A sad note

[Lancealot]

I knew that resurrecting threads would lead to this. Please, if you resurrect threads, don't do it to the ones that cna lead to the kind of nastiness i thought had been run out of town.

I realise some of the newer people don't know what it was like. it was not nice. It had alot of us running from the OB and not participating because we knew (absolutely for certain) that we would be ganged up upon.

bk

Your right Baron. I wished I hadn't resurrested this thread. I didn't mean to cause trouble, but I will say I think everyone has handeled themselves with restraint and we should be proud of that.

 

[Tango Yankee]

Of course our society glorifies violence. "Rocky" is a hero to many, yet his job description could be summed up by "beats other men into bloody pulps." I wouldn't know about violence in porn as it's been a long time since I watched any. For me adult movies quickly became boring.

Still, if you look back at the mainstream movies and TV over the years, you can see how both sex and violence became more and more graphic. The primary difference is that in mainstream movies you still do not see actual body parts entering other body parts. You also don't see actual knives cutting throats, but with special effects today you can't tell the difference between real and movie magic. The question in my mind is still "why is it filmed acts of graphic sexual pleasure are considered pornographic but filmed acts of extreme violence and murder are not?"

Just something I've always wondered. For what it's worth I do watch movies with violence in them and enjoy the stories but I do have a tendency to close my eyes in the really graphic bits.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Fletch]

Read Jim Webb's book Born Fighting sometime. He makes a passionate, if not very solid, argument that America is a culture founded on bloodshed and the use of deadly force, and that in many ways, this is no bad thing.

I've heard it said that violence built this country; sex just populated it.

Viola, how do you feel about violence against women in the movies? How about if it's gratuitous?

 

[katiemakeup]

You would think they would keep that separate from the mainstream...

 

[Dapper Dan]

First, a quote from Viola: "Movie violence is awesome. You'll all take my Scorsese movies from my cold dead hands.

Chick flicks are boring.

-Viola"

Remember that scene in "Taxi Driver" where Travis blows off the pedophilic pimp's hand? Awesome. And pretty much all of "Raging Bull" is up there on the violence meter. Both great movies. I'd say Marty is the best living American director.

I'd also like to say I appreciate MudInYerEye's extremely pithy way of weighing in on issues.

I think now the conversation has swung around to violence in the media versus sex in the media, and which is destroying America faster. Relax, I'm being facetious. Again, I enjoy healthy doses of both, and I don't really want them censored unnecessarily. But I also believe that they are both topics more suitable for fully-formed adults, not children.

On a side note, though, what about the violence that's been standard for children's entertainment for the last 70 years, i.e. the slapstick, Warner Bros.-style violence in cartoons? Anvils falling on speech-impaired hunters, ducks being machine-gunned, coyotes falling hundreds of feet of a cliff (not to mention the lacivious advances of a particular Parisian polecat), and nobody is hurt in the long-run. Did you know that in England, references to smoking are being edited out of the old "Tom and Jerry" cartoons because the government feels children might imitate the behaviour. But the mouse dropping a refrigerator on a cat? Nah, that's cool. Don't get me wrong. I was raised on these cartoons. They were my bread and butter, and I'm no more screwed up than the next guy. But I figured while we were discussing violence in the media, I'd throw that out there. Any thoughts?

 

[Quigley Brown]

How many of you watch MTV? All the rap videos are basically the same. They all contain four main ingrediants: Expensive cars, flashy men's jewelry, trendy nightclubs and half-naked women shaking their rear ends in slow motion. The women in these videos are used solely for the purpose of being sex objects. It's degrading. These entertainers (I won't call them musicians) are idols to teenage boys.

 

[scotrace]

Run its course

Not ALL old threads should be revised.

This has run its course and is now seeing some rather personal insults (which have been removed)..