Eeew

[altivo]

I should have known better. Gary asked me last night if I wanted to watch Serenity with him (the film, not the series which he's already seen.) He'd found it remaindered for $5. I agreed.

Not ten minutes into it, I got up and left the room. The gratuitous violence, which I guess the majority of film watchers feed on, was making me ill. Sometimes I really think there must be something to this otherkin idea, because I sure don't seem to belong to the same race as most people.

Oddly enough, in real life, Gary doesn't deal well with violent emotions. In fact, he doesn't react well to raised voices. He's also an arachnophobe, and won't watch video or films with giant spiders or spiderlike creatures because it gives him nightmares. Yet he can sit through two hours of people hacking, stabbing, shooting, and otherwise destroying each other without blinking. Had I watched the whole thing, I would have had bad dreams. In fact, I think I had some dreams about it anyway, in spite of choosing to read something soothing before going to sleep.

Comments

[linnaeus.livejournal.com]

Understandable, but for what it's worth the ten minutes you saw probably contained about half of the violence in the entire film. There's a school of thought in action films that holds that you need to grab viewers at the very beginning with a lot of intensity (see: most James Bond films) That being said, yeah, there were parts of that film that were very intense.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I suppose they don't care about the people who might walk out and demand their money back, which is what I would've done in a theatre. I have so very much difficulty understanding how our culture can insist on rating a film R or X for a sexual situation and then rate another one PG when it has this kind of crap in it.

The point about oppressive and controlling, manipulative regimes was already made for my by the schoolroom scene at the beginning. I didn't need the casual devaluation of life that was displayed by both sides in the next ten minutes of the film.

No Bond? No problem.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I think it's sad filmmakers think they have to hyperstimulate an audience within the first 15 minutes of a film. Why do they still clock in at almost two hours? Why not boil them down to 25 minutes of sex, violence and some physically attractive character "acting cool" by walking away from an exploding object?

Also, I hate James Bond Films. Shallow, self-centered psedo masculinism wrapped in a character that seems to get grimmer but also younger every other film, while series mainstays become tired gimmicks- much like the newest "spy tech" device, like exploding condoms or a shoe with a switchblade in it.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

I'm similar - I don't necessarily mind movies in which people die or in which other bad things happen, but I don't need and in fact don't want to see it happening, at least in an explicit or gory or gratuitious fashion. The silhouette of a raised hand holding a knife behind a shower curtain is fine; the actual knife visibly being driven into the actual body in plain view is not.

I don't understand how others can watch that and not react to it, either.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't even want to see the knife. It neither excites nor interests me. If they want to posit that the murder took place and show how it is solved, that's fine.

Most people seem to get an almost sexual response out of watching that crap, though. It's darned scary to me to think how this stuff feeds into the actual violent behavior in human cultures, no matter how much they deny that it does.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, are you the same way with books? Would a book containing violence be indigestible by you?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Generally, yes. I can plow through it if I have to, but I won't be happy about it. If it isn't absolutely necessary that I read it, I'm likely to toss it aside and forget it instead. I don't find it entertaining, interesting, or even imaginative.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

I don't care for overly violent or gory movies either. While my SO went to watch 300, I was in another theater watching Bridge to Terabithia.

Oddly, I have no problem with playing violent video games, like Postal 2. Maybe it's because the people in these games don't look like real humans.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The violent games squick me just as badly as films do.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Good pic, Packrat- eaxctly the kind of person who'd think a gun would protect them.

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy Serenity. I thought it was a fairly reasonable film as far as violence went. There are violent parts, but I didn't think they detracted from the story. A lot of movies seem to be based on violence for it's own sake, and I don't care for those.
However, I respect your standards, and resolve to not watch it.

$0.02

[altivo.livejournal.com]

My "standards" are just a gut reaction. That stuff is not entertainment in my opinion, it's just horror for the sake of horror.

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

Serenity made me nervous. I mean you can't even salvage things without the powers that be coming down on you? Another series that made me uneasy was Tripods, a British production set in France.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I caught a bit of Tripods once- a pretty interesting concept. The relationships between the aliens and the humans were pretty well thought out. Between this, Dr. Who and The Prisoner, I'm generally of the opinion the British are the best at scifi television.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, that seems to be the point of it, under the surface. It's subtle propaganda for the gun lobby (we have to keep lots of guns so we can fight the government when it goes bad) and the libertarians (any sort of regulation is just as stupid as any other regulation and they all violate our "freedom.")

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Well, you seem to be a more sensitive soul. That's not such a bad thing. I'll try to be gentle with you.

It's all just a matter of taste though. Me, I can watch some pretty violent stuff, even very gross stuff. Yes, I watch real-life emergency room shows, and real-life autopsy shows. While I'm eating. But that's just me, I think maybe some of us can should soak up some of the pain and the ickyness of the world, like some kind of psychospiritual paper towel. (and no, I'm not linking any of that, or even mentioning titles).

I actually like violence to be depicted realistically, so that the viewers get the idea that the regrettable use of violence results in icky, messy, slow, and painful consequences, not the cleaned up and idealized pap that we see in movies.

