As with his thoughts on gun restrictions, it remains unclear exactly what Mr. Trump thinks can be done on this issue, or what he truly believes....Oh, I get it. He's "shrouding" his own opinion. Shrouding. Good Lord. So macabre.
The administrations of President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama had tried to understand the issue with wide-ranging initiatives and recommendations after massacres at Columbine High School in 1999 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.And nothing happened, including the recommended funding of research on the connection between violent video games and real-world violence. And yet I'm seeing gun-control advocates flatly asserting that there is no connection.
People involved in listening tours during past administrations doubted that Mr. Trump’s meeting would lead to productive policy.... On Thursday, White House officials kept the aims of the meeting vague, and declined to say why they had revoked journalists’ planned access to it.Nothing will happen. We're averse enough to censorship, fortunately. Concern was shown. That's all you're going to get from the government. I hope.
But, come on, resist violent media. Not just video games, but movies and television. If people would boycott this ugliness, it would go away. Why do we encourage a taste for violence in our children?
I'd like to see the Hollywoodlanders who hate gun violence embrace a moratorium on guns in movies. Make stories that don't have any shooting or brandishing of guns. And don't substitute other weapons like knifes and poison. Find a way to entertain us that does not require inflicting violence on the human body.
#NoGunsInMovies
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163 comments:
But, come on, resist violent media.
Blowing stuff up is great if there's a plot to make it interesting.
The violence is so much better than in the 70s.
Women prefer more poisonings.
The trouble with gun violence is that the hero takes out countless evil henchmen with a single shot and then misses the head evildoer with dozens of shots.
This leads to a fistfight that the hero begins by losing but he bounces back.
I see there is in fact a Death Wish 5 but not 6. I'll have to see if somebody finally gets him. He leaves a long trail of motivating dead daughters, wives and girlfriends.
I too highly doubt that anything of consequence will come of all this. It's a listening tour that's ultimately just a placebo for the older, more socially conservative members of his base.
Poisonings: Exterminators (2009). It's a woke Arsenic and Old Lace.
"Blowing stuff up is great if there's a plot to make it interesting."
My challenge is to make plots that don't rely on a particular device — gun violence. I would extend that to other violence as well, including other weapons and the body itself as a weapon (such as in rape or pushing someone off a cliff).
I have a rather broad objection to fiction, in that it creates characters for us to identify with or care about and then it does cruel things to them. I have personally decided not to consume fiction (including film and video) that makes a story out of the infliction of physical suffering and fear of physical suffering.
To say that it's an easy plot point is to further my argument. I am challenging them to do something that is more difficult. I think we are damaging ourselves through the consumption of ugliness instead of beauty. I will not entertain myself anymore with watching a human being suffer.
I will read the news about real-world events like this, and I will read history. I will look at film/video/photographs of these things only when it is not appealing to our debased instinct for titillation over suffering (that is, sadism).
He's making his opponents live up to their own rhetoric. It's about controlling the debate and deflating the opposition. Nothing will change, but the goal is to put progressives on the defensive about why violence in Hollywood and video games is okay. They control the aesthetic narrative of society while, at the same time, saying that people should resist that narrative.
Not unlike highlighting Gore's extravagant lifestyle that, in practice, argues against the very causes he supports in rhetoric. Thus establishing the issue as really being all about power and partisanship. Which is what the present gun control debate is about. It won't change the minds of the partisans, but it does affect those in the middle.
rhhardin - that plot device is unrelated to guns. Have you read Greek and Roman epic poetry?
Having just finished The Aeneid, I find Althouse's plea for violence free entertainment hilarious. Violence is our past and our future. Literature and history (and current events, "Hello, South Africa!") show that multi-culturalism and peaceful diversity are dangerous fantasies. Increasing violence is inevitable.
Death turns up all over in literature and is figurative for change.
The hero leads by example. Blows up (figurative) in the bad guys what was wrong with them.
A bad guys vs bad guys violence is pointless unless it's whimsical screw-up characters for amusement.
There simply is not enough news out there to fill up the agenda of the 24 hour cable news appetite so any thing they can find must do and even if that means generating stuff. Stop showing mass shootings? Are you kidding?
I miss the days when you had the evening news program and that was it for the day. That forced very selective editing.
Arma virumque cano, Trojai, qui primis ab oris venit
maybe wrong, from memory.
It used to be used to torture high school students.
My challenge is to make plots that don't rely on a particular device
Their challenge is to make money.
But, come on, resist violent media. Not just video games, but movies and television.
Why?
If people would boycott this ugliness, it would go away. Why do we encourage a taste for violence in our children?
Oh, because esthetics.
That makes sense because violence was a lot more common before there were video games to take the blame.
"The Blessings of Violence" was the chapter in Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig's _From the Wrong Side_ that I bought the book for.
The "Myth and Reality of Sexual Abuse of Children" turned out to be the most surprising and useful chapter. If you don't let them take at least partial responsibility for it, you screw them up.
Ann - no murder, no seduction? Mah-jongg, anybody?
I prefer suspense in movies to actual violence. I think it was Hitchcock who said it's better to show the timebomb ticking under the chair than to show the actual explosion. The former can cause angst for many minutes, the latter is quick one and done.
Were I a Director, the violence would be off-screen. I trust the audience to have an imagination far more macabre than anything I could dream up.
So..stop making movies that men will enjoy.
it's better to show the timebomb ticking under the chair than to show the actual explosion. The former can cause angst for many minutes, the latter is quick one and done.
Think about baseball.
Althouse apparently desires to live in a Coca Cola commercial.
https://youtu.be/ib-Qiyklq-Q
Americans need some taste for violence.
We have to go around the world killing the bad guys while our soldiers get killed.
Obama and W didn’t kill anybody. Soldiers do. Seal Team Six killed Osama Bin Ladin and dumped his carcass in the ocean.
Obama and Hillary and the others watched from “the Situation Room.”
They are the ones who play video games. They do it with the lives of Brave Men who aren’t averse to violence. Who even like the taste of it a bit.
Americans aren’t Jews during the Holocaust. They know no one is going to help them or can
Arm yourself because no one else can save you
I'm personally waiting for the Tarantino version of The Sound of Music.
Reversing pervasive language and brief nudity would help .
I put school shootings down to bad language.
Make potential school shooters horny.
So let's burn the Dirty Harry movies...and while we are at it, burn all the other Clint Eastwood art films. And throw Bullit on the fire too. Steve McQueen was far too masculine.
I personally loved the adaptation of The Iliad where the Greeks decided it wasn't worth the effort and stayed home.
The worst offender is the "Underworld" franchise. When it's a war between werewolves and vampires, there is never a reason to stop shooting.
