrific violence taking place on stage, eyes gouged out, hands dismembered, corpses littering the stage. For real life violence Elizabethans could go to see men being hung drawn and quartered at Tyburn. It's important to draw the distinction between the real and the pretend which Tarantino's does with great finesse.