So you want a rant, do you? What? You say you’re tired of the frothing at the mouth, end of the world, I-have-all-the-answers racket that goes on 24 hours a day now?
Me, too. But this one can’t be helped.
Creating Demand for Violence
The WordPress blogmeister has this thing called Mind the Gap where you present your “side” of an issue. I rarely participate because as I say, I’m tired of negativity and division and general pointless opining.
But this week, they asked: Does watching violent movies inspire violence in the real world?
This is something personal to me, like being a vegetarian.
Several decades ago, I chose to stop supporting violence in the movies after I heard some producer saying that the reason they made so many violent movies was because that’s what people wanted. So I thought I would vote with my dollars.
I miss an awful lot of movies, and I often can’t join in conversations with my friends who have just seen a film I skipped because of violence. I’m sure some people think I’m eccentric or stodgy or overly dramatic. I don’t care.
I feel pretty strongly about this. I do not want that crap in my head. It is bad for my psyche. I think it’s bad for your psyche, too. And I think it’s bad for a budding young terrorist’s psyche.
Does it affect society? Damn straight it does. Frankly, I do not know and I do not care what studies show. It is common sense.
I cannot believe that people are seriously asking about the Boston bombers, “How could a young man who grew up in America commit such an unspeakable act?”
Duh.
Garbage in, garbage out. Blood and gore in, blood and gore out.
I wonder if one reason so many people are on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds is that we’re all walking around with mild post-traumatic-stress-disorder from exposing ourselves to blood and guts and body parts and decapitations and stabbings and shootings and bombs.
That is not entertainment to me. It is trauma.
At best, we can brace ourselves for violence in a film, inure ourselves, numb ourselves. How is that good? Why should I pay money for that?
This is not an unpleasant reality we’re forced to face, like a Boston Marathon bombing; it is an unpleasant fake reality people choose to subject themselves to. It’s a cheap, low-blow to the gut that makes people think they have seen an effective movie.
Remember the great Alfred Hitchcock films? Those scary movies from the 40s and 50s and 60s that practically made you pee your pants? Yet in his most celebrated films, the murders always took place off stage. Maybe the shadow of a knife.
You lost none of the drama – in fact the subtlety contributed to the terror. Until the Psycho shower scene, when Hitchcock gave in to the pull of violence, and we started our inexorable plunge down the drain to the cesspool we’re in now.
We Don’t Even Recognize Violence Anymore
The other night I went to a movie at my local theater.
“Is it violent?” I asked at the ticket window.
“Noooo,” the guy said, considering.
“You don’t sound too sure,” I said. He knows me. I ask this question every week.
“Well, two older women walked out of the last show, but it’s not that bad.”
“That’s OK,” I said. I went home and watched a Downton Abbey episode instead.
I found out later that the whole movie was about violence, but one friend explained that it really wasn’t violent because it had a redemptive ending where the guy decides not to pull the trigger (this, after several hours of carnage).
One Voice for Nonviolence – Plus One, Plus One, Plus…
I know it seems silly. One person’s choice to boycott gratuitous violence in movies won’t make a difference in what Hollywood does. True. One person might not make a difference. But if one person doesn’t start, it is guaranteed nothing will change.
It’s like being a vegetarian. Back in the early seventies when I quit eating meat, only one percent of Americans were vegetarians. I didn’t know one. Now – depending on whose polls you look at – it’s 5% to 13%. And that doesn’t include the 1/3 of the population that regularly eats vegetarian meals. This weekend I went to a local vegan festival and hundreds of people showed up. Here are two of them — perfectly normal folks.
Vegans are Sprouting up Everywhere
Eating meat is not good for me. Watching violent scenes is not good for me. I don’t think either of those things is good for you either, but I’m not going to get in your business. You make your own choices. But at least think about it, OK?
And a last word from the Bible, because I like the Bible:
“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. “
Thanks to Publicdomainpictures.net
Dec 06, 2015 @ 13:53:02
We need many more people like you!! Thank you, I feel like I am alone sometimes. I strongly believe that constant violence and sex on tv or movies are why we have created a society of killers and perverts.
Dec 06, 2015 @ 21:33:22
It most certainly has something to do with it. Thanks for visiting!