On the other hand, Kate Beckinsale is quite fetching in a leather corset.
The fact that you're finding it hard to think of a plot that would meet my challenge just shows that it would take some talent and effort. You don't have the requisite talent or you don't want to do the difficult work. Noted.
I am not saying I would go to a bad movie if it met my basic requirement. It's not like food. I don't need any of it. Nothing is a high standard for me when it comes to movies. It's got to be better than nothing. You have to meet my challenge and also be worth seeing to me.
I'm curious what would be made if my challenge were accepted.
If you're trying to pontificate at the outset: It cannot be done!!!... well, I just find that very lame.
The story begins when the conflict begins and the story ends when the conflict ends. Every successful novelist, journalist, and screenwriter knows that.
Althouse: "I'd like to see the Hollywoodlanders who hate gun violence embrace a moratorium on guns in movies. Make stories that don't have any shooting or brandishing of guns. And don't substitute other weapons like knifes [knives] and poison."
In other words, you want more talk. That's a TV show, not a movie. TV shows (made for small screens) are written for the ear. Motion pictures (made for big screens) are written for the eye.
"But, come on, resist violent media. Not just video games, but movies and television. If people would boycott this ugliness, it would go away. Why do we encourage a taste for violence in our children? "
Because its human. Its an essential part of the animal.
Pre-civilized man was violent and deadly, and was as happy about that as my cat is when he pretends to disembowel a toy mouse.
Haka
Thats why all the ancient stories are terribly violent. That's why a good part of the Iliad is an extended poetic blood-bath, much worse than anything Peckinpah tried to film. When the US murder rate was low, the kids were running around shooting each other in cowboy&indians games or playing soldier.
You can try to suppress it, but some ill effect is going to pop up as a reaction.
Disarm Elmer Fudd.
"I prefer suspense in movies to actual violence. I think it was Hitchcock who said it's better to show the timebomb ticking under the chair than to show the actual explosion. The former can cause angst for many minutes, the latter is quick one and done."
True, but why do I want to pay to sit in a seat and have anxiety created within my nervous system?
They should have to pay me. A lot!
How about a moratorium on bad guys being cool. That's the real problem.
But seriously, we need to stop trying to ban stuff - a moratorium on moratoria.
Just the mere possibility of a moratorium on guns sells millions of them. I bought one just last month for that very reason. I know people who did the same and really have no business owning a gun. They are not serious about them, but fear being banned from owning one. Without the gun grabbing hysteria, those questionable gun owners would not have one now.
There's always sex.
Romcoms.
I'd complain about the low quality of the thugs in Death Wish. They're acting the part of thugs, as far as the impression they make. You see the acting.
The Cutting Edge (1992) was an unusual romcom in that the woman was at fault and did the apology that the man does in every other romcom.
"True, but why do I want to pay to sit in a seat and have anxiety created within my nervous system?"
De gustibus, etc.
A lot of "traditional entertainment" from dances to folk tales, was exactly "have anxiety created within my nervous system", as our old housekeeper used to do, telling us tales of the aswang and its cousins (You have no idea. The unbowdlerized Brothers Grimm cannot compare), or my abuelita about la mano negra, which was, apparently, a resident of our attic and a proximate threat.
"True, but why do I want to pay to sit in a seat and have anxiety created within my nervous system?".
Take your Soma, citizen, and watch the screen for further instructions.
So I guess Deadpool is right out?
The problem isn't violence in movies, or video games, or music, or television or comic books.......
The problem is the glorification of violence, the promotion of thug culture and the decline of civility.
Violence improved most when they began showing pink spray behind the guy who was just plugged.
Bob and Ray did a High Anxiety series. It may be out there.
Althouse says: "embrace a moratorium on guns in movies. Make stories that don't have any shooting or brandishing of guns"??
Yikes! - let's get serious, pls...what else?? - no robbery, sex, Macbeth, alcohol, smoking, hurricanes-tornadoes, disease, bikinis, NFL ...you want Fiction censored to suit your taste? Roll over in your grave James Joyce. I'm dazed and amazed.
No one thinks it is hard to envision the plot of a violence-free movie, there are scads of rom-coms, for example. And now you want to avoid suspense, too! Is it too much for you to take when a character is upset by a bad date?
Google says Bob and Ray's Anxiety is a send-up of a CBS radio series Suspense.
and while we are at it, burn all the other Clint Eastwood art films.
I thought he did that when he made Gran Torino.
I'm a fan of old movies. Before Bonnie and Clyde, most violence was off screen and that was on screen wasn't too realistic. Hitchcock could instill a sense of violence without showing much if any of it on the screen. I honestly believe movies would be better if directors left more to our imaginations in this area. The same goes for sex. Too much realism usually detracts from the movie.
Paradoxically, asking viewers to use their imaginations to supply the images that take place off screen involves viewer more into the story, making the story more real to them than had the action taken place on screen using the best special effects.
"[W]hy do I want to pay to sit in a seat and have anxiety created within my nervous system?"
Sometimes, the release is worth the buildup. You may want to talk to Meade about this.
Trump should just declare Soros himself to be a violent video that causes a national emergency and confiscate all of his wealth. Then give him Due Process later.
I'd like to see the Hollywoodlanders who hate gun violence embrace a moratorium on guns in movies. Make stories that don't have any shooting or brandishing of guns -- Althouse
You're going to just love the Obama Netflix series.
When Jane Austin wrote, the constant source of anxiety wasn’t guns, it was getting cut off from the family fortune and thrown to the wolves. No need for guns, it was a far more terrifying fate than merely being killed.
We evolved to believe in greater powers, it was adaptive, we evolved to struggle with our environment, we evolved to maximize our sexual success in terms not just number of sexual conquests, but the quality of them. We might not need any of this nonsense in literature if we still had elemental struggles to occupy our time.
Imagine music with no “dissonance/resolution” cycles. All I,IV,V stuff like Good Lovin’ or La Bamba, or Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Survey says! Human beings want conflict and resolution. Crave it.
Maybe it is Trump way of inviting our attention to present TV shows and films without actually doing so and getting accused of attacking the 1st Amendment.
As for AA's argument - she wants to burn all copies of "High Noon"?
See the remake of "3:10 to Yuma" vs. the Glenn Ford version f. ex. Something has changed.
" We might not need any of this nonsense in literature if we still had elemental struggles to occupy our time. "
People who live on the outcomes of elemental struggles tend to have tremendous imaginations going by the evidence. Traditional peoples have enormous bodies of verbal tradition, folktales and mythology. Literature took over a lot of that space.
There are plenty of good movies without violence or degradation that is par for the course from Hollywood.
