General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDirector Peter Bogdanovich: What If Movies Are Part of the Problem?
Obviously, there is violence in the world, and you have to deal with it. But there are other ways to do it without showing people getting blown up. One of the most horrible movies ever made was Fritz Lang's M, about a child murderer. But he didn't show the murder of the child. The child is playing with a rubber ball and a balloon. When the killer takes her behind the bushes, we see the ball roll out from the bushes. And then he cuts to the balloon flying up into the sky. Everybody who sees it feels a different kind of chill up their back, a horrible feeling. So this argument that you have to have violence shown in gory details is not true. It's much more artistic to show it in a different way.
Today, there's a general numbing of the audience. There's too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it's not so terrible. Back in the '70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, "We're brutalizing the audience. We're going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum." The respect for human life seems to be eroding.
(...)
Dorothy was murdered by a guy who was not even legally in the United States, and he bought a gun here. It's out of control. Anytime there's a massacre, which is almost yearly now, we say, "Well, it's not the guns. Guns don't kill people. People kill people" and all that bullshit from the NRA. Politicians are afraid to touch it because of the right wing. And nothing ever changes. We're living in the Wild West.
I'm not sure what the solution is. I just know that the violence in this country is out of control. And the fact that guns are so easy to get is chilling. But nobody wants to blame the movies. Nobody wants to blame guns. And yet, it's so easy to buy them and there are more murders in this country than anywhere else.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dark-knight-rises-shooting-peter-bogdanovich-353774
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
KT2000
(20,577 posts)are even more influential. Those things put the player in the role of killing people. I wonder what the game players really feel when they kill someone in a game.
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)Most of the time I feel nothing, because I know it isn't real. Now there are some companies that can make me care about their characters, such as Bioware, but normally I feel nothing, since it isn't real. For example, in Mass Effect when I had to choose to leave one of my crew behind to die to complete the mission, I felt something because I cared about the characters. Most of the time, though, it's nothing.
flamingdem
(39,313 posts)I had that question on my mind -- since I don't play
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)and killing someone in real life.
Who among us hasn't thought about a fellow human being, "If you were crossing the street in front of my car, I might just hit the gas instead of the brakes?"
It's a huge difference to think something like that and do it, however. Everyone has thoughts like that, but very few people actually do it.
Violent video games are the mental equivalent of the really good revenge fantasy. The thoughts and the cares of the day just melt away.
Video games have as much to do with mass murder as revenge fantasies do.
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)but some people seem to disagree.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)You are desensitized to killing the enemies but it bothered you to leave on of your own behind? That is the exact problem here. There is a thrill as long as no one they know or like gets hurt.
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)and it makes sense to an extent, but I still don't think it is accurate to say people who play games are desensitized. People who know me wouldn't describe me as desensitized to death in real life. There is a world of difference between games and reality and most people know that.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)I understand that there are plenty of well adjusted a people who play video games.
I just think that it is worth exploring whether some are affected in ways that desensitize them in such a way that they would not have any physiological reaction to watching murder scenes in movies. By extension they are not affected by learning that someone they knew got robbed.
Confusious
(8,317 posts)Theres a difference between reality and fantasy.
You can shoot and kill little wisps of digitial fantasy, that's all they are. There's no desensitation. at least how you think.
I personally had a had time killing a grasshopper that was eating my sunflowers, until it got to be so bad it was the sunflowers or the grasshopper. I chose the grasshopper.
I've played these games for 30 years. I haven't gone on any rampages, and I don't even own a gun.
If you want something to blame, how about the kids and thier "rock and roll"
Confusious
(8,317 posts)in mass effect 3. if you use that logic, then killing ghosts in pacman desensitizes you.
grantcart
(53,061 posts)I am not arguing that you are or you are not but you cannot tell by yourself.
It requires a doubleblind study to give any useful data.
My father was a dentist and one of his favorite jokes was relating the story of a dentist who got one of the new high speed drills in the 40s. Everyone noticed that it had a very loud shrill when it was used and people wondered if it would effect their hearing.
This guy responded one day "I have had it for two years and use it constantly and I can hardly hear it anymore".
Alduin
(501 posts)why should anyone feel remorse for killing a pixelated, computer-generated character in a video game? Seriously now. Who feels remorse for killing video game characters?
I felt terrible and terrified after I heard about the theater shooting last Friday. I also play violent video games.
grantcart
(53,061 posts)the brain to produce increasingly lower levels of epinephrine and other hormones causing it to change how it views violence.