Nov 12, 2013 @ 22:03:06
How do you suggest judging the amount of violence in a movie before you go see it? Obviously asking the ticket seller doesn’t work. Ratings don’t seem to indicate much since recent studies show PG-13 movies have more violence than R rated movies. Is there a website or just ones for children like http://www.kids-in-mind.com/?
Nov 13, 2013 @ 16:43:58
Not that I know of. I usually ask the ticket person or friends who have seen it. They usually say something like, “Oh, it’s not bad, except for the part where the guys head gets cut off by the helicopter and the part where the woman gets her leg blown. And, oh yeah, then there’s the part…” So take it with a grain of salt. People are immune to it.
Oct 25, 2013 @ 09:32:55
I totally agree about the violence in movies. It is pervasive and ugly and I am at a loss to understand why people enjoy it. I just find it repellent. Movies are getting more and more violent I find, and there are not many I can watch and enjoy these days. One thing I do find interesting is that a movie that shows appalling violence in great detail will be rated MA, and yet if a movie shows full frontal nudity just briefly and the rest of the movie is people talking and walking around a city it will be rated R. Very strange.
Oct 25, 2013 @ 12:35:33
I know – same with language. They’ll rate a movie R for strong language or sex. I’m way more offended by someone getting hacked to bits. Oh well, I say, I vote with my dollars. One small voice…
Jul 18, 2013 @ 13:36:47
Nice! Thank you for sharing!
Jul 24, 2013 @ 18:03:27
Thanks – glad you liked it!
May 19, 2013 @ 15:37:22
I was thinking the same thing the other day. Some people like myself suffer from trauma of a graphic display of finding someone that has taken their own life. I was watching a new movie the other day and they put a suicide in the middle of it and showed a very grizzly display of the gun shot wound and the bloody aftermath and I have to tell you its hard to see. Its harder to see when you have experienced it first hand. Whats good/bad about the situation is that so many violent deaths are incorporated into movies and catch me off guard so often that I have started to become desensitized to it once again. Its quite different seeing it first hand but the replication of it still shakes me to my core and brings me back to that day.
May 17, 2013 @ 23:14:58
Violence in movies has long been used as a scapegoat for violence in society and honestly I think it’s bull****. There’s so many other reasons for violence in society (for example, a terrorist doesn’t watch Cannibal Holocaust and then go blow up a building, nine times out of ten they’re trying to send a sociopolitical or religious message fueled by anger, real-life violence, or countless other things. A psychopath doesn’t butcher people because he just finished watching Hostel, he butchers people because he’s completely f***ed in the head). Blaming violent movies just perpetuates an avoidance of the real problems in society and it comes off as kind of naive.
Normal people can easily distinguish the difference between violence in a movie and real-life violence. Violence in a movie simply isn’t real and nobody’s getting hurt. There’s a level of disconnect that comes with that. Filmmakers can use the spectacle to entertain, confront, shock, or even amuse an audience and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I’d also add that our increased awareness of the real violence in society adds to the desensitization of the “fake” violence in films as they’re just not the same thing. A guy eating someone’s heart in an Amazon cannibal movie or a zombie movie is not the same thing as – nor is it responsible for – a Syrian rebel eating a soldier’s heart. It just simply isn’t. And I don’t think the Boston bombers did what they did because they watched the opening scene of Die Hard 3, either.
Of course you find violence in movies more confronting than most, you never subject yourself to it. When you finally watch something that involves a decapitation or a gruesome headshot you’ll undoubtedly react to it with a lot more shock than most. But blaming violence in movies for real life violence makes you sound kind of out of touch because you rarely seem to experience it, yet have a fully formed opinion about it. If you find violence in movies confronting, then that’s just your personal taste in film, but I’m telling you that it’s not what you think it is. In my eyes, and the eyes of most, violence is just part of a film and can be completely necessary when telling the story. It’s just as valid a narrative device as anything else is. I find it kind of a shame that you’ll never be able to enjoy something like Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Fight Club, In Bruges, or literally thousands of other great movies that involve violence, but that’s just me. Regardless of whether you check out those movies (I highly recommend you do), please stop blaming them for something they are not responsible for.
May 17, 2013 @ 23:58:26
I hope you don’t mind that I cleaned up the language in your comment.