Now, if a movie was to start off with ten minutes of something that causes a sexual response, how about...something sexual? Something intensely erotic, full of passionate, varied, and intense sexual imagery (without getting tawdry or pornographic), maybe something that could get the whole audience to eschew public decency standards...that would be nice. After all, why is violence okay, but sex isn't?

Now last night, I had the poo scared out of me. I stayed late at the office so I could compact and copy a Windows XP VM from my laptop to a new box under the desk. Took a while, and I couldn't scratch out any daytime time to not run that VM all week. Got home at 11pm. Anyway, the cleaning lady came by for a second pass to make sure the waste cans were empty because the first pass is about 6pm and people are often still there. I wasn't expecting anybody in the office, and nobody had been in there for hours, and suddenly there's a noise behind me. I started and yelped, and must have looked a sight because she put her hand on my shoulder and petted me and said "So so sorry...it's all right, I just come get garbage...it's all right..."

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, people tell me that I'm overly sensitive. My take on it is that if more people were like me, the world would be much, much better for it. Instead, there is deliberate effort to "train" such tendencies out of us, especially males.

I rather disagree with you about graphic presentation of blood and gore in film. That's rather like saying that child pornography should be OK as long as it is accurately depicted. I don't believe that most people are sensitized by the stuff. Instead, it tends to DEsensitize them, so they think less about the consequences of violent actions. This is especially true now when we have so many, particularly younger people, who seem to live almost entirely in the world of entertainment with few connections to reality.

Back when I was in driver education a century or so ago, they had a requirement that we sit through an hour of very graphic films of gory accidents and emergency responses. It was supposed to keep you from driving recklessly. Fortunately, the teachers said you could leave if it was too much for you. Now there was no risk that I was going to drive recklessly, in fact, and they knew it. I didn't really want to drive at all. I left after five minutes and waited outside. When it was over, the other boys in the class came out grinning and exclaiming to each other, "Wasn't that really cool where the guy's car was cut right in half? And they got him out alive?" Those films did nothing useful.

As for your late night scare, yeah. I've had those experiences too, once in a while. Sure generates an adrenalin rush, doesn't it?

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

I don't like violence in general, although for the most part movie violence doesn't seem to bother me all that much and I think my brain automatically says "I know this isn't real." It also bothers me a lot less when it's integral to the story..and a lot more when it's flagrantly unnecessary.

I think there are a lot of people that "get off" on violence, so movie producers feel that they have to pander to the lowest common denominator to sell their movies. There's an awful lot of violence in movies and on TV that absolutely doesn't need to be there.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Precisely. And it's there because it sells. In turn, by being there in such huge quantities, it both perpetuates itself by becoming an expected norm, and desensitizes viewers to the realities of such situations.

I believe the consequences of treating sex as dirty and damaging to the young mind, while violence is normal and inconsequential, are only just beginning to be noticed. The battle to change attitudes about this stuff is going to be horrendously difficult because it has been allowed to run wild for so long, and so much money is being derived from it. If you think the fight against the tobacco lobbies was long and hard, that's nothing compared to the coming fight against the "cult of violence" in public media.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

It sounds like Serenity...wasn't. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that the name was chosen for some double-entendre in Japanese reason.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

I guess I am strange in a way...

I can stand seeing some violence on TV, but I do not really enjoy it. But then again, I do not watch TV at all. I can watch war movies and similar because I consider them as re-enactment and the violence is part of the movie.

When the movies is just an excuse to spill blood and guts and off people, I am not interested. It just irritates me because I feel insulted in a way.

Horror movies are way out of my menu. I hate them with passion. If I have to watch one, I WILL get traumas and nightmares, and flashbacks no matter how "mild" it is supposed to be. I seem to be able to "project" and make up images in the visual center of my brain based on shapes and patterns on fabric, wallpaper or even ceiling. So I "am able to" see monsters and ghosts everywhere. I so wish I wasn't...
I mean, I still fear Jodie from the original "The Amityville Horror". And I must have been 7 when I accidentally saw it as a little colt.

I guess I am sensitive, in a way.

I can play violent computer games, but I use that to get rid of some stress and frustration and aggression. If I didn't, I would be very likely to break something or hit someone. Which I do not want to do. I am not mentally so well.
I need to get this depression out of the way, but before that happens I need to get the ileostomy out of the way. It pretty much controls my life and feeds my depression.

*hugs tight*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think the best "treatment" for violent impulses is to alter the things that cause them, or else to change one's view of the things that cause them.

[alexfvance.livejournal.com]

Oof, you've hit a goldmine of discourse here! I'll admit I haven't the time to read all the excellent responses, though I did glean a few very insightful bits by yourself and others.

I understand you didn't enjoy what you saw in Serenity and I fully respect that, let's get that straight first :)

My position is that this kind of violence-as-spectacle is not a recent and worrisome trend, but that it's been part of human expression since effectively forever.