AA: I'd like to see the Hollywoodlanders who hate gun violence embrace a moratorium on guns in movies. Make stories that don't have any shooting or brandishing of guns. And don't substitute other weapons like knifes and poison. Find a way to entertain us that does not require inflicting violence on the human body.
I abjure torture porn, but avoiding pain and fear of pain leaves out a goodly chunk of the human experience.
True, but why do I want to pay to sit in a seat and have anxiety created within my nervous system?
Hollywood wouldn't make any money off of caring about what I would and would not pay to experience, either. "Sell to the classes, live with the masses; sell to the masses, live with the classes". Same as it ever was.
bagoh: But seriously, we need to stop trying to ban stuff - a moratorium on moratoria.
Gahrie: So..stop making movies that men will enjoy.
I don't think Althouse is calling for banning anything, or prohibiting the making of anything. She's engaging in critical judgment, not calling for censorship.
I got nothin' against aesthetic/moral critical judgment. I indulge in it myself, all the time. People shouldn't be so touchy about any criticism of their tastes. I'm willing to entertain the idea that my love of certain classic violent movie genres coarsens my aesthetic sense, enstupidates my intellect, and degrades my character. I probably won't be persuaded that the stuff I like does those things, but I'm hardly offended by the suggestion that it could.
Well, buwaya, you are right. But let’s all just say that millions of years of evolution in an uncaring wilderness never happened! Problem solved! A new literature for a new mankind!
Film a duplicate bridge tournament and call it "Groundhog Day II"
For some reason this post and the comments made me search for an animated short film that I saw about 25 years ago.
It was Kim Thompson's All the Great Operas in 10 minutes.
On the other hand, it is possible to enjoy The Wild Bunch and still appreciate The Remains of the Day.
The Hallmark channel, Hallmark Mysteries and the UP Faith and Family network have very entertaining shows that don't require corpses and serial killers.
A good example is the series "When Calss the Heart" which is about a love story between a Candian Mountie and a school teacher. Or books based on a series of novels like Chesapeake Shores or Cedar Cove. They go so far as to have a show about the Post Offce without anyone going postal.
Even Netflicks has shows like "Anne With An E" and "Fuller House" for he family to watch together like the good old days.
There is plenty of great entertainment that the normals enjoy that fancy pants elitists scorn so they can watch flesh eating zombies or serial killers.
Althouse - There are plenty of movies that meet your criteria on the Hallmark channel. Or, there are several adaptions of Jane Austin's novels that should meet your criteria. I can also think of several screwball comedies that would fit the bill. So, it's not that difficult of a challenge.
However, I believe eventually you would find your moratorium on any violence too limiting. Some of the greatest, most ennobling, stories involve violence. (You cannot tell the "Greatest Story Ever Told" without mentioning the Crucifixion and the Savior's overcoming violence through the Resurrection.) So, while we shouldn't glorify violence, we shouldn't ignore it either. It's part of our mortal condition. Part of the beauty of the world around us is how so many overcome violence and live decent, loving, lives -- even when having to reluctantly use violence to protect those they love.
Has there ever been a movie where a young hero grabs a gun and kills his classmates at a high school? Besides Heathers?
I don't see the cause and effect, here.
"In other words, you want more talk. That's a TV show, not a movie. TV shows (made for small screens) are written for the ear. Motion pictures (made for big screens) are written for the eye."
You made an inference that shows your lack of imagination.
The only images worth seeing are violent?!
The only images worth seeing are violent?!
Naked women will do in a pinch.
It's just a question of finding the violent movie producer, running him off the road, over the cliff, and crashing down in a fiery wreck.
Hollywood revels in gun violence and sexual degradation and perversion. Then they want to lecture the rubes to drop their religion and take away their guns and their church.
When having guns is the only thing that prevents them from imposing their corruption and perversion on you. They are at war with Christianity and Patriotism. They want to force nuns to pay for abortions and everyone to participate in the farce that is gay marriage under penalty of losing your business or your job.
It is all of a piece. There is a cold civil war going on and Hollywood is a big part of the other side.
They are Harvey Weinstein. They all either do what he does or they enable it. They are scum.
Airplane crashes aren't much good. The smithereen effect is all you get.
I'd like to see the Hollywoodlanders who hate gun violence embrace a moratorium on guns in movies.
Yes!!! How can this not be happening already? And women don't want their sexuality used in an exploitative way? Embrace a moratorium on female nudity in movies, too.
Failed violence can be amusing. Some B-grade shoot-em-up scene in a set constructed out of the cheapest possible office cubicle materials would be the high point.
There is a serious argument to be made for violence in fiction -- one that asserts that violence is not only beneficial to, but necessary for, psychological health and the maintenance of healthy psyche.
I recommend, in this regard, Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment." It's the foundational work on the subject, although far from the only one.
Ann, I'm a mystery buff. I have literally hundreds of books in which people are murdered. Nearly all of Christie (the Tommy & Tuppence ones excepted), all of Marsh, all of Sayers, all of Allingham, all of Elizabeth George, all of Ruth Rendell, all of Edmund Crispin, all of E.C. Bentley, naturally all of Chesterton. Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is my latest find. Plus a dozen or more short story anthologies. I have never tried to tot up all the people killed in these books, but the number is naturally larger than the number of books.
If you conclude from this that I'm a bloodthirsty maniac, you couldn't be more wrong. Chesterton has it right: The detective story is the one infallibly moral part of literature, in which evil is constantly exposed and punished. Your "solution" to evil is never to portray it, because obviously it will then just go "poof!" and vanish. Forgive me if I'm a mite skeptical.
"Althouse - There are plenty of movies that meet your criteria on the Hallmark channel. Or, there are several adaptions of Jane Austin's novels that should meet your criteria. I can also think of several screwball comedies that would fit the bill. So, it's not that difficult of a challenge. However, I believe eventually you would find your moratorium on any violence too limiting. Some of the greatest, most ennobling, stories involve violence. (You cannot tell the "Greatest Story Ever Told" without mentioning the Crucifixion and the Savior's overcoming violence through the Resurrection.) So, while we shouldn't glorify violence, we shouldn't ignore it either. It's part of our mortal condition. Part of the beauty of the world around us is how so many overcome violence and live decent, loving, lives -- even when having to reluctantly use violence to protect those they love."
I was going to bring up the crucifixion but I restrained myself.
There is a central violent image in our culture, and you can go in our greatest art museums, perhaps in search of beauty, and one horrible bit of torture porn will slam you in the face. We've adored and drawn inspiration from the visual for centuries. It rivets your attention. It is who we are. But Christianity does not require fixation on that image. That was a choice that human beings made, to focus on the physical torture of execution and to devote the highest artistry toward wrapping our minds up in that torture, with details of wounds and woeful faces. It's not the kind of Christianity I was brought up in, however. I remember being taught that the empty cross is what we display and where the meaning is -- the resurrection.
