Poor babies.
They can't carry out something like the Texas chain saw massacres themselves, so they will be entertained by watching someone else do the dirty work. Extreme violence in entertainment is a form of pornography IMO. It says something about the entertainment industry and those who feed off it.
Okay first of all, people are attracted to horror movies because of a thing called adrenaline. Humans have a natural need for adrenaline and in modern society there isn't a whole lot of release naturally, so some people will seek that out. In the form of entertainment or even jumping out of a flying plane. You want to get all psychological, that's all there really is to it. People want an adrenaline rush. Oh how.........terrifying to society??
And secondly, you are aware blood and violence isn't actually central to cinema as a whole, right? It's not even unique to it.
From the top of my head
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare. Ritualistic sacrifice, rape, mutilation, torture and murder galore. Written in the late 1500s. Trust me, there is nothing left to the imagination when such scenes play out, even on stage.
Candide by Voltaire. Cannibalism, torture, murder and rape. Written approximately in 1759. Very vivid imagery, also Pangloss is a twit, just needed to get that out there. If you read that and still have trouble imagining the gore that takes place within the story, then your head is a potato.
The entirety of the (shudders) Libertine Movement and really anything they wrote. They existed as a movement since the 18th century. (That's well before cinema was born, in case you were wondering)
In fact a prominent member of the Libertines was Marque De Sade, a man with tendencies so violent, he is literally the namesake of the word "sadist" in the English language. His *ahem* "novel" 120 Days in Sodom (written in 1789) makes the entire Saw Franchise look like freaking Disney.
Look back in human history and you will of course see violence and sex as part and parcel of entertainment. From real life sporting events like the Gladiator spectacles to plays to poetry to classical literature still studied in the hallowed halls of upper academia. So I don't know where on earth you get this idea that it's a new thing. My grandfathers' grandfather was probably being entertained by something filled with gore or sex. It's called supply and demand, if there was no demand in the first place, then there'd be no real supply.
Even still, that has never been all that's been on offer.
Also just FYI, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a horror/splatter film. It is what's called a "niche" film, not the film industry as a whole. That's like pointing to Vampire Academy and claiming all novels have vampires in them. There exists an entire industry outside of very specific examples of a specific genre.
There are all sorts of things if gore is not to your taste. From sweeping melodramas, to documentaries, to comedies, to fancy critically acclaimed slice of life to fantasy to contemporary. You have literally every genre known to mankind in cinema, to attack a specific genre makes you look ill informed about what is literally at your fingertips 24/7. You could watch an entire decades worth of movies (from this era of film making) and never have a single solitary shot of celluloid that has anything to do with violence. If that is your desire. I can even ring off a list of films for your viewing, if you like.
Sadly that is true. You can't feed those who have no appetite.
Maybe. Or maybe people are just harder to impress now that CGI can create amazing visuals.
They don't "LOOK" base by comparison"....they "ARE" base by any standard of common decency. (Which is not so common anymore.....like common sense.)
. Should we have a
No they look base in comparison. You can't look back at something and apply today's standards to it. Old timey black and white photos of white men lynching black folks appall our new fangled sensibilities. But people were so desensitized to them happening for over a century that back in the "good old days" people probably wouldn't give any thought to them. Or how any real life photos from concentration camps would sicken anyone today, but people from the era who followed the Nazis wouldn't care. Is that cinema's fault too?
Watch any documentary based on classical cinema, hell just look on the behind the scenes for classic movies themselves and you will get the sense that because cinema was a brand new shiny tool, it was shocking and scary. As the initial novelty wore off, studios had to keep pushing boundaries, else people would look elsewhere.
You can't blame McDonalds for obesity. They're merely giving people what they have demanded. Cinema is many things, wholesale evil entity is not one of them.
Lots of people watch the news every day....but not for entertainment.
Yes, that is called being informed. And?
I gave you the comparison which you apparently ignored. Is reality as entertaining as theatre? Do we watch actual news footage of people being blown to bits in a real war for entertainment? Or are we appalled? Why is 'make believe' blood and guts more acceptable than reality? What is the 'blood lust' that drives the kind of graphic violence we see in movies? "Lust" it seems is at the base of all aberrant behavior.