Obviously, we simply disagree. I am not saying that violent movies cause all the violence acts in society. My point is that the cumulative effect of all the violence we see – real and fake – serves to numb us to violence, real and fake and this leads to a more violent and less loving society – and world – in general. This is simply neuroscience.
The science concludes that repeated viewing of violent media can blunt emotional responses (de-couple the consequences of aggression and an emotional response), and this has the potential to promote aggressive attitudes and behavior. Especially if someone is already a little off-balance.
I disagree that “in the eyes of most,” violence is “just a part of film” or “necessary.” I’d say out of the 150-plus comments to this post, at least half agreed with me. A film is more artful and subtle if it can elicit an emotional response without the gratuitous violence. The violence is cheap and must keep ramping up because people aren’t shocked by what used to shock them. That’s why it’s getting worse and worse.
Trust me, I saw plenty of violent movies in my time before I gave them up, including The Godfather. Don’t feel badly for me missing “a decapitation or a gruesome headshot.” I’m fine.
Thanks for the comment.
May 18, 2013 @ 03:15:12
I guess we just disagree. I find violence in films can be completely necessary depending on the type of film and can add a lot to the work. For example, things like Cannibal Holocaust or Martyrs would loose a lot of their power without violence. While it can often be used gratuitously I feel like it kinda gets accused of being worthless and detrimental a lot more than it deserves.
I guess there’s also a generational gap between us, which effects our sensibilities and context. I’d say that pretty much 70-80% of the people I know have no problem with violence in movies and find it to be a pretty valid thing, though I can imagine that it would be a lot lower in the people that you know.
I still disagree that violence in films adds a whole lot to the desensitization within society as I believe that people can generally separate what they see in a film to something they see on the news. I don’t disagree with you that society as a whole has become pretty desensitized to violence, but I think overexposure to actual violence through various mediums (like, for example, the news) is more to blame. We’re currently in the “information age” and we hear and read about a lot more of the violence within society as we ever have before. So naturally after a while, you kind of get desensitized to it.
But yeah, I guess we just disagree.
(Sorry about the swearing)
May 18, 2013 @ 17:15:59
You might be right there is a generational aspect, which I think kind of proves my point. The younger generation has been exposed to a lot more violence and so it is numbed to it. Most of my friends in their thirties have a lot more concerns about it than my friends in their twenties. I see this as headed the wrong direction. There are a lot of studies showing the correlation between violent movies and violent behavior – the Oxford Journal has one that’s pretty dense, but here is a simpler one that was done a few years ago recording the changes in the brain from viewing violent movies. It concludes that the changes would make people less able to suppress aggressive behavior and even seems to suggest that it might make them more likely to PLAN such acts, based on another part of the brain becoming MORE active. I don’t know, I’m just sayin… http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20071107001931data_trunc_sys.shtml
Sep 20, 2013 @ 18:41:59
Hey Dan,
You have all the classic indications of someone who decides that two things are not connected and prefers to back it up with your circle of friends opinions. You are aware, that when looking for factual evidence and statistics, that is meaningless. Right?
Fact is, kids who spend a lot of time playing violent video games- shocker here- exhibit more socially aggressive behavior in all measurable areas.
You see, children like to emulate what they see adults do if it appears exciting or cool. Suspecting you were a young boy at one time (perhaps may still be, I do not know), it would be hard to imagine you could argue this.
And the concept that desensitization of humans to violence allowing them to engage in violence without the same level of processing is concrete fact.
As a matter of fact, in training soldier for urban combat in elite units, the training ramps up from standard target practice to target mannequins with blood splatter bladders inside. The idea being that when they finally pull the trigger in combat in close quarters they will not be shocked to see the entire rear portion of the thorax turned into meat sauce exploding out the back of the enemy.
Grow up and admit that you just enjoy/accept violence for entertainment, but please dont make up an entire fact set to back up what you want to be true.
May 13, 2013 @ 00:42:23
Thanks Melanie for your kind words regarding my attempts at enlightened discussion about media violence. Also, I realize that it’s a bit of brazen self-promotion, but I just started a blog of my own and wrote something that ties in with this discussion. The title of the post is- “The Psychopathology of Civilization- A Brief Primer on Native Solutions to Modern Problems”. So, I encourage you and all of your followers to check it out at- parapoliticaljournal.com/ It will add substantially as to why violence, not only in the media, but society in general is becoming the accepted standard and norm by which we handle our collective problems.