Video games are also part of the problem. It desensitize children to murder and death. When are mudering and raping playing Grand a theft Auto you are whetting the appetite for those inclined to that behavior. Or at best "normalizing" it for young minds.
I don't know if you could ban it by government action but parents should take a stand. Get your kid off of his phone and toss a ball around. Or teach them to cook. Or build something. Or repair something.
The antidote to the violence is spending some quality time with your children. Not leaving them n front of the video games for hours at a time.
Tits don't count as nudity any longer. Anyway they just call in strippers for the inexplicable gentleman's club scene.
I don't think Althouse is calling for banning anything, or prohibiting the making of anything. She's engaging in critical judgment, not calling for censorship.
You do realize she ended her post with #NoGunsInMovies, right?
Klavan says that nudity of the star for the love scene should be taken as figurative for loving each other, a convention.
The can be said of violence. It's a convention for something else.
Aristotle's and Nietzche's ideas about tragedy -- the nature, uses, and benefits thereof -- may be seen as complementary to Bettelheim's musings on violence in fiction.
Long story very short: we need it (violence). It's good for us, after a fashion.
May the righteous indignation of God crush out the proud and the unholy. - Erik Satie
So now images of Christ on the Cross are relegated to "torture porn." God let Christ go through all of the suffering, and the torture, for naught. For Althouse, the message would be the same if Christ had simply died from a household accident, or of old age, because the only significance is in the Resurrection.
Nicholas Sparks always kills off the love interest in his movies. Women love it.
If people would boycott this ugliness, it would go away. Why do we encourage a taste for violence in our children?
According to Jordan Peterson’s interpretation of Jung, “we” are dangerously indulging our “shadow selves,” which is the dark side of human existence that truly moral individuals acknowledge and seek to control in themselves. The plight of our children is just the inevitable side effect of catering to that human taste for violence.
No fatal disease movies. Take that, ladies.
dark side of human existence
It holds galaxies together, is one theory.
I think dark matter may just be a huge collection of bad jokes.
Like islands of plastic in the ocean.
" But Christianity does not require fixation on that image. That was a choice that human beings made, to focus on the physical torture of execution and to devote the highest artistry toward wrapping our minds up in that torture, with details of wounds and woeful faces. It's not the kind of Christianity I was brought up in ..."
You describe precisely the kind of Christianity I was brought up in!
Exuberantly so. Enthusiastically so.
Christ on the cross is the symbol, in every church and on every wall, and more so, in every church (and on many walls), the stations of the cross, each with its betrayals, humiliations, kindnesses and tortures. Besides the very numerous and varied tortures of all the martyred saints, also ubiquitous.
Christianity without the symbolism of blood, of suffering, of the realest of the real bits of humanity, hasn't got, well, reality. Christianity is pain.
"Take up your cross and follow me" becomes, I can't stand being anxious during a movie. The further you take this, the shallower your position becomes.
Has there ever been a movie where a young hero grabs a gun and kills his classmates at a high school?
"Elephant," by Gus van Sant.
#NoIRSAuditsInMovies
an anti-anxiety move.
Gus van Sant has left a trail of sexually abused and dead young actors in his wake. It would be better to ban Gus van Sant from movies in place of banning guns.
What was the film with the IRS auditor hero. I think _Dinner for Schmucks_
Althouse wants to ban Shakespeare. Proof she’s angling for the Madison Community Fiundation blogger grant money.
Oh there's another one. Stranger than Fiction (2008) where the actual guy is to be killed in order not to ruin the novel.
How can you call yourself a Christian, and yet characterize the crucifixion as "torture porn"? Isn't Christ's sacrifice and suffering for humanity the key event of Christianity?
SDaly @1:07:
I have no opinion on Gus van Sant and the merits, or lack thereof, of his movies. I was merely answering a question asked upthread.
SDaly to me: "I don't think Althouse is calling for banning anything, or prohibiting the making of anything. She's engaging in critical judgment, not calling for censorship."
You do realize she ended her post with #NoGunsInMovies, right?
She's right here, we can ask. Hey, Althouse, you callin' for a new Code or what?
And, Ann, have you thought what this would do to theater, both spoken and sung? All of Shakespeare's tragedies are obviously out. Hell, at the end of Hamlet, what with Hamlet's father and Hamlet's uncle and Hamlet's mother and Hamlet himself and Polonius and Ophelia and Laertes and Rosencrantz and Guilderstein, who's left alive? Horatio and Fortinbras and Osric, I think.
Macbeth manages a similar death toll in about half the time. King Lear kills fewer people, but compensates with a protracted spot of torture. I won't speak of Titus Andronicus, except to send interested people there.
The Passion of Christ or Fifty Shades of Grey...which is worse?
The administrations of President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama had tried to understand the issue with wide-ranging initiatives and recommendations
So Democrat. "We don't yet understand this issue. Here's what we want to make everybody do."
People involved in listening tours during past administrations doubted that Mr. Trump’s meeting would lead to productive policy
Lol!
...But Christianity does not require fixation on that image. That was a choice that human beings made, to focus on the physical torture of execution and to devote the highest artistry toward wrapping our minds up in that torture, with details of wounds and woeful faces. It's not the kind of Christianity I was brought up in, however. I remember being taught that the empty cross is what we display and where the meaning is -- the resurrection.
Thank you for responding to my comment. I mentioned the Crucifixion only to show that violence is sometimes a necessary part of an ennobling and beautiful story. I agree that it is possible to focus too much on the suffering of Christ and too little on His triumph over sin and death -- yet His story is incomplete without a mention of the violence of the Crucifixion. We just need not glorify the violence. And, like the Christianity you were raised in, mine does not focus on the Crucifixion. You won't find a cross adorning any of our church buildings: We worship the Resurrected Lord.
Returning to the topic of violence in art: Even here, surely the problem wasn't the depiction of the Crucifixion itself but the overly graphic nature of the depiction. This seems to be a stylistic approach taken with a lot of Latin artists. Paintings of battle scenes by Latin artists seem to be 'bloodier' than those by artists from other ethnic backgrounds. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm confident a Spanish artist's rendition of the Battle of Waterloo would be more graphic than one done by an English artist.
"The Passion of Christ or Fifty Shades of Grey...which is worse?'
The answer is the same as the answer to - "why do they suffer?"
Anne said: I'd like to see the Hollywoodlanders who hate gun violence embrace a moratorium on guns in movies.
The recent olympics gave me my first dose of broadcast TV in about 2 years. I was bowled over by the ads for violence, mostly new movies and TV shows. Seemed like everyone was waving guns around, may be even in a Coke ad. Hated it.