For much of the population there may be little effect but it is possible, even likely that for males under the age of 25 constant exposure would have an impact on the way that the brain processes violence and responds chemically to it.
Confusious
(8,317 posts)double blind study. 
If anything, I care more about life as I've gotten older, not less, and I've played these games for 30 years.
Alduin
(501 posts)because I know it's just a game.
When I hear about people getting killed everywhere, it upsets me and freaks me out.
Confusious
(8,317 posts)Like monopoly. It's a game, I won.
now, I've shot a gun, and been shot. Seen people die in grisily ways in the movies, "saving private Ryan" comes to mind. Heard it described in documentaries. Had to put pets to sleep, and had family members die.
Totally different feeling.
Being shot, massive fear
movies, fear and sadness at seeing people shot
putting pets to sleep, massive sadness
family members dying, massive sadness
Totaly different feeling.
I would like to repeat the former (I won!) and not repeat the latters.
kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)Sorting between them is an exercise in mining meaningless distinctions. The pornography of FPS ultraviolence may dominate video games completely, but with movies today based on comics and video games -and with action flicks from even 30 years ago expected to deliver body counts that rivaled Vietnam- viewers addicted to ultraviolent fantasy can go to movies every week and reliably find what they're looking for. Other viewers hoping to see the next Citizen Kane or Paper Moon must scour the direct to DVD independent and foreign catalogs.
pnwmom
(108,978 posts)loli phabay
(5,580 posts)how far would you want to go, not even sure if you could get them all banned anyway. What happens when people say its the books or the internet, not sure i am comfortable with banning stuff.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)x number of graphic deaths = NC17.
Who knows? As alluded to in the OP, leaving something up to the imagination might make the movies better.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)but some movies just wouldnt work without i hate saying it seeing some of the gore. would be interesting to see them try though.
pnwmom
(108,978 posts)and adjusting their behavior accordingly.
HCE SuiGeneris
(14,994 posts)However, $$$ and escapism are winning out... 
MADem
(135,425 posts)more graphic depictions, I guess.
For example, crazed killer approaches victim with chainsaw. Fires up chainsaw, close up of chainsaw, close up of terrified victim, then a close up of the killer with a crazed expression on his fact accompanied by a sound effect suggesting the chainsaw has met the victim (crunching bone or what have you) and then some blood getting sprayed on the murderer's face...
No actual violence is depicted, but we get the idea.
It's like the cutaway to the roaring fire or the curtains in the open window wafting in the breeze with music rising to a crescendo...those were "cues" for s-e-x...we never saw any, but we got the idea!
Movies were cheaper back in the dark ages, too--I guess for the price of them these days, people demand a great deal of detail...!
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)lol i totally forgot about those unti this post. not sure todays audience would go for it though.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)must have been a horrifically violent read.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)She had to leave.
Fantasy violence had lost its taste for her after seeing years of real violence.
Irishonly
(3,344 posts)Violence bothers me. I don't think I have seen the battle scenes in LOTR. I have never watched Harry Potter's owl die. When I was a kid and saw "Old Yeller" my uncle and a man sitting in back of us were trying their best to comfort me.
I don't think anybody can be "entertained" by violence except if they are extremely superficial and probably bored to death already.
I think Bobcat Goldthwait makes this point very convincingly (and not without irony) in God Bless America (2011).
When I tried watching the first of Nolan's Batman movies I had to turn it off after ten minutes because I found it simply disgusting.
AlphaCentauri
(6,460 posts)on how to commit a crime.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Tangled showed the audience how not to steal a crown. Flynn was a lousy thief.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)I feel the same about most movie sex scenes. The first few times showing all the details was pushing the boundaries, shocking, realistic, etc.
These days it's just fucking boring and a waste of movie time.
Not very creative, either. I like films that creep me out but i can't quite put my finger on the reason.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)
GTurck
(826 posts)having won free tickets to Cinemax I cannot seem to find anything worth seeing. Either violent or insipid and often both. Many themes are aimed directly at teens (PG-13) just to make sure the theaters make money but there is nothing thoughtful and absolutely no great story-telling from the revues I read. Last movie we saw was Avatar, which was okay but not worth even renting to see again.
6000eliot
(5,643 posts)slampoet
(5,032 posts)Bad Example.
Very few American films show child deaths in any detail. It just isn't done.
FedUpWithIt All
(4,442 posts)It was quite popular and more than a little disturbing.
slampoet
(5,032 posts)Not even close to the Japanese movie Battle Royale which is what Hunger Games ripped off wholesale.