I also thought that I should mention that another reason why Hollywood and TV incorporate so much violence into their programming (an apt word for what they do if there ever was one) is because they understand human psychology well enough to know how it draws our attention in. Human neurology is naturally attuned to danger, since our instinct to self-preservation (i.e. our fight or flight mechanism) has to be to keep us alive.
After all, our ancestors wouldn’t have survived being eaten by saber-toothed tigers and other hungry animals in the wild if we weren’t acutely aware and sensitive to our environment enough to escape danger and fight for our lives if need be. Merely knowing consciously that what we’re watching is simulated violence doesn’t negate totally all adrenaline, which as we know can become like a drug for some.
Adrenaline gives you a rush of sorts wherein you feel supremely powerful and viscerally alive, unlike most of our waking boring hours. Social engineers working in media, of course, know this…going so far as to design subliminal messages within certain ads that incorporate themes related to sex and death (reptilian brain fixations) and hence get more people to pay attention, since these are largely reflexive actions that can’t be readily or consciously controlled all that easily. While many would dispute this notion that Madison Avenue is using these kinds of subliminal imagery, this is no longer a matter up for debate.
The Rosetta Stone for subliminal artists going into advertising was found by Eldon Taylor, who wrote a book called “Mind Programming” if you doubt this. So, I encourage you to check it out to understand more how this works. Suffice to say, your unconscious mind records and believes everything that it sees regardless of whether you consciously recognize it or not. Utilizing what are called archetypes of the collective unconscious as Carl Jung would call them, embedded subliminal imagery, emotional association as the Edward Bernays knew all to well, backward masking, certain kinds of music and other tricks of the trade of social engineering and control- the art and science of psychological warfare and manipulation is very sophisticated indeed.
If you want to see how this was employed by the founder of modern advertising, Edward Bernays, who used his uncle Sigmund Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind to form the foundation of social engineering and psychological manipulation today- you should read a book of his called “Propaganda” or go watch the BBC series that you can download on-line called “The Century of the Self”, which goes into this in much greater depth. Needless to say, media violence is just one tool in the manipulator’s toolbox that is used to create what Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, called a “psycho-civilized” society.
May 13, 2013 @ 21:38:56
Great stuff! Thanks for the info. I remember being horrified when I read a book called “Subliminal Advertising” – oh, a million years ago. I wrote a couple of college papers on it back in the day. Sounds like the research has come a long way. Very glad I got rid of my TV. I don’t want to play in that sandbox.
May 07, 2013 @ 11:10:11
I totally agree as well. i just don’t get this countrys fascination with violence crime and murder. There are barely any dramas on tv with out it anymore. I can’t handle it. Too sensitive I guess. I have to change the channel on a comedy when I know someone is going to get humiliated!
May 09, 2013 @ 16:28:17
Well at least you know that you are empowered to change the channel! Some people just sit and watch all this crap and bemoan what they are watching. Just say no.
Thanks for your comment!
May 07, 2013 @ 00:20:30
While nobody can rationally fault you for avoiding “violent” movies, your arguments against seeing violence and its effects are a bit overly simplistic and naive. The media, such as Hollywood, aren’t creating violence in society so much as reflecting in a distorted form what is already in it. If anything, Hollywood violence is tame by reality standards. After all, when’s the last time you saw a movie about child sex trafficking? The torture taking place at CIA black sites? The drug cartels blood letting in Mexico? What you see are so-called Hollywood sanitized versions of this, since the MPAA is run by religious zealots that would tag stuff like that with an X rating if it were ever released at all. So, the problem isn’t the depiction of “violence” per se so much as the glorification of it by Hollywood and TV producers that is the real problem. Since you ended your blog with a religious quote, you ought to look at the obvious hypocrisy of deploring “violence” on the one hand in movies but failing to recognize how the Holy Bible is the most violent book in the American cannon of books that is very widely read. Cotton Mather didn’t have Hollywood to tell him to burn so-called witches at the stake…he had the word of God. The Spanish Inquisition wasn’t influenced by Tarantino films, but they did commit some of the most violent murders of the last 1,000 years due to their religious convictions. What are you gonna do? Ban the bible?