Gahrie: I'm personally waiting for the Tarantino version of The Sound of Music.
"The hills are alive, with the sound of gunfire...."
Althouse:
Challenge accepted.
You will get Searching for Bobby Fischer which is about chess.
You will get lots of consensual porn.
You will get lots of Lifetime movies with predictable plots.
You will get Rogers and Hammerstein.
Meanwhile, I will get whatever-the-hell I want to buy with my money. I want Aliens chasing Ellen Ripley and Newt. I want homesteaders defending themselves from cattle barons. I want Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I want the Boondock Saints.
Plus, I get all that other stuff that you get, to boot.
AA: It's not the kind of Christianity I was brought up in, however. I remember being taught that the empty cross is what we display and where the meaning is -- the resurrection.
No death, sin, and suffering, but meaning in resurrection nonetheless? Is this some kind of Protestant koan?
I think the kind of Christianity you were brought up in is pretty much an entirely different religion from the Christianity I was brought up in. That said, the Iberian aesthetic tradition in Catholicism can look pretty over-the-top and morbid even to other Catholics. (Probably best tradition if you had a mind to converting Aztecs, though.)
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard: No death, sin, and suffering, but meaning in resurrection nonetheless?
That was my thought, too. Christ died on the cross, and took the suffering, so that we wouldn't have to. To ignore, or even minimize, that suffering seems to miss the whole point.
It was his death, not his resurrection, that was done for our benefit.
No pain, no grin.
" I'm confident a Spanish artist's rendition of the Battle of Waterloo would be more graphic than one done by an English artist."
Not necessarily. Or, well, maybe.
Two paintings made during or very shortly after the Napoleonic wars -
Goya, didn't of course, paint anything on Waterloo, the Spanish having just one officer present on that field (one of Wellingtons staff officers). But he did do quite a few, almost journalistically, about his own parts of the Napoleonic wars. Goya was sui generis and at the same time extremely Spanish. His violence is almost intimate, and every man, each one, full of fury or pain or both, is individual.
https://historiadepinceles.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/mamelucos4.jpg
This is a traditional sort of battle-piece much more typical of the time. There is furious action and lots of dead people, but it is much more anonymous.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Battle_of_Waterloo_1815.PNG
"How can you call yourself a Christian, and yet characterize the crucifixion as "torture porn"? Isn't Christ's sacrifice and suffering for humanity the key event of Christianity?"
You are confusing 2 things: the crucifixion and the depiction of the crucifixion in artwork.
The image that is displayed in detail in those paintings (and movies) is, in the gospel of Matthew, described in these words: "And they crucified him..."
The garish focus on the intimate bodily details, for the edification/entertainment of the people, is a choice that was made by... who, exactly?
Roughcoat said...
"Elephant," by Gus van Sant.
Here's the trailer.
I wonder, as one does, if the denomination in which Althouse was raised has lost or gained membership.
Does Ann's critical judgment include films that focus on a female writer or artist whose struggle with depression ends in suicide?
The garish focus on the intimate bodily details, for the edification/entertainment of the people, is a choice that was made by... who, exactly?
Humans.
"And, like the Christianity you were raised in, mine does not focus on the Crucifixion. You won't find a cross adorning any of our church buildings: We worship the Resurrected Lord."
I don't know what yours was, but the churches I was taken to as a child were Presbyterian and Episcopal, and I can't remember which one taught me that about the empty cross, in fact, I can't even remember if empty crosses are displayed in Presbyterian Church, but I'm used to seeing the cross in church, just not a crucifix.
Sorry to reopen old Protestant vs. Catholic wounds. I didn't mean to display them so garishly. As I said, I initially thought of this topic and decided to self-censor, but DKWalser brought it up.
Catch 22 proposed that a just god would have just created a doorbell system instead of pain to warn us of bodily danger.
Some say the point of the story is that the self that persists through various versions of ourselves experiences death and resurrection as it grows and changes.
Other than that it's pointless dogma.
Which is to say it's about change, not death and violence.
"I wonder, as one does, if the denomination in which Althouse was raised has lost or gained membership."
Well, which way does that argument cut?
Pornography is very popular.
If it's all about drawing the biggest crowds, then show porn.
Artists tend to make Jesus look very tall and handsome, but " the average build of a Semite male at the time of Jesus was 5 ft. 1 in., with an average weight of about 110 pounds."
Are you looking for the true religion or the biggest crowd pleaser? Of course, I agree that garish, violent melodrama will please the biggest crowds, but I'm registering my objection.
Here's an idea. Immense crowd-pleaser.
"Does Ann's critical judgment include films that focus on a female writer or artist whose struggle with depression ends in suicide?"
Suicide is murder.
Sorry to reopen old Protestant vs. Catholic wounds. I didn't mean to display them so garishly. As I said, I initially thought of this topic and decided to self-censor, but DKWalser brought it up. I sincerely apologize for the error. On behalf of my mother, I want everyone to know I was raised better. One should never raise the topic of religion of politics.
The telling of thrilling, grotesque, or frightening stories is as old as humanity, and I think it meets a social need. It provides catharsis, i.e., purgation of excess emotion. When I begin watching a film noir, say, or reading a novel about crime and death, I'm already filled with frustration and anxiety and fear from my everyday life; the work of art provides a release for all of that. It would be better if I didn't have problems, but I do have them, and the works I consume tend to help me deal with them productively. (I'm talking about fiction in general here, not about shoot-em-up games, which don't really appeal to me anyway.)
As for the crucifix being torture porn, well, it can be taken to that extreme. I think the Mel Gibson movie does this, for instance, but that's a matter of opinion. I think the line is crossed when you seem to be denying Christ the dignity of humanity. But the image of Christ crucified can bring great comfort to those who are suffering greatly. One extreme example is the Isenheim altarpiece, which was painted for a monastery specializing in hospital work. If the Crucifixion is an over-and-done-with historical event, to hell with it. (That's me speaking as a Catholic.)
Down here in the Texas border region, it's not the church leaders who go for your more garish depictions of Christ's sufferings. It's the people. I'm talking about religion as lived in the modern world here; I have limited insight as to what went into the works you see in art museums.
"The garish focus on the intimate bodily details, for the edification/entertainment of the people, is a choice that was made by... who, exactly?"
I suspect, on the evidence, by the people. The Catholic (or better said, early/medieval Christian) church was influenced upwards almost as much as it influenced the popular mind downwards.
I also take that from what I know of pre-Christian peoples. South East Asian folklore is rich in fearsome monsters and bloody outcomes. They would explain the origin of a fruit, say, with a double murder and a suicide. These peoples became Muslim or Christian or remained pagan, but a lot of that folklore survived their new religions, and so the similarities remain. Catholic Christianity proved extremely compatible as it happens.