It's *boy's* stuff. Scary stories told around a campfire, penny-dreadful pirate stories, the fictionalized books about Western gunslingers written while the slingers themselves were still alive. It's a puerile thrill, largely masculine, and its prominence in the history of narrative media -- oral, scriptural, visual -- is evidence, to me, that this is an inherent human phenomenon.

But it's puerile boy's stuff, crafted to appeal primarily to an audience that hasn't experienced the actual trauma of this kind of violence. And that's a good thing, in a way -- such stories couldn't be told if the teller had to respect the actual horror of what they were presenting.

You'll probably scowl at me for saying this but, within their context, I feel that these boys' stories do have a gentleness about them precisely because they don't dwell on the horror and trauma of violence. When a black-hat or an Injun Varmint gets shot, they fall off their horse and out of the story. They don't visibly suffer. Even in the scene in Serenity where the homicidal cannibals raze a town we don't see anyone *actually* suffering at their hands. It's all running and screaming and grabbing.

The audience is acculturated to this: since the action all happens so quickly, they suspend their empathy. Boys in particular find this extremely easy to do since they haven't had the traumatic experiences that would allow them to empathize in the first place.

For an audience that's acculturated, the spectacle of violence becomes a thrill ride not unlike a rollercoaster. Moments of true fright, quickly turned into an experience of exhilaration, and bits of near-pornographic indulgence in the kind of bloody gore that boys are wont to imagine precisely because they've never seen anything like it.

There is much to be said for the argument that the proliferation of violence has caused violence in society, specifically in youths -- but I maintain that this can't be the only aspect of it. It's evident, to me, that these stories come from an innate lust, a hunger for sensual experiences that is primarily a puerile masculine trait.

We're all fragile beings. People die, and it's often a messy affair. I've read theories which claim that the teenaged masculine hunger for blood and gore in fiction and media is a survival response that aims to desensitize the boy to the horror of violence so that when it's their turn to encounter it, they have something of a psychological barrier. Taken further, I read a social evolutionist who insisted that brutality was an excellent survival trait; someone who was unaffected by witnessing suffering and death would more quickly become productive again after such an event.

But yes, enjoyment of violent fiction is an immature pleasure, and I'll wholly admit my own indulgence, and my immaturity for it. That said, I'm reminded of a scene in a film or a passage in a book of which I regrettably can't recall the source, which talked about a young man being utterly out of touch with reality, engrossing himself in fantasies of war and battle without truly understanding how awful they are. One lamented the state of modern youth, being so ignorant -- the other was more wistful, and mused that it would be a wonderful world if all boys could be so innocent.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You can always generate a pile of responses by attacking a sacred cow. That's what I did here. A good half of the responses are actually a discussion of the history of telephone systems, which shows how easily we can wander from a set topic.

Everything you say here is unquestionably valid, up to a point. I can't disagree with any of it, EXCEPT...

You are describing the "wild" state of human behavior and culture. This is the barbarism that controlled us for millions of years, that has only just begun to be regulated and suppressed as we evolve toward something much more advanced. I believe that all of our "best moments" in history come from times when individuals overrode their instinctive and hard-wired reactions and used rational thought to choose a better, more reasonable and humane path than the mere instinctive behavior would have produced. England's Elizabeth I failed this when she executed Mary Stewart, but succeeded in it when she befriended Granuaille, for instance. Her father, Henry VIII likewise failed much of the time, yielding always to his puerile impulses, while her successor, James I, was much more rational and advanced England greatly during his reign, precisely because he mostly kept his emotional excesses out of sight and ruled based on rational advice and foresight.

You often tell me that you don't have time to read, but I'm still going to recommend a book. Sherri S. Tepper describes an entire civilization that has been formulated on an understanding of the forces you describe here, and has expressly taken action to deal with them. The book is titled The Gate to Women's Country and was first published in 1988. Her premise is that these impulses that you (and others) ascribe to hard-wired behaviors in young males are destructive to civilized society, and the best way to get rid of them is to breed them out. Unfortunately, any attempt to do so would lead to the violent overthrow of the society setting such a goal. She solves the conundrum neatly, in my opinion.

Ursula K. Le Guin has confronted similar issues again and again in her writing, and though she doesn't always solve them, she presents graphic evidence that they must be resolved in works such as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. The much less prolific (alas) Elizabeth A. Lynn has also dealt with them at great length, and very well in my opinion. I particularly recommend The Dancers of Arun and A Different Light.

It is no coincidence that the authors I mention here are all women. While I am strongly in favor of the idea that this difference between "male" and "female" rationality is more a product of cultural and early childhood environment than it is of hard wired differences, the evidence continues to pile up suggesting otherwise. I suspect the atavistic persistence of this meme in human culture is due to a simple fact. Males who are self-centered, aggressive, and crude are likely to have more offspring than those who are civilized, polite, and self-effacing. Tepper points this out as the source of the dilemma in her writing.

"Puerile" is indeed the correct term for this inclination. I don't remember that I ever shared it, though, even when I was eight or ten years old. My father lacked it as well, as did his uncles and his only brother who survived into my lifetime and memory. There may well be some truth to the notion that a genetic factor is involved.