Sign of the Apocalypse
Jul 12th, 2007 by craig
Back when I used to read Sports Illustrated on a real regular basis there was one small part of the Scorecard section I never missed, titled “This week’s sign of the Apocalypse.” Recently I saw one of those signs of the Apocalypse on TV.
Have you noticed that movie studios have taken to advertise their movies on television more often these days? Some are ok, but I tend to be annoyed by the horror/slasher movies being advertised. I don’t understand the appeal to those types of movies at all. Why would anyone want to see people getting murdered, or killed in some violent, bloody way? It seems to me that for the most part we don’t really like seeing violence; have you seen the video of Joe Namath getting his leg broken in an NFL game? It hurts to watch. Notice that there is a different response to the America’s Funniest Videos when someone gets hurt, it’s much more of a sympathetic groan than laughter. I noticed the other day that when I had to have blood drawn, I don’t mind the needle so much as long as I don’t have to watch it go in.
So why is there so much money to be made from these violent movies? That the movies are made doesn’t bug me so much, as I don’t have to go to them (“I don’t like what goes on at Bed, Bath and Beyond, so I don’t go there…”), but why are people paying to go see them? I’m baffled.
I don’t recall what the movie was that I saw an ad for on TV, but one of the promotional lines hung in my living room like a bad odor. It was about some killing spree and the line was “inspired by a true story.”
Ok, so there was someone that went nuts and killed people. That’s bad, that’s evil. Ok, so someone decided that this evil story had to be told, they had to make a movie about it. Ok, someone elected to go the horror/slasher route. Ok, they made the movie, and the movie is being promoted. But who in this much maligned social sphere we live in could conceivable be “inspired” by such an event? And if they are inspired, I just have to ask, inspired to WHAT?
Such a poor choice of words in such a public forum…
I also do not understand the appeal to slasher movies. Intense movies, yes. Suspenseful movies, yet. Horror, no. Why would anybody want to see someone done in by a crazy man with a chainsaw? I watch movies to be entertained and to escape from reality for a while. I don’t want that to be what I escape to, nor have it seem like my reality! Any body out there who enjoys these types of movies, can you give us some insight into why? 🙂
If I had to take a random guess, I’d say it was similar to riding rollercoasters in a peculiar sense. They go watch it for the thrill. They’re kind of mindless to not think these things through, and just want to go see it for the thrill of being frightened, but that’s their choice.
“Inspired by a true story” gives a sort of sense of a thrill, too, just reading that. People who are seeing a slasher movie that was “inspired by” – no, let’s say based on – something that really happened are going to be scared by that fact; and the more frightened you are, the merrier!
But your question stands.
“Inspired”? Inspired to what?
I too am no fan of slasher/horror movies; nonetheless, I am very fascinated by people who are fans of such films. To me, it’s strange that in this culture, which is largely devoid of violence (I know, I know, I can hear everybody moaning about what they see on the evening news, but–well, more on that in moment), we have, as a culture, a constant urge to experience violence vicariously (and pretty fakely I might add). In other words, statistically speaking, most people’s lives are without violence–in fact, for most they would be hard pressed to come up with a single violent event from their entire existence. I’m not saying there isn’t violence–there’s a lot of it and it’s terribly tragic, but, compared to some other societies, ours is pretty mild. For example, I was just reading this morning in a biography of the English poet William Blake (a wonderful irreverent rebel all should expose themselves to, btw) that in the mid eighteenth-century it was common in London to see criminals whipped in the street and to see the heads of executed convicts displayed above the entrance to the courthouse. To cite another example, I’ve been reading a book about evolution and prehistoric cultures, in which the author, Nicholas Wade, says that if the same rate of death by violence existed in our culture today as existed in early hunter-gatherer societies, we would have seen the death by violence of three-billion people in the last century. Now, no one’s saying the 20th century wasn’t violent, but it wasn’t nearly that violent. Anyway, to get back to my point. I find it fascinating that while most people don’t experience much real violence, they are very interested in seeing it portrayed. Perhaps it might even be said that those who have experienced no actual violence in their lives are the ones most fascinated by its portrayal. BTW, sorry this is so long. I don’t know–I got going and couldn’t stop–never give a forum to a word nerd!
I don’t know if things like car accidents are violent so much as they are tragic and traumatic. I see violence more as willingfully inflicting harm on someone, or the attempt thereof. I’ve been in couple of car accidents, but I think the only violent one was when someone deliberately rammed the back of my car and tried to force my friend & I off the road. That was kind of violent. And quite scary. Or the time I was chased around the house by someone with a butcher knife, intending me harm, until I was able to make it safely behind a locked door. That seemed violent.
I try to limit the amount of violence I view in movies and television shows, and I’m disturbed when I encounter it unexpectedly. I tend to have those violent and disturbing images come to mind uninvited at later points in my life, and I do not like that to happen.
I concur with all the sentiments above… I don’t think you could pay me to sit through a slasher movie. OK, maybe for a LOT of money… if I could keep my eyes closed…..