May 09, 2013 @ 16:38:25
I agree, it is the glorification of violence by Hollywood that is deplorable, and the “demand” created by viewers’ dollars for such gore. I have indeed seen movies and read books about trafficking and torture, but of course they weren’t Hollywood movies; they were documentaries by justice groups I’m involved with.
The Bible surely does contain violence. It’s a book about humans and their God, and humans harbor violence. People do a lot of crazy things because of their religious convictions, for sure. I personally prefer the New Testament which does not contain such violence and instead points to the victory of love over violence in both the physical and inner realms. If you are familiar with the New Testament, when Jesus’s follower tries to defend him with a sword, Jesus tells him to put it away. That’s the cannon I quoted from.
Thanks for your comments.
May 05, 2013 @ 20:46:06
Hmmm. I don’t normally reply to these blogs I randomly stumble upon, but I think I shall. I’ll write this from my own personal perspective since it’s all I know. I enjoy violent things. Films, games, whatever you like. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an underside to my personality that isn’t pleasant. It’s caused depression, frustration and general anger for years at a time. The best way I can think of it is a drumbeat. An ancient drumbeat that was originally intended to keep humans going through the Darwinian process, beating out all other challengers. Deep, primal aggression. And I think a large amount of people feel as I do. Humans are violent animals. 10,000 years (more or less) of (mostly murderous) civilisation won’t undo that. The violence I’ve experienced through various media still doesn’t even nearly approach what my brain has churned out by itself. Violence through media actually helps. It’s a safe way of engaging that side of the brain. And I think it’s a mostly male affliction. For obvious reasons. I use the term affliction because it’s not a nice conclusion to come to. To realise that regardless of anything you do, the subconscious will still throw up violent urges. The rational brain still isn’t the stronger half. If you don’t feel like that, then by all means avoid the violence. If it isn’t present and makes you uncomfortable to think about, then clearly it’s not up your alley. I hope I don’t come across as a homicidal nutbag, but it has really impacted my life. Since finding violence in media, I’ve found the drumbeat quieter and easier to live with. Muted. Thanks for reading (if you have :p)
May 05, 2013 @ 23:36:07
Thank you for this really thoughtful and insightful reply. This made more sense to me than the others who have tried to explain their fascination w/ violent movies. I cannot understand it, personally, but as you say, I think that gender is involved.
I guess I go to spirituality to curb my primal urges – I think that a human can be truly transformed and rise above both the primal urge *and* the rational brain. See? That’s what you get for commenting on a blog you randomly stumbled across – they go all God on you.
You don’t sound like a homicidal nutbag; you sound very interesting (but I suppose that homicidal nutbags could be described as interesting, too).
May 05, 2013 @ 05:45:23
When asked if there was validity in the media’s criticism of violence in his movies, Quentin Tarantino said, “Sure, Kill Bill’s a violent movie. But it’s a Tarantino movie. You don’t go to see Metallica and ask the fu^%ers to turn the music down.”
I enjoy movies of all genres. I and lot of my friends see movies as escapism rather than something that we need to mimic in our real life.A rational mind is essential in discerning the realism and fantasy expressed in movies. But I do see where you have a problem. Since humans are irrational by nature, there will be some person or group of persons in our society who will treat movies as bible and try to follow word by word.
Well I suppose we all just have to live with what we have because we all humans can’t become rational being in an instance and neither will we stop making violent movies forever.
May 05, 2013 @ 23:30:10
True. I am hopeful that over time, our society will “gentle” itself and lay off the violent media.
Blog response | Living each day for God
May 04, 2013 @ 19:10:47
May 02, 2013 @ 23:05:14
It comes down to a lack of creativity now days. Films are like music video clips just a montage of violence/sex/nudity with some dialogue thrown in to tie it together. We rarely see any character development anymore, so we don’t know why these characters are doing these things nor do we care because they are so 1 dimensional.
Which brings me to my second point. violence in these films is now glamourized and the people who were once considered the bad guys are the goodies now, we are actually expected to root for the criminal in most of these films which is the real cause of the problem.
The author Roald Dahl said “Don’e ever let the bad guys win” when he was talking about how he writes his stories. It’s a shame Hollywood don’t follow suit.
