Why do we watch violent movies?

all's fair in love and mofo but stop trying to boost your post count, keep it to a single post from now on

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Undercoverlovers 100 REDUX

thanks for listening my gussip

I don't see what's violent about movies. I mean sure there are violent movies, but as far as I know - I don't watch films for the violence.

I like violent movies as much as the next person, as long as they stay in the movie and don't jump out of the screen into my neighborhood. However, as I alluded to in one of the first posts, I think we like violent movies because we are uncomfortable with sex in films, at least as a family viewing experience. It seems easier, at least for Americans, to allow their kids to watch violence than sex. Sorry. Shut up again, mark!

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The next person? As in me? I don't watch movies for the violence. I watch movies because I enjoy them. However, blood and gore doesn't bother me and it doesn't make me squirmish.

thesoundoflove is making no sound arguments.

hahaaaaa i'm so clever

some people are like that, but even still, haven't you ever felt that a violent, intense scene has added to a films enjoyment? i think you'd be lying if you said no.

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letterboxd

There is no comparision between violence in the media (be it book, song, TV program, or movie) and the real violence of the Roman circus where men and animals really died in public. Such a comparision is probably what fans reformers fears of violence in the media--the inability of some to distinguish make-believe from reality.

There obviously are comparissons that can be made, or else we would not be making them. In my opinion though, the only real parallel between the Roman bloodsports and our simulated violence is the fact that both satisfy the same set of emotional needs. I would say that it is far better to go the simulated route.

We no longer need to bring simulated battles with real life-and-death struggles into our arenas. This is a more enlightened time. We are now able to bring highly polished and stylized simulacra; as well as whatever actual organized campaigns of murder our government happens to be waging at the moment; into our living rooms.

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Have you ever seen a person slowing down to gape at a wreck on the highway hope out of his car and try to assist the police, wrecker drivers and EMTs already at the scene? Or does that concern end with a look at the wreckage?

If people ogle traffic wrecks and crime scenes only out of empathy for their fellow men, then why don't they go to strangers' funerals for the same reason? (Funerals of everyday people, I mean, not the famous or infamous). At funerals you can actually contribute something--flowers, condolences, food for the family as we do down here in the South. One could contribute even more if one volunteered to help at hospitals for burn victims or for people crippled in those accidents or a cancer center for children.

Slowing down at accidents and showing up at crime seasons, you just get in the way of people trying to contribute something to the rescue and investigation.

But then a neatly dressed cadaver in a coffin or a paralyzed child isn't nearly as "entertaining" as a bloody wreck or a bullet-riddled body on the sidewalk.

Actually, I was responding to your comparisions of books, religious literature and Roman circuses by arguing there is no basis for comparision.

If humans really have an emotional need to witness the execution of living things, there would be a fortune to be made selling tickets to slaughter houses and the back rooms where stray dogs and cats are "put down."

I don't think that's part of our nature, like some fictional werewolf's need to eat flesh or a fictional vampire's need to drink blood.

You seem to have misunderstood me. I never said that there is an emotional need to "witness the execution of living things." There is however a widespread and universal interest in witnessing dramatic and compelling physical struggles. Your slaughterhouse show sounds promising, but if the cattle were allowed to have a go at the butcher, you'd sell far more tickets.No, it's nothing like that at all. It's not a basic physical need. It's an emotional need.

I've longed argued that hours of violent video games conditions a person's reflexes to pick up a gun and fire at a human-like target. It's the same principle the Army used on the shooting range during basic training. Dozens of young men out there banging away at humon-sihouette targets that fall down when hit. All to get us used to all the noise and confusion around us and to pick off human-like targets.

Games don't make people want to kill (unless there's something wrong with them to start with), but it trains your reflexes to act almost without thinking so that your instinct is to fire first.

The slaughter house where the cattle fight back is called bullfighting and can still be witnessed at some rings in Mexico. There are still in this country illegal cock-fights and dog-fights where people make bets on which animal will live or die. I've been to illegal greyhound races in West Texas where they use live rabbits--no photo finishes needed, you can hear the rabbit squeal when the dog grabs him, just before the pack rips him apart.

Is that part of this "universal interest in witnessing dramatic and compelling physical struggles"? Or is it just sadistic destruction of animals for human enjoyment? There are real physical struggles in a bull ring or the dog and chicken death rings than at a car wreck where all that can be seen is twisted metal and the lights of cop cars and wreckers.