FedUpWithIt All
(4,442 posts)I wasn't making a point about the quality or history of the film. I was pointing out that children are murdered in film and it is graphically shown
slampoet
(5,032 posts)playing advance age teens that you call children and no one else does.
Compare that to the child death scene in The Heroic Trio
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105619/
In this movie there is a group of babies in cloth diapers that die in a pile and they even show the infants screaming and wetting their diapers as they all die together.
Oh and why do they die? Not for some game they are pawns in, but instead because the toddlers are Born Evil and in the plot of the movie deserve to die.
Again. US movies don't go there.
FedUpWithIt All
(4,442 posts)
She looks like an adult? This is the actress, now 13, that played Rue.
This is actor Ian Nelson who was depicting a child known as "district 3 boy" and who's character was killed in a viscous neck breaking scene.
Here is Ethan Jamieson, character shown slaughtered by machete.
These are children.
JI7
(89,250 posts)loli phabay
(5,580 posts)Zalatix
(8,994 posts)You'll be sorry. But then you have to wonder... why doesn't that inspire Japanese viewers to violence?
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)i think its a cultural difference, maybe they internalise it and it comes out a different way.
eShirl
(18,492 posts)Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, coincidentally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)problem. And if you think mass murders only happen in the U.S., think again.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)Not sure why but that country is always mentioned as if they have no major problems with violence. It really isn't the case.
And of course no matter how clearly its said, this idea that we should look at, consider, examine the role of these things... there are many responses which seem to be more fitting responses to a call for banning things.
Then again there are a few who think any call for any kind of reflection or consideration is either the first step on the road to bans or an outright lie intended to trick people into endorsing bans. It's beyond silly.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)Last edited Thu Jul 26, 2012, 10:30 AM - Edit history (1)
and yet as others love to point out: they are no where near as violent as we are.
/is this the 90s already?
Javaman
(62,530 posts)crap movie but really violent.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)on edit
"Japanese government surveys and National Police Agency statistics show that approximately one-third of women have "suffered physical assaults, psychological threats or sexual coercion from their current or former partners."
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120617rp.html
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)A movie doesn't draw a crowd unless someone is getting blown up.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Last year's top 10 US films by gross:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
2 Transformers: Dark of the Moon
3 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
4 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
5 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
6 Kung Fu Panda 2
7 Fast Five Universal
8 The Hangover Part II Warner Bros.
10 Cars 2
I see three out of ten that would have action with firearms or explosives in something like a realistic setting. The rest is fantasy kid fare and comedy. "A movie doesn't draw a crowd unless someone is getting blown up"? Cars 2? Is Potter an agent of witchcraft, the right wing says so!
Facts are better than rhetoric.
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)pesky facts! You are destorying some perfectly good outrage!!1
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)audiences. 'No one shows up without violence' and yet the entire top 50 of last year holds few shoot 'em ups, lots of children's fare, fantasy, comedy makes piles of money. Yet people love to say 'those other people, they only watch gore, and that is all that draws'. If you want to make money, make Toy Story. That's the fact.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)didn't actually watch the violent movie he interrupted.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)nt
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)'blame movies/hip hop/video games' meme.
If people don't like shoot 'em movies, then don't go. The facts you presented clearly show that.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Cause there's a war, torture, a huge battle, plenty of death. Just because its a kids show doesnt mean violence isnt depicted. Kung Fu Panda was a beautifully animated film about abandonment and battling a despotic ruthless dictator. It still had lots of fight scenes and explosions. I personally know the people who worked on both Panda films and that the studio was very nervous about how all those fight scenes would go over with parents. (similar to the concerns held by CN when they produced Samurai Jack) Turns out it was fine. Our culture and movie rating system accepts violence while repressing sexuality. Know how you get death, violence, torture in PG rated films passed the board? All you have to do is not show blood. That's how you get a pass and how children see more than 200,000 deaths depicted in media. And that's not including video games.
Now I'm not saying movies cause violence in our culture, but they do desensitize people. Even the movies marketed to children when you strip away the colorful images are dark and full of violence. Look at the Twilight series. Look at every superhero/comic book story. They are dark tales as were the fairy tales of old.
You want to make money in movies? The key in that list above isn't violence or cartoons or even story. It's VFX. Yknow the workers most treated like shite by the industry. Without thousands of 3D animators, compositors, lighters all those films wouldn't have made a splash.
