Hollywood's gun use should be honest about carnage

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Sonny Bunch / Special To The Washington Post

In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting, some Hollywood storytellers are questioning the film industry’s love affair with guns. There’s one thing these filmmakers and showrunners could do to try to stem the tide of gun violence: stop sanitizing what guns do to human bodies. Hollywood should step up and show what journalists generally can’t depict, be it the victim of a mass shooting identifiable only by DNA or the aftermath of a suicide carried out with a gun.

Working in concert with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, more than 200 writers, directors, and producers such as J.J. Abrams, Mark Ruffalo and Adam McKay recently signed on to an open letter calling for a period of introspection into how guns are used on-screen.

“Cultural attitudes toward smoking, drunk driving, seatbelts and marriage equality have all evolved due in large part to movies’ and TV’s influence,” the letter says. “It’s time to take on gun safety.”

Some specific suggestions: Show gun owners making use of gun safes; limit the portrayal of children and guns in the same scenes; and consider whether guns are necessary in any given scene.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-hollywoods-gun-use-should-be-honest-about-carnage/

[tanyev]

1. Stop showing the hero/es successfully running through a barrage of gunfire.

With no body armor.

[Effete Snob]

2. Also, in the first Star Wars movie...

...Obi Wan Kenobi doesn't recognized R2-D3 or C-3PO, even though he knew them for a long time before.

We should not rest until this is addressed.

[Bucky]

4. .

"There are other ways to fight"

-- Obi-Wan

[AndyS]

3. I can get behind this.

The idea of showing the Uvalde or Sandy Hook victims not so much. Once it goes on the web it stays there forever. It pops up at odd times, sometimes un-invited. It leaves a mark on the survivors' psyche that never goes away. Besides the conspiracy nuts will use it to torture the survivors.

I recently saw an editorial by the subject of an iconic Vietnam photograph (I'll not identify it out of deference to the victim) with the headline "I am not _________". The public exposure that photo got became the identity for 50 years.

Yeah, show what gunshot wounds actually look like. Show what the movie survivors go through the rest of their lives.

Even put photos of gunshot wounds on ammunition boxes and in gun ads like we did for tobacco, but protect the survivors from a lifetime of re-living the worst moment in their lives.