And so did Islam, at least to the extent that it licensed an already violent nature, among other things, much of the rest being ignored.
Re:
Me: "In other words, you want more talk. That's a TV show, not a movie. TV shows (made for small screens) are written for the ear. Motion pictures (made for big screens) are written for the eye."
Althouse: "You made an inference that shows your lack of imagination."
----
I'm simply telling you what top movie execs at Disney, Columbia, United Artists, and 20th Century Fox told me before I stopped writing for a living and reached top management of a publicly traded corporation before my 30th birthday.
If you can't get the money, you can't make the movie.
I don't know what yours was, but the churches I was taken to as a child were Presbyterian and Episcopal, and I can't remember which one taught me that about the empty cross, in fact, I can't even remember if empty crosses are displayed in Presbyterian Church, but I'm used to seeing the cross in church, just not a crucifix.
To prevent this thread from going even farther off topic, I'll not disclose my religious upbringing. Not because I'm ashamed of it. Simply for the reason already stated. Althouse's topic was violence in art. For her own consumption, she prefers to focus on art that is beautiful, inspiring, and uplifting. She feels violence detracts from that objective.
I believe that, eventually, art that contains only the beautiful will become too sanitary to be interesting. (This is, of course, a matter of taste. Some might enjoy the flavor of chocolate so much that they wouldn't mind if every meal were made entirely of chocolate flavored items. I love chocolate, but I'd find such a diet boring.) In this context, I used the story of Christ as an example of a story that contains violence yet is beautiful, inspiring, and uplifting. I wish I had chosen a secular story. But what secular story would have been as readily acknowledged by Althouse's vast audience?
Why not? If we are going to give up one constitutional right for the sake of safety, why not another?
I think the easiest and least invasive way to end mass shootings (as opposed to reducing murders) is to cease international news coverage of each massacre. Restrict the news to local areas directly affected. Stop naming murderers and making them stars. No laws needed- pressure media companies to do it. It's victim protection.
Violent media certainly is a problem. But... you don't have to watch. I don't. I don't own a TV. It's not much of a loss. If violent media is somehow making other people violent that is a problem, but I don't trust other people to decide what media is allowed and what I can and can't say. Moral panics do more harm than good.
AA: You are confusing 2 things: the crucifixion and the depiction of the crucifixion in artwork.
The image that is displayed in detail in those paintings (and movies) is, in the gospel of Matthew, described in these words: "And they crucified him..."
Which means a body on a cross.
Only after that, a body placed in a tomb, and then the empty tomb. Not an empty cross and no tomb at all.
The empty cross isn't truer to the words in the gospel. That depiction is a choice, too, but it isn't a choice to refrain from adding anything that isn't there. All that "garish" stuff depicts nothing that isn't there in a crucifixion.
"I'm simply telling you what top movie execs at Disney, Columbia, United Artists, and 20th Century Fox told me before I stopped writing for a living and reached top management of a publicly traded corporation before my 30th birthday. If you can't get the money, you can't make the movie."
I don't think you're simply telling me what they told you. I believe you when you say that they told you that movies are visual and that talk-oriented scripts are undesirable.
I do not think they told you that my demand necessarily entails a talk-oriented script, which requires the inference that the only way to have a visual story is to make it violent.
It's usually not worth going to the movie theater if there's nothing especially visual about it. You can wait and see it in more comfort and convenience and with better food on TV. But something could be fabulously visual without being violent, and I am challenging people to provide those visual experiences.
Maybe you were disappointed in your writing career because you wanted more talk and they weren't buying it, but that doesn't mean that talkiness is the only way to avoid violence in movies. Even if the movie companies have been refusing to make nonviolent movies, I don't really care. I can still say I want a different kind of movie and simultaneously reject you assertion that I must just want a talkfest. There is something else that is possible, whether anybody wants to do it or not.
Talky movies are also a problem because they're not suited to the world market, so my idea for nonviolent but powerfully visual movies could be commercial. If not, I feel sad about humanity. We're terribly cruel and sadistic.
Why not? If we are going to give up one constitutional right for the sake of safety, why not another?
I don't read anything Althouse has written in the original post or in this thread as advocating a probation on violence in movies. She's simply advocating for artists to voluntarily express themselves without the use of violence.
I don't think it's bad to bring up religion in these kinds of discussions, partly because I think it has a lot to do with how a person views various kinds of art. It's all connected, historically if in no other way.
"I am much more interested in the nobility of unnaturalness than in the nobility of naturalness... [I]t is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth. The violent are not natural." "The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality." (Flannery O'Connor)
If not, I feel sad about humanity. We're terribly cruel and sadistic
The second part of that sentence leads me to believe that you are a Rightwinger, but the first part indicates that you are indeed a Leftwinger.
"Which means a body on a cross. Only after that, a body placed in a tomb, and then the empty tomb. Not an empty cross and no tomb at all. The empty cross isn't truer to the words in the gospel. That depiction is a choice, too, but it isn't a choice to refrain from adding anything that isn't there. All that "garish" stuff depicts nothing that isn't there in a crucifixion."
I am, as you note, talking about graphic depictions. In Matthew, the image is conveyed very minimally. That is a depiction. In various paintings of the crucifixion, there are elaborate, garish depictions of bodily wounds and dramatically sorrowful faces. That is a depiction. The empty cross may, as you say, depict something that "isn't there" in some sense, but so what? You want literal, storybook illustrations? Why? The crucifixion itself is important for what it symbolizes, and the empty cross is the symbol of resurrection, so the choice to use the empty cross is a choice to look at the message of the resurrection as opposed to the killing of Jesus.
"I don't read anything Althouse has written in the original post or in this thread as advocating a probation on violence in movies. She's simply advocating for artists to voluntarily express themselves without the use of violence."
Yes, there's a market -- supply and demand. I'm working on the demand side, saying what I want and asking people to join me.
The crucifixion itself is important for what it symbolizes, and the empty cross is the symbol of resurrection, so the choice to use the empty cross is a choice to look at the message of the resurrection as opposed to the killing of Jesus.
The suffering and sacrifice of Jesus during the crucifixion is just as important to Christianity as his later resurrection.
Violence doesn't need translation and nuance. Dialog does. That's important when so much of a film's revenue comes from foreign markets.
Althouse: "Maybe you were disappointed in your writing career"
I made good money as a writer. But three years later, as a business executive, I was earning 15 times that figure. I had a family. I had no desire to return to the life of a writer.
Althouse: "We're terribly cruel and sadistic."
We are animals. Some people don't like being animals. They want to be gods.
