I'm not quite sure that the tragedy you are describing earlier in the article actually qualifies as violence- violence is usually directed toward another as a means to some end, whether it be psychological, material or social forms of gratification, self-defense, etc.
As for the portrayal of violence in medias as missing some of the passion and depth of real life, I think that is a bit of an over-generalization. I don't mean this to cheapen your point, because there is one to be made for weak portrayals of such a basic part of the human condition. I just think the same could be said for things like love and sex, like the difference between an artful lovemaking scene in a film versus some of the less-savory forms of pornography, or a film like Closer to one of the more recent high school smoochfests that downplay the intricacies of human relationships. Also consider more artful depictions of violence in paintings like Picasso's Guernica or films like Zwick's American Civil War masterpiece Glory as opposed to films like Hostel that shed blood for shedding's sake.
As a self-described horror-film fanatic, I think you'll agree there are a lot of underground classics that make Hostel look like Disney-fare. And why do we laugh sometimes when we see these things? Maybe the same reasons we laugh at the end of a roller coaster. We survived it, knowing the whole time it wasn't real. Sometimes we laugh because as scream aficionados we know how they did it and it really doesn't look that real. And maybe we're just thankful that, unlike a lot of the inhabitants of our world, when we're faced with violence it's a safe flopping rubber movie prop instead of something more real that we're confronting.
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Joe
Nov 04, 2009
12:45 p.m.
I'm not quite sure that the tragedy you are describing earlier in the article actually qualifies as violence- violence is usually directed toward another as a means to some end, whether it be psychological, material or social forms of gratification, self-defense, etc.
As for the portrayal of violence in medias as missing some of the passion and depth of real life, I think that is a bit of an over-generalization. I don't mean this to cheapen your point, because there is one to be made for weak portrayals of such a basic part of the human condition. I just think the same could be said for things like love and sex, like the difference between an artful lovemaking scene in a film versus some of the less-savory forms of pornography, or a film like Closer to one of the more recent high school smoochfests that downplay the intricacies of human relationships. Also consider more artful depictions of violence in paintings like Picasso's Guernica or films like Zwick's American Civil War masterpiece Glory as opposed to films like Hostel that shed blood for shedding's sake.
As a self-described horror-film fanatic, I think you'll agree there are a lot of underground classics that make Hostel look like Disney-fare. And why do we laugh sometimes when we see these things? Maybe the same reasons we laugh at the end of a roller coaster. We survived it, knowing the whole time it wasn't real. Sometimes we laugh because as scream aficionados we know how they did it and it really doesn't look that real. And maybe we're just thankful that, unlike a lot of the inhabitants of our world, when we're faced with violence it's a safe flopping rubber movie prop instead of something more real that we're confronting.