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)Research indicates that media violence has not just increased in quantity; it has also become
more graphic, sexual, and sadistic. 1
A September 2000 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report showed that 80 percent of “R” rated movies,
70 percent of restricted video games, and 100 percent of music with “explicit content” warning labels
were being marketed to children under 17. 2
By the time the average child is eighteen years old, they will have witnessed 200,000 acts of violence
and 16,000 murders. 3
Media violence is especially damaging to young children (under 8) because they cannot easily tell the
difference between real life and fantasy. 4
More information and further links on this document: http://www.jacksonkatz.com/PDF/ChildrenMedia.pdf
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)And yet that is simply not the truth. Which of last years top films bothered you so much? The Panda one or Harry Potter?
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)that happened in the wake of that report. Perhaps you can provide more current stats? That FTC study brought some major and well needed changes. 12 years ago.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95605&page=1#.UBFd9qDCaSo
Javaman
(62,530 posts)video rentals.
That and crap writers.
video rentals cut a huge swath through movie theater profits. Hence the higher prices. Also, rather than showing films with good story lines (which only seem to reside now in "art house" theaters), the big movie chains needed to resort to sensationalism to draw in their big money demographic: teens.
Lots of explosions, lots of overly dramatic mellow drama, lot's of over the top killings and a huge dose of completely unrealistic situations that are passed off, by the very thinnest of script plots, as plausible.
The big chain theaters now offer an "experience" not a pleasurable movie experience.
Every movie that I have seen in the last 2 years in an actual chain theater has always had one half wit movie goer yell at the screen. Which takes me out of the moment.
I avoid them like the plague now.
Most of the movie going audience don't want a story. They get plenty of well written stuff on cable now. People go to the big box theaters to be "wow'd".
the bottom line (as I said in another thread) is: mental illness, in this nation, is either not diagnosed properly or not diagnosed at all.
Combine any sort of psychopathy with anything and you can have problems; whether it's movies, video games, milkshakes, or too many tacos. If the person was predisposed to violent outbursts, (whether or not any incidences occurred before), it won't take much for them to be set off.
We've had countless mass shootings here in the U.S. and nothing has been done to deal with the screening the mentally ill from the gun purchasing process.
(FYI: full disclosure: I play "violent" video games and really enjoy a good "shoot'em up" action movie, yet I don't own any guns and abhor violence of any kind against real people or animals)
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)"Lots of explosions, lots of overly dramatic mellow drama, lot's of over the top killings"
Last year's top ten.
1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
2 Transformers: Dark of the Moon
3 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
4 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
5 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
6 Kung Fu Panda 2
7 Fast Five Universal
8 The Hangover Part II Warner Bros.
10 Cars 2
I mean, Kung Fu Panda was gruesome stuff, over the top killings even worse than Cars 2 or Harry Potter! And all that melodrama we see in the Hangover Part 2.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)and just because a movie isn't a top grosser, doesn't mean it still doesn't get play time at the big box theaters.
of the first 5, 3 have explosions, 5 have violence.
And you don't think those 5 are "sensational"? They are all fantacy films.
sen·sa·tion·al·ism /sɛnˈseɪʃənlˌɪzəm/ Show Spelled[sen-sey-shuh-nl-iz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1. subject matter, language, or style producing or designed to produce startling or thrilling impressions or to excite and please vulgar taste.
wow.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Pirates is a comedy. "lot's of over the top killings". Which film had that? Fantasy films are fantasy films, not 'melodrama' and comedy is comedy. Do you really feel that Potter is designed to please 'vulgar tastes' or is it made to please young viewers? Vulgar? Seriously?
And what of the other 5? What of the top 20? The top 50?
What in those films is different from films 20 years ago? Which is as violent as say, Bonnie and Clyde or Star Wars?
Javaman
(62,530 posts)and chose to use it via it's second reference and not it's first. Hmmm
vul·gar/ˈvəlgər/Adjective:
1.Lacking sophistication or good taste; unrefined: "the vulgar trappings of wealth".
2.Making explicit and offensive reference to sex or bodily functions; coarse and rude: "a vulgar joke".
we're done.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Plus I'm not speaking of dramatic styles the subject is violence in films, not the quality of the acting or the tone of the narrative. What I took issue with is the wild hyperbole in this statement:
"Lots of explosions, lots of overly dramatic mellow drama, lot's of over the top killings"
The actual box office figures do not support that at all. Note I am not saying any of the films are 'good films' or 'well acted' or anything at all other than the fact that Americans turn out in droves to see many films that are not filled with lots of over the top killings and gun violence. To say otherwise is just false. Which is why I stuck to the point, and to specific facts. I think 'does melodrama cause societal problems' is a separate subject from the violence question, how's that?