Be careful about assertions and generalizations concerning the stature of ancient peoples. All claims should be viewed with skepticism, all sources with suspicion. Especially journalistic sources -- bear in mind Crichton's Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Ancient Indo-European peoples with their cattle-based societies ate huge quantities of beef and were accordingly relatively quite large. The mighty king interred in the tholos tomb at Mycenae known alternately as the Treasury of Atreus and the Tomb of Agamemnon has been estimated to have been about 6'1" based on an analysis of his thigh bone. A Roman Army manual compiled during the middle Republic period stipulated that a Roman man had to be at least 5'7" to qualify for service in the Roman Army. This standard was probably easily met given that army service was restricted to land-owning citizens who had good diets with lots of meat (that all changed with Marius's so-called reforms, but that's another subject). The peoples of the Fertile Crescent were smaller/shorter because grains were their dietary mainstay, a consequence of the agricultural revolution. The agricultural revolution made possible the feeding of large populations which in turn promoted urbanization but at the cost of stunting growth and introducing the myriad diseases associated with high-carbohydrate/gluten diets (e.g., heart disease, tooth decay, colon cancer and other cancers, bone disease, arthritis, etc. -- the list is very long). But these were dietary not genetic problems. In other words, if those peoples switched overnight as children from a grain-centric diet to a meat-centric diet their health would have improved almost immediately they would eventually have grown taller and larger. The elites in the ancient world, even in Mesoptomia, were generally more robust -- taller, larger, and healthier -- than the lower classes because of their more varied diets which certainly included plenty of meat.
There were certainly "giants in the earth in those days" and they were probably Aegean peoples (i.e., Mycenaean Greeks) who migrated to the Land of Canaan as part of the Sea Peoples diaspora. The Hebrews, who were indeed of short stature, called them "Anakim" and were terrified of them. "Behold, the people be strong that dwell in the land [Canaan], and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.... We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.... The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.... And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
The chariot warrior Goliath was one of these "sons of Anak." In the Septuagint he described as being "four cubits and a span" (6 feet 9 inches); in the Masoretic Text he is "six cubits and a span" (9 feet 9 inches). The first of these is within the realm of possibility: he seems to have been a very tall/large man among a generally tall/large race of Indo-European warriors. Or he may have been a pituitary giant, like the deceased French wrestler Andre the Giant ("Fezzik" in "The Princess Bride). The horsehair plume on his helmet may been factored into his his height measurement; it may topped out at 12 inches.
Buwaya said:
....A lot of "traditional entertainment" from dances to folk tales, was exactly "have anxiety created within my nervous system", as our old housekeeper used to do, telling us tales of the aswang and its cousins...
Don't know what that means but a (viet vet)friend from Philippines tells of Grandma threatening if he misbehaves,she will let headhunters take him when next they come to the village.
"Violence doesn't need translation and nuance."
Sure it does. The causes, the anticipation, the planning and preparation, and the execution of violence, and its consequences and the recovery from it, the whole business is usually extremely complex and nuanced.
The whole Iliad is a poem of violence, exactly all that.
What you are striving for here is action, the swordfight on stage.
"Don't know what that means but"
Aswang - One of many monsters in Philippine folklore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswang
So, if Bethesda is going under oath, is the plan to ask when the next game is dropping?
Could be one strategy to improve the Millennial vote.
And you can tell a nuanced story (about violence if need be) in film without a word, and it certainly can travel.
Milius wanted to make "Conan the Barbarian" a non-spoken, unsung opera, a silent movie with a musical soundtrack. I think that very likely could have worked, across most of it.
FullMoon: "if he misbehaves, she will let headhunters take him when next they come to the village"
In New York City, when I was 7 years old, my mother said she would let "Gypsies" (Roma) kidnap me. I went to a street corner near my home, eagerly waiting for them to come. They never showed up.
"Grandma threatening if he misbehaves,she will let headhunters take him when next they come to the village."
The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon
From Ifugao to Kalinga
A Ride Through the Mountains of Northern Luzon
By
Cornélis De Witt Willcox,
Lieutenant-Colonel U.S. Army,
Professor United States Military Academy,
Officier d’Académie.
Kansas City, Mo., U.S.A.
Franklin Hudson Publishing Co.,
1912.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12970/12970-h/12970-h.htm
"Violence doesn't need translation and nuance."
Yes it does. What's more, it needs mediation of the kind provided by drama/fiction; or, more generally, storytelling. Again, see "Uses of Enchantment."
The telling of thrilling, grotesque, or frightening stories is as old as humanity, and I think it meets a social need. It provides catharsis, i.e., purgation of excess emotion.
See Aristotle. He wrote: "“A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language;... in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions."
AA: I am, as you note, talking about graphic depictions. In Matthew, the image is conveyed very minimally. That is a depiction. In various paintings of the crucifixion, there are elaborate, garish depictions of bodily wounds and dramatically sorrowful faces. That is a depiction.
And you appear to be thereby making the claim that the minimalist depiction is somehow more true, more of the essence, of the minimalist verbal depiction, than more exuberant expressions, because it is minimal. That doesn't follow. (Actually I think you're trying to make simple matters of taste and tradition more than what they are, but I'll play along.)
The empty cross may, as you say, depict something that "isn't there" in some sense, but so what?
No, you read that carelessly. I said that the "garish" stuff wasn't depicting anything that "isn't there", implicitly, in the starkly minimal "and they crucified him". I was arguing against your interpretation that the "garish" stuff is more or less add-ons, non-essential embellishments to the real story, as opposed to the empty cross. But as I said, that doesn't follow from any property of minimalism. One can as easily say that the empty cross edits out too much and misses the raw truth that the stark minimalism of the words manages to convey.
You want literal, storybook illustrations? Why?
As a lifelong student and lover of the great art and architecture of the European Christian tradition, I will only smile at your notion that what it comprises is a bunch of kitschy holy cards for the literal-minded and childlike among believers. (And you, an artist!)
Btw, how did you manage to infer a global opinion about abstraction in art from a discussion about the meaning of cross vs. crucifix? Quite an invalid leap, there.
The crucifixion itself is important for what it symbolizes, and the empty cross is the symbol of resurrection, so the choice to use the empty cross is a choice to look at the message of the resurrection as opposed to the killing of Jesus.
Yes, that that's your view is clear. Others are merely pointing out to you that resurrections don't make much sense to them - symbolically, theologically, philosophically, emotionally, whatever - without, as they say, the rest of the story. And I don't see anyone objecting to an empty cross, per se - all that garish stuff you object can attach itself to the symbol of an empty cross, too.
