The question of the impact of movie and TV violence

[Cyrano]

When I was a kid, America's self-appointed "Puritans" claimed there was too much violence in the movies and on TV. From cowboys, to gangsters, to horror flicks, many fretted that our "values" as human beings were being destroyed by Hollywood. I thought their opinions were bullshit and that they were idiots.

Well, maybe I'm getting older, or maybe I'm getting grumpier, or maybe I'm getting dumber, but last night, I finally watched a John Wick movie for the first time. It used to be that people got killed, or got a "flesh wound," or survived "a shot that just missed a major artery." But John Wick shoots everyone in the head, (wounded or not), because ... well, I guess that because to John Wick, (and his fans?), death is a necessity.

After seeing this blood fest, I started wondering if ultra-violent movies contribute to the violence in today's society. I believed that concept to be bullshit back when, but now ... I really don't know. Do today's kids fantasize that they're John Wick shooting people in the head? Beats me.

What do you think? Do films like this have a real life impact? Or have I become someone who yells at kids to "get off my lawn." Have I turned into one of those assholes I used to call "Puritans?"

I really don't know. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on this?

[Alpeduez21]

1. "Comedy has been on tv for years and people aren't getting funnier"

-Dick Cavett

[msongs]

2. maybe the primary outcome is de-sensitization with some copy cat actual behavior nt

[Initech]

3. I personally LOVE the John Wick franchise.

And I am very much looking forward to installment #4. But I also know enough to take them as mindless entertainment and not to be taken seriously.

I don't know what would cause someone to commit a mass shooting but I'm sure there's other underlying factors. I blame more our easy access to guns than anything else. It could be a combination of things including easy access to guns and violent entertainment, but it could also be our American propaganda system. Which that is extremely far reaching, and groups like the NRA with their gun toting macho bullshit definitely aren't helping things.

[LanternWaste]

4. My (wholly unsupported) opinion is that media/art reflects its audience

rather than acts as a leading indicator for that audience. I believe media programming is simply another commodity, and I approach the trends and in-things on that basis.

It creates what we desire, and gives us more and more of that at the expense of less popular programming. Until the next big thing comes along.

[Scrivener7]

7. I think it's a circular relationship. Media reflects its audience, but then the audience

reflects the media back.

You know that thing about gang kids holding guns sideways? I remember reading - and don't ask me where because it was a long time ago - that that began on TV, and then was copied in real life.

Butt and boob surgeries - who ever got a butt surgery before the Kardashians made giant butts a thing? Now that is a common surgery. Gun ownership. School shootings - they used to be a rarity. Now they are monthly if not more frequent. Stephen King took his book Rage out of circulation because a school shooter came right out and said he did what he did because he wanted to do what the kid in the book did.

I think the wide availability of violent porn has influenced sexual expectations in a bad way, but I won't go into that because it makes the heads of some DUers fly off.

[LanternWaste]

9. Solid points, all.

It may be a chicken-egg argument, and I had completely ignored the last reference you made when I wrote what I did, and failed to factor it in in any way (but yeah... 'nuff said, flying heads are messy).

I'm also thinking about the most viscerally violent film I've ever seen-- Schindler's List, and questioning my initial premise even more.

That said, I had zero idea butt surgery was a thing. Now I do. Dammit!



(Coincidentally, I recently re-read Rage, along with Long Walk, only last month. Weird you bring it up)

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Some time ago I read somewhere that Japanese movies and...

gsmes are fsr more violent than ours, but the Japanese people are far less violent

Methinks thst if this is true, the causes are far deeper than entertainment.

[Notek]

8. Good point.

[Clash City Rocker]

6. I think the problem is unrealistic violence

Realistic violence is not much fun to look at, and makes you want to avoid it. For example, those old training films they showed in driver’s Ed in high school like Red Asphalt actually made me want to drive safely.

The problem is in a way that they undersell the violence by making it look cleaner than in real life. This drives people to want to use guns, thinking they’ll just be like their favorite action heroes. It’s better to just be honest.

[abqtommy]

10. I've been exposed to violence at the movies, on TV and in print for all my life

and I've never killed anyone. Yet I realize that some people are more impressionable
than others and we really don't need to encourage them.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

11. You left out video games, thats where kids learn their kill em skills, on the phone, sex & violence

[BannonsLiver]

12. Rock n Roll has got to go!

[Retrograde]

13. Ever see any Elizabethan or Jacobean theater?

"Titus Andronicus" is gruesome gore from beginning to end. A spare character at the end of "Hamlet" has to announce that the play is over and everyone can go home, since all the main characters are dead. In "The Duchess of Malfi" there are about ten murders in the second half (including a character whose only purpose as far as I can tell is to get killed). And we've lost a lot of the plays from that period!

People have been complaining about violence in media for as long as I've been conscious - and probably for a lot longer! I think today's gore is a lot more gorier than it was back in the 60s (anyone remember Sam Peckinpah?) but the spirit is the same. My mother wouldn't let me watch the 3 Stooges because she thought it was too violent.