Javaman
(62,530 posts)we're done.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)I still note that you simply ignored every single specific question asked of you, and each and every fact brought to the table. It is what it is. Facts take priority over bullshit.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)"Most of the movie going audience don't want a story. They get plenty of well written stuff on cable now. People go to the big box theaters to be "wow'd"."
Audiences don't give a damn about story. If they did there are plenty of non effects movies big on story they could go see. Audiences don't go see them. Even when they are packed with big name actors. People go to be wow'ed. That's why all the studios are pushing 3D and now shooting at 48 frames a second to up the wow factor. That's why movies are packed with ever increasing amounts of FX. It's the FX in those movies that drew audiences.
Hangover 2 was only successful because it piggybacked on the unexpected success of the first.
GOTV
(3,759 posts)4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)so they aren't quite as violent.
A .45 is just that much more evil than a 9 mm.
GOTV
(3,759 posts)
ailsagirl
(22,897 posts)That's why it's a bit tricky to blame it on movies and video games. I think it's a huge and very complicated problem with many facets. It's not something that can be explained away in a few sentences. I don't have any answers.
reorg
(3,317 posts)I'm not saying they do but it is interesting to note that after a single rare case in the sixties, there has been a string of school shootings in Germany since 2002, all committed by adolescents who played violent video games and watched violent movies ...
Bremen 1913
Volkhoven, Juni 1964
Eching und Freising, Februar 2002
Erfurt, April 2002 (17 deaths)
Coburg, Juli 2003
Emsdetten, November 2006
Winnenden, März 2009 (15 deaths)
Ansbach, September 2009
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoklauf_an_einer_Schule
They got their guns illegally, though, and after the first major incident, gun laws were immediately changed. Who knows what it would be like if they could just mail order assault weapons.
I think violence in the media is just a symptom, perhaps a booster of already existing violent habits and impulses, but perhaps, in some rare cases, playing Doom for hours and weeks may give a troubled boy some bad ideas ... (I introduced my 14-year-old niece to Doom and she turned out fine, so I wouldn't try and make a case for causal relationship there).
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)Just makes me want to shake a cane at those whippersnappers!
Swede
(33,246 posts)
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)He kills his family at home, moves on to an oil refinery where he sniper shoots and kills several passersby, then he goes to kill more at a drive in movie theater. This film was written, produced and directed by Peter Bogdonovich, it was his greeting card to the industry, and he based it on the Texas campus shootings. He cast the best looking shooter he could find. Uh huh. He did all of this in 1968, more than 40 years before the films he, as an old man, takes issue with.
Funny that when it was his career, his first thought was to make a film about a mass murderer. I am sure Peter is stung by the irony, as he was perhaps the first to film a scene of mass gun death set at a movie theater.
Blecht
(3,803 posts)1. Bogdonavich sure sounds like a bitter has-been trying to pry his way into the headlines with all this.
2. Or maybe he is being honest with his current opinion and feels guilty about the choices he made as a young director.
It's hard to tell, but the cynic in me leans toward possibility #1.
reorg
(3,317 posts)Haven't watched it, just asking the question.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)and hyper self serving. He does not mention is own work in 69, yet paints himself in 70 as a sage with Wells.
reorg
(3,317 posts)in a way he criticizes now?
You haven't really made a point yet.
Making a movie about a mass murder can be the exact opposite of "violence in the media", case in point:
God Bless America (2011)
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)portrayed a mass, single shooter killing in a movie theater. It is obviously on his mind, it was written by him, produced and directed by him. Yet he fails to so much as mention that film, his film, one of two films I know of which depict random mass shootings during a public film screening.
The Bobcat film is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Loved it. Many people on DU thought it 'glorified violence' because it depicted violence. This stuff is as old as the stage, and rather than blaming the media we might as well blame Medea. Or Antigone.
Here's a thread about God Bless America...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002287689
reorg
(3,317 posts)- maybe I should watch that movie before talking about it but I don't think portraying a mass killing in a movie theater is necessarily "brutalizing the audience" or "part of the problem".
Bogdanovich points out that there are different ways to "show" violence, he doesn't say it should be ignored or never be the subject of a movie.