Because it's make believe. If you go out and kill somebody, you have hurt others. You should be in jail for the safety of society. Make believe is make believe. Do I really need to spell this out for you? Are you incapable of separating reality and fiction? Do you need to speak to someone professionally? I mean no judgement here, just wondering.
Let me ask you this, who is harmed specifically by Little Red Cap (Red Riding Hood)? I mean it is a story about a little girl being eaten alive alongside her grandmother by a wolf, who is then sliced open by a hunter. (Who then proceeds to fill the wolf's stomach with rocks, stitch him back up and in some versions tosses him into a river to drown.)
No one, the story doesn't magically attack anyone who happens to read or even translate it. You might scare the hell out of a little kid if you tell them that version. But as you yourself pointed out "Grimms doesn't really hurt anybody" right? So why all the worrying?
Too late. The damage is done. The violence seen is schools is getting worse because of it.
Well they're not yet at the Colonial British School system that our grandfathers probably attended back in the day. I can recommend several testimonies and even very old films (like from the 30s) that detail the extreme brutality one would have faced as a child going through such schools. And how the children often mimicked it by bashing their peers, ostensibly under the guise of "discipline" (read school sanctioned bullying.)
Christ, you want to talk desensitization? Try the children who lived and breathed violence, not just kids who saw what they knew was fake on a screen.
For Christians, the Bible is our handbook. Magic and many supernatural events are associated with the forces of evil. So all forms of spiritism were forbidden to prevent God's worshippers from being deceived. (
Deuteronomy 18:9-12) The problem for some (even those who claim to be believers) is that the devil masquerades as "an angel of light" so any kind of supernatural activity, if it isn't from God, then it is from his adversary, even if it appears to be innocent. Sometimes people can't tell the difference.....especially children.
Fair enough.
But again, what constitutes this on film specifically to you? Disney's Sleeping Beauty from the 50s because of all the magic being done by both sides? The '39 Wizard of Oz because of the Wicked Witch of the West and Good Witch Glinda? A Christmas Carol (circa 1800s) because the story is literally about Scrooge talking and learning from ghosts?
Was what the Hays' code was trying to prevent, such a bad thing?
Are we not all sick to death of hearing about scandals and outrageous conduct of so called "celebrities" every other day?
How many good movie plots are ruined by foul language or unnecessary violence? Seriously, who is offended if they leave it out?
Why are we sinking to the level of lowest forms of humanity?
Well, I am actually. Tabloid news is scum.
Again, people often crave adrenaline. Which is what you get when you get scared. That's why kids like Halloween so much (well that and all the free lollies.) It's exciting, it breaks up the mundane and if well crafted makes you think.
Sometimes a character needs to swear otherwise it breaks the immersion for the audience. Suspension of disbelief takes you only so far. So if you have some hardened but ultimately nice hard boiled detective who says "heck" when they stub their toe, the suspension of disbelief for the audience will falter. Believe it or not, a writer's task is not actually to curtail to people's sensibilities, they have to be true to their characters, world and story. Sometimes violence is a natural part of that story, sometimes swearing is natural to a specific character, sometimes grittiness is hard to avoid if you're being true to your writing. Even if you don't like it.
If you're writing for kids, then your "swearing" might be a bit more.........er inventive shall we say. Like for example Roald Dahl straight up just made up words out of thin air to avoid swearing for his young audience (his adult books are another story altogether.) Rowling used mild language, or at least what is considered mild language in England for her series. And her series has what is the child's equivalent to the literal Nazis (Death Eaters.) Grittiness was a little hard to avoid.
What movie plots? Passion of the Christ, maybe? With it's literal torture porn. Maybe Auschwitz for being highly sensationalized with its violence and largely inaccurate (and torn to shreds by the film industry, just saying.) Name and shame these so called mainstream movies ruined by gratuity. (And exploitation films don't count, that's their specific job.) Should be easy to do, right?
Again you can easily avoid all of these things you speak of by choosing films, TV shows and books specific to your tastes and sensibilities. This is why we have the ratings system. You can peruse the G (and some PG) rated films for a year and not have seen every single one of them. You act as though G or PG ratings don't even exist. I have over 40 films that are rated G with nary a swear word in sight. I could lend you a few if that's what you're craving?
