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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Mmm. It doesn't excite me, either, but I won't mind (and note I was talking about a silhouette being visible behind a shower curtain, not the actual knife itself) - I wouldn't get nightmares because of it.

But yeah, it's rather scary, and "sexual response" is exactly the right word. There is a reason why a certain kind of movie is called "torture porn", I think. :|

[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.

[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.

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.

[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]

*nods* I can respect that, and I applaud you for being universal in your feelings o this matter regardless of genre or form. I wonder if you expected someone like me to say that ;)

Re: No Bond? No problem.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, we're in agreement about that. I could never stomach Bond, even in writing. The films are just pure junk.

[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.

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

I agree. Tripods was good sci-fi. Just made me nervous. Don't mess with my brain. The British do science fiction right.

Pavlov should have been in marketing.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

People in our society have been gradually conditioned not only to find this acceptable, but to seek it out. Probably a tactic designed by the military to make "better soldiers" out of when when we decide to go to war with China or Cuba or whomeever is the Evil Oppressor of the month. How's the search for Bin Laden coming?

Re: No Bond? No problem.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Get Smart was better.... and shorter.

Admittance

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Scifi that isn't boring is hard to do, especially by us Yanks. We have no idea how to develop a concept that isn't about blood, (straight) sex or explosions. When I think of the older Quatermass films, I shudder at the idea of John Carpenter remaking The Village of the Damned, or even the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (with Keanu Reeves?!? Come on!)

Re: No Bond? No problem.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

He was kinda short wasn't he? I agree, the writing was much better. Acting that stuff with those deadpan faces must have been really hard, too.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

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

Re: Pavlov should have been in marketing.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I doubt the "conspiracy" runs that deep. It's just the usual. Whatever makes the most money, wins. If people want to kill themselves with tobacco or sugar, why not? Just sell 'em all they want. If they want to rot their brains with violent porn, why not? Make it cheap and sell it dearly.

[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.")

Re: No Bond? No problem.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Would you beleive... well, it gets a bit repetitous, but Don Adams made it work. Actually when I said short, I was referring to the length of a Get Smart episode vs. the slow unsplooling of a Bond film :P