Interestingly, the thread on God Bless America is not about the movie, it's about the trailer, LOL. The movie did not just "depict" violence, though, it was a reflection on violence, on a violent society AND on its depiction, with many interesting references. It never "glorified" violence, as do other movies such as for instance the boring Batman crap by one Mr Nolan.
reorg
(3,317 posts)Bogdanovich does NOT "leave his own work out of the equation", on the contrary, he specifically mentions it:
We made Targets 44 years ago. It was based on something that happened in Texas, when that guy Charles Whitman shot a bunch of people after killing his mother and his wife. Paramount bought it, but then was terrified by it when Martin Luther King was killed and Bobby Kennedy was killed. The studio didn't want to release the film at all. So they released it with a pro-gun-control campaign, but that made the picture seem like a documentary to people, and it didn't do too well.
It was meant to be a cautionary fable. It was a way of saying the Boris Karloff kind of violence, the Victorian violence of the past, wasn't as scary as the kind of random violence that we associate with a sniper -- or what happened last weekend. That's modern horror. At first, some of the people [at The Dark Knight Rises] thought it was part of the movie. That's very telling.
Violence on the screen has increased tenfold. It's almost pornographic. In fact, it is pornographic. Video games are violent, too. It's all out of control. I can see where it would drive somebody crazy.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dark-knight-rises-shooting-peter-bogdanovich-353774
Targets is a suspense thriller, very calm. I think Bogdanovich describes his own preference, reaching back to when he made Targets and used several times in that film, when he says it is more artistic to show horrific scenes indirectly, not "in gory details".
Other filmmakers might disagree, but Bogdanovich is truthful and consistent. But I guess he pisses off some people who dislike his statements regarding guns:
... Things have gotten worse when it comes to the control of guns. This guy in Colorado legally had an arsenal. What's an AK attack rifle for? What is that for but to kill people? It's not for hunting. Why is it for sale? It boggles the mind.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dark-knight-rises-shooting-peter-bogdanovich-353774
Right on, Mr Bogdanovich.
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)He spends the entire book trying to make Hugh Hefner a critical factor in Paul Snider's murderous actions.
And yet, he is able to somehow ignore his own "culpability"
Hmmm...
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)He has made some of my all time favorite films. He also gives me the creeps for exactly that reason.
randome
(34,845 posts)Not sure if that person could be said to have been 'desensitized' by American worship of movies. Unless movies are a type of infection.
Swede
(33,246 posts)nt
BOG PERSON
(2,916 posts)that settles it. Orson Welles hates the first amendment and doesn't understand movies!
randome
(34,845 posts)But I am open to a discussion about it. But the responses in this thread are interesting.
Many posters seem to think their personal experience has something to do with the more generalized question of video game violence and think that trumps all else.
"If I am not a serial killer, then obviously your premise is wrong."
Not really.
Some come across as defensive instead of curious.
I think that obviously *most* people can watch a violent movie, game, own a gun, etc WITHOUT acting themselves in a violent way. Otherwise we would have 1000 times more than what we have now.
So, when people say *they* are not affected, ok - statistically it's true that *most* will not be. HOWEVER, does it increase the likely hood that SOME will act? That is where the debate goes for me. And then, what do WE as a society decide is worth our movies, games, guns, etc.
I don't want a ton of regulation, but I believe that not having regulation in itself requires US to be responsible for what we support. That could mean we dont buy the stuff, or we create support to deal with people that are affected, or other solutions - but we dont ignore it and pretend that the only thing that matters is MY rights, or MY desires.
In the end, its true we get the society and culture we deserve.
And I agree it's interesting. I hope that we *really* look at all facets of the issue and not just react out of fear or rage.
reorg
(3,317 posts)I don't think so, it sounds more like he is talking about the ethics of filmmaking.
thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)Not the other way around
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)nt
grasswire
(50,130 posts)but I don't believe your blanket statement is accurate.
Do you have something to substantiate your statement?
thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)That's all you need to do
grasswire
(50,130 posts)A whole huge profession is based on the premise that the mind can be influenced through images and words and other triggers.
Why would not the same be true of movies and games? Why would they not influence our lives and our choices?
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Are just a reflection of what is happening in modern society. If anything in my mind can be blamed for the general downfall of our society it is the actions of our leaders. The way they justify unleashing the most powerful war machine that ever existed against some of the poorest people on the planet. The way they continually push the envelope with war crimes or police brutality that are never brought to justice. These crimes are slowly becoming considered the new normal. The blatant disregard for humanity exhibited by our politicians and corporations is the only thing that has trickled down.