On Sunday afternoon I went with a couple friends to see the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature, GrindHouse. Although it isn’t Tarantino’s best work it did not disappoint. By that I mean that it was phenomenally edgy and violent.
During one particularly gruesome scene, with guns blazing and blood
splattering, I suddenly became conscious of how excited I was and how
much I enjoyed that feeling.
I’m not proud of it, but I like watching violent movies. Not for the
sake of violence itself. A movie with nothing but violence would be
terribly dull. But violence combined with compelling dialogue, violence
that I can believe, now that’s entertainment. The popularity of
filmmakers like Tarantino and Rodriguez proves I’m not alone.
The events at Virginia Tech made it shockingly clear that we live in a
violent society. The Roman games may no longer exist, but the human
craving for violence, action, adrenaline, whatever you want to call it,
continues to rage.
Do I think that violent movies or music or video games are to blame for these events?
No, absolutely not.
Hundreds of millions of people see the same violent entertainment and
don’t exhibit psychopathic behavior. I’m more inclined to think that a
love of violence is a species wide trait that was key to survival for
many thousands of years.
So why does it seem like these tragedies always happen in America?
The reason that occurs to me is that this young man had nothing to
live for. A person with nothing to live for is capable of anything. Are
there more Americans with nothing to live for relative to other
cultures? Are we more isolated from each other? More cruel? More
competitive?
I don’t know. These events make me realize that I don’t know much of
anything. This tragedy has left me very confused and very sad.
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