I love going to the movies. I really do. I grew up in the suburbs with a movie theater within two miles and I used to walk there often alone. And I enjoy all sorts and manner of movie. Action, romantic comedy, Christmas movie, animated, independent, horror, even foreign films. I love how stories are told. I love good characters.
But…
Come on. You knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you? Recently, in watching action movies I find myself paying attention to the effects of the action. The body count in some of these movies is pretty awful. In so many movies you have police and/or military men and women getting killed or crashing in their helicopters into office buildings. You’ve got regular people in their cars getting turned over because the bad guys are chasing our hero.
And even though the scene follows our hero I find myself wondering about the people in the helicopter or the people on the sidewalk or in the turned over car.
I think the thing I don’t like is the casual nature of the violence in action movies.
Look. In a horror movie you’ll often see young good looking people in the prime of their lives essentially doing two things -getting naked and getting killed. And it’s often ridiculous. But you know what? At least it’s admitting the horrific nature of killing someone. It’s a big deal. So yeah, we get a killer who kills a dozen or so but in the end they pay the price for killing them. When the last standing heroine find the bodies of her friends she’s horrified and running and falling inexplicably but we’re left rooting for her to put a stop to the killing.
Action movies often have so much casual violence that it starts to bug me. How many times do we see a guy in a business suit get in the way of gunplay. The guy goes down and the gunplay continues and we never even bring up the death of the guy in the business suit.
Maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies. But I think I’ve always seen movies as an escape. And maybe when I see a movie deal so casually with death it reminds me too much of the real world.
October 12, 2009 at 3:09 am
That was one thing that struck me about the Hulk (with Eric Bana) was that deaths that did not advance the plot occurred. It was like, in a weird way, seeing Jesus' anger. No injury except to the deserving.
October 12, 2009 at 10:45 am
Jeff Hendrix here, Matthew. As I say in this,
Today, all the above – birth, old age, death – are all kept rigorously (and profitably) far way from the consciousness of most persons. Want to make yourself a pariah of social opprobrium? Suggest that it be otherwise. No, the movies are filled with plenty of killing, sex, heartbreak of sickness, old age, and death – but they are all carefully, dutifully kept far away from the first person singular…
(Death) isn’t such a strange, metaphysical thing. Mortality, being so hidden and kept from the general awareness, makes death the thing of near-pornographic fascination today, as long as it is someone else who is being so fascinating.
Pop culture works vvery hard to keep awareness of our mortality from the consciousness of its denizens. We might stop working so hard for insignificant causes and begin thinking and behaving as though we shd be concerned about Eternity. That wd be hope and change indeed.
October 12, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Great post. Maybe I don't need the Die Hard DVD set. Maybe.
October 12, 2009 at 1:58 pm
"Maybe I'm just getting old."
Thats a part of it. You're probably more acquainted with personal tragedy & death than many other moviegoers. This would be a direct result of living during times when death and infirmity was more familiar on a daily basis than the present.
Modern culture as a whole has moved away from a lot of life's unpleasant realities.
Here are a couple of examples.
Instead of nursing our parents in our homes during their final days, we'll place them in "assisted living facilities". Not too many decades ago they'd have lived with an adult child who would have had more than enough experience with suffering by the time "Mom" or "Dad" shuffled off their mortal coil.
When death DID come to a family the departed would be given a three day wake at home, a family member would sit with the body the entire time. Nowadays the corpse is whisked off to a funeral home, prettied up and placed on display for viewing a few hours of one evening and then buried the following day.
Until 30-40 years ago neighbors routinely interacted with one another, so suffering and trials were inadvertently shared to a greater degree than we see now.
All of this gave greater personal knowledge of Death and infirmity, so going to the cinema to see it had little appeal. We already knew more that enough on the subject, thanks anyway.
But that isn't as true as it once was, so death and disability become more of a vicarious experience. Bring on the buckets of blood and gore, we'll munch the popcorn and go home afterwards with no personal appreciation of what the onscreen suffering might REALLY mean.
The changes in themselves aren't necessarily bad, speaking from personal experience some of them can be beneficial. But we should be more aware of the tradeoffs that have been made. Otherwise as we become more personally disconnected from one another there'll be a greater lack of empathy. Isn't that a direct feed into the current "Culture of Death" mentality?
If my comments ramble a bit and seem vague I apologize. This is a thought provoking post and right now the mind is going in three different directions with it.
October 12, 2009 at 2:32 pm
This post reminds me of a homily Pope Benedict XVI gave at World Youth Day in Sydney. His words definitely put such entertainment in a different light:
Here too, in our personal lives and in our communities, we can encounter a hostility, something dangerous; a poison which threatens to corrode what is good, reshape who we are, and distort the purpose for which we have been created. Examples abound, as you yourselves know. Among the more prevalent are alcohol and drug abuse, and the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, often presented through television and the internet as entertainment. I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation “explain” that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely “entertainment”?
Full text of the speech here:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/sydney08/resource.php?res_id=649
October 12, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Excellent quote, Kristin… and thanks for the original post. The final thought on film as an escape ironically reminding you too much of the real world was a very nice turn of phrase that will stick with me.
October 13, 2009 at 4:27 am
You might compare the remakes of older movies. The movie "3:10 to Yuma" was originally made in the 1950's, the deaths were few in that movie then comes the recent remake..in that version there are so many killings that it was grotesque.
It ruined the whole story. It was more like one of the violent video games on the market–violence for no reason, made no sense. Hollywood cannot get anything right–especially "remakes".
October 13, 2009 at 10:13 pm
"When the last standing heroine find the bodies of her friends she's horrified and running and falling inexplicably but we're left rooting for her to put a stop to the killing."
That's what really ticked me off about those Friday the 13th movies. Jason would be temporarily immobilized (ie nailed to a door or something) and the frantic bimbo would just run away and leave the job unfinished, to whence eventually she herself would be fatally nailed to a door or meet some other demise. For heaven's sake, pull your head out, grab a maled or something and make doubly-sure!! Because they didn't "stop the killing" the movie continued and we got our money's worth without having to jump out of an airplane (and later complained about the stupidity, of course).
Sorry if I veered off topic, Matthew. You're right, of course. I thought I was the only soul sensitive enough who worried about the poor business suit 😉