Even non-slasher, but violent, movies like Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, etc… they images are burned into my brain for far too long…. I think SPR is a movie that is worth seeing, to experience the horrors of war…. real war….. and I’m glad I saw it, but NEVER want to see it again…..
Slasher/horror shows just for the sake of blood and gore… I just can’t fathom the appeal.
“Word Nerd”–it’s a title–you have to work long and hard to earn it. High school football–indeed! You should read Don DeLillo’s Endzone as he makes many metaphorical links between the violence in America’s soul and its idolatrous participation in the ritual that is high school football. But isn’t it strange that peaceloving, passive, shy Canada should be infatuated with one of the most barbarous and violent sports going (hockey).
Kristin–those events certainly sound legitimately violent to me. Don’t you think, though, that real-life violence is so much more deeply disorienting than the convuluted violence they often portray in movies and on tv. I think that’s sometimes why people get into portrayals of violence–like Sam said, they like the thrill–but they don’t understand how in real-life it dismantles so thoroughly the basic workings of the consciousness and its ability to process life events.
Yes, Brent, I agree with your thoughts on this. I think “disorienting” is probably a great description of what would be happening as a result of real-life violence.
Someone suggested to me that one of the damaging things about kids playing violent video games is the failure of the games to show the consequences. There don’t seem to be any. No realization of what would actually happen as a result of such violence.
Now that I am in my 70’s and have never really experienced violence in real life, I don’t enjoy it in the movies. I have seen movies about war and the violence there and I do read lots of Historical Fiction where there is violence, and it just makes me realize how blessed to be born in such a good place and such a good time that my life is not filled with such horror. As for seeing movies just for the thrill of it, count me out. I don’t know why people enjoy and pay money to see such things. I guess I am love seeing good and inspiring movies where everything turns out o.k. Dad and I went to the movies the other day and saw “Evan, Almighty”. that’s what I call entertainment.
Well, seeing as I am only so young, I would not have experienced violence. I don’t even understand why somethings they play on America’s funniest videos are funny, seeing some kid fall off their bike just when they started riding it, that’s disappointing.
Now, me just have seen Harry Potter (5th) I have one great line in my head that I think fits this topic. Harry says to his fellow students who want to learn Defense, “You don’t know what it’s like when you are faced with death, or seeing your friend murdered right in front of you”. People go to thrilling movies and I don’t think they consider that concept, what would you do if you were in that situation? What would be going through your head? I’d be pretty scared. I even get scared hearing my friends talk about Horror movies they have seen, (unfortunately for me they like those movies) that’s partially because I have an over-active imagination. So those who don’t like to see violent movies may think what they would do in that situation, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Concluding, I would elect not to see those movies, or think of the violence our species experienced in the past, and am just glad that violence in my life is on such the low level – that it is – none
I guess I wrote a lot too…. go figure
(forgive me if my spelling is bad, so many people who have posted have used such big words!! 🙂 hopefully you all know what I mean)
I got a little more interested in this violence issue from an evolutionary standpoint and checked out a book I’ve been meaning to read for some time called “Demonic Males”. Now I know Demonic Males sounds like some sort of horror story but it’s actually Harvard anthropologist and biologist Richard Wrangham’s study of violence among male chimpanzees in Africa. What he finds is that their patterns of violence and cruelty is eerily similar to the cruelty and violence displayed by humans. Chimpanzees have, in fact, crude forms of warfare and run a sort of crude form of the justic systems where offenders are escorted from the community or executed. Very interesting stuff. I also really enjoyed primatologist Franz de Waal’s book Our Inner Ape, also about the similarities between apes and humans. Also has lots of interesting stuff about violence but–beware!–also lots of stuff about ape sexuality–particularly about the species bonobos. If you haven’t heard much about the bonobos, you might be in for a shock. Descriptions of their exploits make most pornography seem tame.
There are too many people out there who’d need to be brainwahsed before we could do anything remotely effective to society, like that… As expressed in the book Fahrenheit 451, there are too many minorities, too many groups that would cry out and protest. Now, I suppose if you wanted to take the direct approach, you could just say “This is the policy. Who disagrees?” And round all the disagree-ers up, and execute them, too, in the name of society. But then people would speak out against that (like relatives, maybe) so you’d have to execute them, too, until you had a much smaller country than you started with and it was full of cowards who were too afraid of death to speak up.
Actually… Let’s just not go there.
I personally believe that the very idea that people can coexist in such large groups is a fallacy. Human beings were not made, mentally, for solitude, but groups as large as the United States is not good. Indian tribes and tiny Western towns had the right idea. Groups of ten to maybe a hundred people, working together, could coexist and possibly coexist with all the other groups, too. Maybe. And maybe we can get the current system working, I don’t know. But groups this large tend to just… break up into smaller groups.
But then we have to trust the people doing the “calling” to call trustworthy and capale leaders…. in my experience with the LDS church, there are plenty of untrustworthy, and even more incompetent, people in positions of authority……
No simple answers, are there?