May 02, 2013 @ 23:56:33
These days, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. I wonder whether that started in Hollywood or Washington D.C.? Either way, I fear that things will get worse before they get better.
May 02, 2013 @ 14:16:20
I can’t say that I am “strong” enough to follow the decision you have with regards to movies, but I whole heartedly agree with ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’.
I think of the people who inspire me. I think what would they do differently. This can help make choices. We all need to start treating the mind just as preciously as we might fawn over our hair.
I am glad you are a vegetarian. This year I became a Vegan. Little by little life is making progress.
May 02, 2013 @ 23:53:12
That’s great! Becoming a vegan is a huge step towards living out your values. It’s such a personal thing, too – what you put into your body. And into our minds, as you say.
Thanks for the comment.
May 03, 2013 @ 01:23:01
Your very welcome 🙂 Thanks for such a thought provoking post on violence in movies, I’m still thinking about it hours later
May 02, 2013 @ 05:29:43
Well said. Our society equates its future by adding ‘-er’ to everything. Faster, better, easier. That’s fine, but it keeps going into: scarier, crazier, sleazier, and if it was correct I would add an -er to violent. We have become desensitized as is proved by the mass viewership of “The Walking Dead”. Have you seen the movie, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”? Can you imagine our society’s picture? It is tucked away horrific beyond our actions.
May 02, 2013 @ 23:51:47
Oh Lord yes – great metaphor. I would hate to see the picture of our true nature! Only a truly desensitized society could develop and USE drones. That is the ultimate in evil to me.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 10:58:14
If our bodies are built from the things we eat then it makes sense to me that our minds (thoughts, personality traits) are built from the things we perceive through our senses. Like you said, garbage in, garbage out.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 17:44:58
I like that – thanks for visiting.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 05:28:29
It’s sad they are substituting pure horror with gorey violence… Most of the movies made in the Golden ages of Horror hardly had any gore in it. It was very PG rated. They depended more on the skill of the writer or director to create movies that made you lose your shit by scaring you mentally not visually. I’m an aspiring horror writing and the industry over the past few years has sickened me. I hate gore and I don’t understand people that are so amazed by it. I know what the anatomy of a person looks like I don’t need to see it pulled outside.
They should be focusing on different techniques and I’m trying so hard to find an original one. It pisses me off to see how shitty writers make so much money off of a shitty horror flick. There are really great writers out there that are hardly getting the chance to get quality material viewed because the load of garbage is way too high.
I’m glad you spoke up about the Violence and Gore in these horror movies. I love Horror not some action packed adventure thriller wanna be horror movies.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 17:47:25
Exactly! I don’t mind peeing my pants in the theater, I just don’t want to vomit. OK, maybe a little crass, but that’s kind of the point. I like being scared by an artful writer. Not by a cheap shot. Thanks for the comment. And good luck with your writing – keep at it; I imagine someday people will tire of crap and appreciate art again.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 17:52:14
I hope to god that ppl appreciate it. Most ppl are so dumb that everything needs to be dumbed down for them. Thank you for the support, hopefully one day you watch a Drishti Sanger film & regain faith in the horror industry 🙂
Apr 29, 2013 @ 23:37:15
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the matter. I will not go into the politics of food or culture, but do applaud your decision to embrace vegetarianism. The less harm we cause to other living beings and the Earth, the less destruction we inflict upon ourselves. In our current socioeconomic system, we do have the right to vote with our wallet. In this sense, we have the power to decide and act upon our consciousness. A very well written post Melanie, congrats once more on your WP feature! 😀
Apr 30, 2013 @ 17:50:20
Thanks! I remember an old poster from an early international ecology conference that said something like, “We have forgotten how to tread gently on the earth as its other creatures do.” That has always stayed with me. I think that gentleness is a lovely quality, and I try to cultivate it in myself. Being a vegetarian is definitely an important step towards that.