Personally, I think violence is a developed taste, not something that is wired into our DNA. Some people like to participate in violence, some people like to watch it, and some of us really don't care for it.

On the other hand, if games constitute the whole of your experience with firearms, you'll get some false expectations too. No recoil

My point wasn't that people flood crime scenes because they have empathy, they're not there to pay condolences, it's pure curiosity. When somebody tells you their friend died the first question that comes to most people's minds is 'how'? How old were they? The younger it is the more tragic it is and the more stirring of emotions you feel. And i wasn't condoning people hindering crime investigation i was merely saying that it's instinct to wonder and that if you aren't wondering you have a serious problem. This happened to me the other day, traffic was already slow because of an accident so i myself didn't physically slow down for the accident but i, and everybody in the car, looked to see how bad it was or if anyone was hurt or if there was an ambulance, my friend thought she saw her mom's car so she called her mom (who was fine) so yeah i don't see anything wrong with that.

And especially with this, this is completely not the point i was trying to make at all. People don't get out of their cars to help because they're not trained professionals, are you saying that it would be more humane if people went to everybody's funerals and tried to help police? I think this would be disrespectful to families and disruptive to police. Concern does for the most part end with a look at the wreckage because what more can somebody do? What are you asking of the human race? lol that sounds a little ridiculous but seriously

haha exactly, videogames don't teach kids how to load a clip into a gun.

My point exactly. In fact, it was imported from Spain where it may have had it's origins in the old Roman arenas.Yes.There is an element of that too, of course. But if that's the whole of it, why the struggle? Why not just tie the poor things down and play Russian roulette with them until one is killed?I am not making a judgment on the 'nature vs. nurture' of it one way or the other. I am simply making an observation that there seems to be a universal preference across many geographic, cultural and chronological boundaries; thus suggesting that it may represent an expression of a universal emotional need. And perhaps only the most far-gone psychopaths and remote autistics could have no emotional reaction to it at all. Though personal reactions may vary, I am sure that we can agree on the fact that violence is universally compelling. I would argue that both the capacity for violence and the fear of violence are parts of human nature.

It would appear you are on both sides of the argument, Lucifer. You say you're not making a judgment "one way or the other" on nature vs. nurture, but then you say the capacity and fear of violence are "parts of human nature." From this and other statements, I get the impression you see violence being as natural and essential to humans as hunger, thirst, and sex.

I don't believe that's the case, however, or that media images of violence are some sort of a substitute to satisfy a need for violence, considering that through most of the history of the world, most of the people who have lived on this planet did not have access to books, movies, television, circuses or any of the modern forms of entertainment. And although I can't prove it, I suspect that most people over the ages have lived out their lives without witnessing violence to any large degree; in fact, I imagine most were never exposed to violence at all, considering that the population usually was on the upswing. Even the plagues of the dark and middle ages did not kill most of the people. The Romans built arenas in many cities over the life of that empire, but the total population of those cities were small compared with the vast urban areas that had no access to such arenas.

In other words, if the human race has a compulsion for violence as a basic part of its nature, then how was that need satisfied among the vast majority of people with no access to violence?

If one reads period diaries and other sources about about normal behavior and life in this country hundreds of years ago, one finds various entertainments listed: making music, singing, ice cream dinners, taffy pulls, picnics, church socials, racing, wrestling, ball games, cards, etc., basically non-violent events. There also existed in that period public executions, lynchings, duels, bear baitings, dog fights, but with the exception of the last two, no one classified these as entertainment, and relatively few people witnessed such violence and even fewer participated in it. The fact that in time every state outlawed such activities indicates that such violence is not welcome within our society.

Moreover, I find few things physical or mental in humans that I would class as "universal" because there are always exceptions. You and I can form opinions about violence based on observations of what is really very small samples of world's total population. But I submit that we probably don't know very much about most of the world's population.

For instance, I wonder if Mother Teresa ever rubbernecked at a traffic accident? Do the Friends, Quakers and other such groups today gather at crime scenes and make faces into TV cameras? What about the pacifists who have gone to prison rather than go to war or who served as medics, often unarmed, on and near battlefields? I believe there are people out there like Ghandi who sincerely preach and practice non-violence even to the point of not trying to defend themselves against attackers. And what about citizen soldiers down through the ages who have come back from wars shattered by what they have seen and refuse to talk about their experiences? How is that possible if we all have a "need" for violence?