Being the sort of literal-minded peasant churl who has been moved by many great artists' depictions of Christ's passion and death, I cannot resist pointing out that an empty cross in itself doesn't really work as a symbol of resurrection. An empty tomb, yes. Dead men got taken down from crucifixes, leaving them unoccupied, and put in tombs, where they stayed dead. Now, I have heard that our Muslim brothers (or some of them, anyway) have it that Jesus was rescued, alive, from the cross and taken into Paradise, but I am not aware of any Christian sect that holds that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected right then and there rather than being taken down and entombed first. But I'm no expert on Episcopalian or Presbyterian theology, so I may be misinformed on this point.
On the difficulty of "getting" something foreign, or at least substantially culturally different, my best example is Stanley Karnow.
On the face of it, he was entirely suited to writing about Asia. A Harvard man, he was also at the Sorbonne and what later became Sciences Po. An old Asia hand, he had served in India and Burma during WWII, was a foreign correspondent for several decades, most in Asia. He wrote what is still the most commonly assigned short history of the Vietnam war. An important and influential man.
Then in the 80's he went to the Philippines, partly to cover the political unrest there, and partly to gather material for what became "In Our Image", a history of the US relationship with its only real colony.
And there he had a problem, which is all over that book. Unlike with his Vietnam history, he finds it difficult to understand, or explain, though he struggles, the motivations of the people. Unlike with Vietnam, where he focused mainly on the Americans in truth, being in the main unable to communicate or deal directly with the Vietnamese in Vietnamese, only with some of them in French, in the Philippines his subject is Filipinos, and so were nearly all his sources and interview subjects. That whole business of martyrdom, of tribal identity, of allegiance and loyalty, defeat him, and he says so. He can tell you what happened, and what people thought, but not why.
At the root of this I think is that Karnow was, unconsciously perhaps, less a cosmopolitan than a member of a particular tribe. That tribe is of course the Jewish-American intelligentsia, or perhaps the international intelligentsia, but it is its own thing. It takes an encounter with the truly foreign (who may not SEEM so foreign, speaking good English and all), to expose ones limitations.
If Karnow had been, say, Irish, I don't think he would have had such a problem.
The book is, in any case, very worthwhile anyway, and essential if you have an interest in these subjects -
Amazon "In Our Image" Stanley Karnow $13.99 on Kindle
As for video games (on topic again)
They are evil and need to be banned.
Not because they are violent but because they are enormous wastes of time, impediments to education, murderers of ambition, and contribute mightily to the lack of physical fitness.
They keep boys and young men from studying, acquiring actual skills, whether they me vocational, musical, social or sporting, and keep them indoors and unexercised. They are better advised to race cars and chase girls.
If Karnow had been, say, Irish, I don't think he would have had such a problem.
I'm Irish and I do NOT have that problem. What I do have a problem with is Karnow's lack of understanding. I.e., I don't understand why he doesn't understand "that whole business of martyrdom, or tribal identity, of allegiance and loyalty." Makes perfect sense to me. Karnow should consider attending the Chicago's South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day parade on Sunday. Irish tribalism in full and magnificent flower. Sure, and won't I be there too.
"Suicide is murder" True enough. But fighting depression is pain.
Jesus on the cross is always depicted, AFAIK, with a loin cloth -- an absurdity, as ALL clothing was removed from those being crucified, for maximum pain and humiliation. If that artistic convention changed, never mind Our Lord's IQ, artists would have to deal with the question of the size of His Holy Junk.
In the movie "John Wick" star Keanu Reeves killed 77 people. In the sequel "John Wick: Chapter 2" Keanu killed 128 people.
In the movie "My Dinner With Andre" nobody got killed as far as I know. The box office was limited. In the planned sequel "My Last Dinner With Andre" Wally pulls a pair of nines and wastes Andre, the waiter, the bartender and a handful of diners. Or so I've heard.
This is an interesting challenge. Am trying to recall if there are any episodes in e.g. Kieslowski's Dekalog where there is gun use or even any actual physical violence, and can't. I think not, but it's been a few years.
Ross Douthat admonished us on Quinquagesima to abstain from pornography and indeed to re-criminalise it, AA now asks the entertainment industry to abstain from gun and other violence in film and media: what's next, I wonder? Mr Trump doing penance in sackcloth and ashes for his libertine ways?
I agree with Althouse. Let Hollyweird put its money where its mouth is.
No more gun violence in film. No more rape. No more fight-fights.
Sex with potted plants - optional
The last we'll call the Weinstein exemption.
Hollywood used to produce "women's pictures"
So, they could have a good cry.
TV has taken over that job.
Ann writes: "Find a way to entertain that does not require inflicting violence on the human body.
I'm for that. Make it illegal to graphically depict an act of violence that shows blood or body parts, or that realistically depicts physical beating. We have obscenity laws. Expand the definition of obscene. Make em do it behind the curtain as in Shakespeare's day, or by fake fights and body clutching as in old cowboy movies. There is no intrinsic reason why the bar has to move ever lower rather than higher.
Ann, when you got yourself into this 'crucifixion' thing you not only went a bridge too far, you burned them all behind you. With all the respect I feel for you and can gather for this particular posting, I would urge you to turn the page and move on. If nothing else, you are proving - with this 'empty' vs 'crucified' cross thingy of yours - you are truly confused about the concept and meaning of the schools of 'representation' in Art and the power of Time over Taste ....In any event, you are essentially promulgating for what you prefer (or, even worse, religiously promoting) and banning what you personally dislike. Bad luck with that! I say.
I read no effort to ban, from Ann. (Could not avoid that rhyme. Sorry.)
Don Quixote probably felt as Althouse does about her preferences. Viewed from that perspective, one feels sympathy.
I take from the earlier response that the churches Althouse attended have lost adherents. That was easily predicted.
Another prediction: Windmills will resist Althouse's lectures.
#NoGunsInMovies
I prefer samurai.
Speaking of words in the (Arnold Schwarzenegger's) Conan the Barbarian movie, one might note Conan's (Schwarzenegger's) famous quote concerning the “lamentation of the women,” to wit (quoting…):
Ruler: … This is good! But what is best in life?
Warrior: The open steppe! Fleet horse. Falcons at your wrist — and wind in your hair!
Ruler: Wrong!! Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.
Ruler: That is good.
(/unQuote)
Anyway, that quote did not originate with Conan in the Barbarian but actually was said (in almost exactly those words) by Genghis Khan back in the 13th century!
Here, for instance, is historian Harold Lamb reporting the tale (quoting…):
[Genghis Khan:] “What, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness?”
[Guard:] “The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse under you,” responded the officer after a little thought, “and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares.”
[Khan:] “Nay,” responded the Khan, “to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet — to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best.”
(/unQuote)
(Harold Lamb, Genghis Khan: The Emperor of All Men, Doubleday, 1927, p. 107)
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