Apr 29, 2013 @ 17:23:29
Violence is a pretty natural part of being a human. In fact, I believe a lot of the disorders you rally against above (as someone who has suffered from them) are in part created because we don’t have an outlet for our primitive, animalistic need to hunt, gather, and exercise our survival skills–except for depictions of violence on screen or in books, which is why these things have become so popular in our culture. The reason why it bothers you, even though it’s fake, is also the reason why it has value: the human brain cannot differentiate what is happening on the screen from real-time visual data, which we absorb in our brains which then tell us to fight or flee. I fully appreciate the value of being extremely empathic and feeling the emotions on the screen in an extremely heightened, and sometimes uncomfortable, way. But I think the value of letting this into someone’s psyche and releasing an emotional blockage so they can glimpse themselves from a different angle is extremely beneficial. Fiction is almost always a release. It’s the real world that puts the chaos there in people’s minds in the first place.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 17:59:03
Interesting theory. I understand that Aristotle said something similar. You might be right; it’s all brain chemistry in the end! I wonder, though, if mere exercise wouldn’t release a lot of the same things? You don’t have to be running from a mastadon to secrete flight hormones. You make me think, too, about this newer phenomenon psychologists talk about in addition to fight, flight, and freeze. Submit/attach – like a hostage. Maybe that’s where society is headed. Everyone is in submission mode — just feed me my violence — and has gotten attached to the feelings.
Thanks for visiting!
Apr 29, 2013 @ 16:38:09
Violence creates violence but at least Hitchcock was smart. Nowadays, the Hollywood kill’em all movies are so superficial that they’ll make you go mental. The American cinema isn’t being very productive in that sense. Thanx for the piece 🙂
Apr 30, 2013 @ 18:02:12
Neither productive nor creative.
Thanks for commenting!
Apr 29, 2013 @ 12:57:27
Interesting post. After I read it, I wanted to disagree with you because I don’t usually feel like violence in movies affects my behavior. However, I immediately thought of some instances of things I’ve done which were a direct result of seeing an action in a movie.
For example, I never drank scotch until I saw the movie Anchorman. It’s weird, but after I saw Will Ferrell do the whole “scotch, scotch, scotch, here it goes down, down into my belly,” I thought it was so funny I had to try it.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 18:03:43
That’s really interesting. And now are you an alcoholic?? 🙂
I remember when I was a pre-teen, I saw a girl in a movie with a big fake fur coat and I had to go get one. I was obsessed with being like the girls in the movies. Ah, humans.
Apr 28, 2013 @ 23:57:26
It makes sense an older woman wrote this. You live in a cocoon of security protected by the nanny state. I’m guessing you filter out anything that gives you the slightest hint that your world isn’t filled with butterflies or your nanny state is less powerful and safe then it appears to be. Typical of most Western-modernized countries I guess.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 18:13:29
Ouch – you know how to hurt a girl, dontcha? An older woman indeed. I am not sure that your comment has much to do with my post, and also wonder what age has to do with living in a “cocoon” or a “nanny state” — do you think that twenty-somethings in America have a different experience than middle-aged people? Certainly all Americans are absurdly sheltered compared to much of the world, but I have worked for the CIA, been a drug addict myself, and worked with AIDS orphans and widows in Uganda and Kenya. So I’ve seen some things that don’t look much like butterflies. That doesn’t make me want to watch violent movies.
Apr 28, 2013 @ 20:11:29
It’s obviously up to you what films you watch and I’m sure there would be market for more old fashioned suspense movies without violence if they made them. But its wrong to stop others form watching whatever they want to watch.
Pretend violence obviously does not influence the real world. As the another commentator pointed out violent crime is down and has been for years. I know some stats can be tampered with, but it’s quite difficult to do that with homicide stats (unless people have just got really good at hiding the bodies).
There has always been violence, in fact, in the western world at least, there has never been less violence. A psychopath is a psychopath and watching a movie or reading a book isn’t going to make one iota of difference.
But you sound like a lovely person, so don’t take this personally.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 18:18:58
Good Lord, I wouldn’t be blogging if I took things personally.
I disagree with you, obviously, but won’t repeat my entire blog. I think it’s pretty amusing that two people can look at the same issue and say, “obviously black” or “obviously white.” It does seem like a no-brainer to me, but I’m using the opposite side of the brain than you are, I suppose. I guess that’s the point of WordPress’s Mind the Gap challenges. There’s a gap!
I’ll just point out as I did to the other commenter that there a lot of variables in the crime rate, including huge increases in police and prison populations which have driven down crime.
Thanks for commenting! You sound like a lovely person, too.
Apr 30, 2013 @ 18:23:34
You’re welcome.