I suspect that people--especially young people--who prefer movies of violence and horror are more likely expressing a desire to shock their parents and old grumps like me more than fulfilling a need to witness violence. Moreover, I think it's a market that has successfully been sold via smart advertising that both creates a market and then fills its "need." I also suspect that most of the folks who prefer those violent movies would puke if they ever witnessed the real thing, because violence is as foreign to their emotional makeup as a space-walk.

You said in your original post: "Wouldn't you be way more alarmed if there were body bags on the side walk and somebody just kept on walking without a glance?" From which I inferred you supported the opposite view that rubbernecking at an accident indicated you really cared what happened to the strangers in that wreck. My response is that if one really cared about the unknown victim, one would stop and inquire if assistance was needed, even if it was no more than to make a coffee run for all of the emergency crews at the scene. Or lend that cell phone to the accident victim so she could call her mother. Or go to the funeral--or at least send a card--to tell the victim's survivors that you share their loss. That would show some empathy and support of fellow human beings. Rubbernecking is, as you say above, "pure curiosity." Which to me means that one doesn't really care what happened to the folks in the wreck but just want a glimpse of the wreckage.

Let me give you just one example of why I have such deep disregard for rubberneckers. One time when I was working the newspaper's police beat down in Orange, Tex., I ran the scene of wreck on a narrow highway outside of town. A tanker truck had jacknifed across the two traffic lanes and an on-coming dump truck had smashed into the tank-trailer so that the hood and trailer were crushed around the dump truck trapping the driver inside. Police and wreckers were at the scene when I arrived and the rescue crews were trying to figure a way to get the driver out. With the road blocked other traffic was pulling off the road and people started getting out of their vehicles and walking up to the wreck for a better look. First thing I noticed when I arrived was liquid dripping out of the tanker and spreading across the roadway. It could have been gasoline or other inflammables. It could have been acid. It could have been corrosive. It might even be poison or explosive. Whatever it was, I made damn sure I didn't step into it. But the cops, wrecker drivers, and EMTs had to in order to reach the driver. The liquid continued to spread until it reached the crowd of onlookers. One police officer was trying usuccessfully to move them back from the fluid pooling around their feet. Meanwhile several of the crowd were smoking cigarettes and dropping lighted butts onto the roadway! If it had been inflammable, it would have burned the driver trapped in the wreckage. killed a couple of cops, and consumed the front row of spectators. That sort of ignorance of danger is, I think, typical of rubberneckers. I've seen them nearly run down policemen or actually collide with other cars because they were looking back at a wreck instead of looking ahead at where their car was moving.

But most people "don't see anything wrong with that" because they haven't yet caused a second accident while gapeing at the first. And they don't have the emphathy to think how the people trapped in the wreckage feel about being the center of their idle curiosity.

Now what about me? Back when I was covering cop shops for newspapers, I was somewhere between the rubberneckers and the rescue workers. I carried a pass issued by the police department that gave me access to accident and crime scenes. I usually knew some of the cops or detectives at the scene or, more important in Houston, the medical examiner who was the one authorized to retrieve the dead person's identification He usually would then read it out loud so we reporters could get the name, age, and address of the victim. Once when the shooting occurred on the grounds of a factory, the security guards wouldn't let us in. I was approaching an early morning deadline when the medical examiner drove up in his station wagon. "Why are you guys out here?" he asked. We told him we were banned from private property. "Get in," he says. Then he flashes his badge and drives past the security guard. We wait in his car while he goes in to get the ID and basic data, then comes out to brief us. We write it down, jump out of the wagon and run out the factory gate to our cars parked across the street.

So unlike the rubberneckers, I was doing a job, taking photos, taking notes. Unlike them, I really didn't want to be there, and I knew not to get in the way of emergency workers.

And like the cops and EMTs, I learned to focus on my job, and not the victims. That's the only way I could photograph a family of children killed in a fire, laid out like flowers in the grass by their smoking home.

Point being, I've seen so many dead and dying that I don't ever want to see any more, not even the pretend violence of the movies. So when I pass a wreck on the highway, I never look at the wreckage but watch out that the rubberneckers don't run over me.