Funny, I just watched the original 1932 Scarface, which opens with a pretty defensive statement that the film's actually an "indictment" of gang warfare.
I keep reading/hearing there's little evidence increased exposure to increasingly graphic levels of violence has much effect on behavior. Then why does increased exposure to porn seem t…
Funny, I just watched the original 1932 Scarface, which opens with a pretty defensive statement that the film's actually an "indictment" of gang warfare.
I keep reading/hearing there's little evidence increased exposure to increasingly graphic levels of violence has much effect on behavior. Then why does increased exposure to porn seem to mess so greatly with the sexual function? Because it's a real sex act being viewed, whereas with the violence people can tell themselves, "oh, it's fake/CGI?" In that case I wonder if the problem is not so much desensitization to violence as certain minds/personalities wanting to act out the movies playing in their heads, thinking everyone else will want to watch.
But what do I know? I'm the wimp hiding my eyes behind my hands during every gory movie scene, begging my husband to tell me when it's over.
I think there's a point to be made about "knowing it's fake". In my experience real footage of violence or from war zones truly hits differently, somehow your mind recognizes that it is real and that people that are being hurt and killed. I can watch war movies all day long no problem but even if the real killing is only "implied" it's absolutely haunting. There was a video from Mariupol of a Chechen soldier walking through the ruins of an apartment building and you could hear a woman screaming off-camera followed by a gunshot and silence, you could get a hundred of the best actresses of all time practicing their best blood-curdling screams for a month and not capture that emotion. On the other hand, watching the D-Day beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan really messed me up as an 11-year-old, so there has definitely been desensitization in that respect and I suppose the same could be true if one were to decide to regularly consume real graphic violence. Although I cannot imagine how one could do that without either becoming totally numb and nihilistic or overwhelmed with sadness and anguish.
That’s true to an extent regarding people disassociating entertainment violence as being “fake/cgi”, but for the last, say, decade, it has been very, very, easy to find websites that are just mass compilations of real life graphic violence videos; from cartel & terrorist executions to convince store murders, police shootings, and even mass shooters who live-streamed themselves. There’s whole internet communities out there who treat that stuff as entertainment in and of itself, and even though they know it’s real, they treat it as consequenceless entertainment.
Funny, I just watched the original 1932 Scarface, which opens with a pretty defensive statement that the film's actually an "indictment" of gang warfare.
I keep reading/hearing there's little evidence increased exposure to increasingly graphic levels of violence has much effect on behavior. Then why does increased exposure to porn seem to mess so greatly with the sexual function? Because it's a real sex act being viewed, whereas with the violence people can tell themselves, "oh, it's fake/CGI?" In that case I wonder if the problem is not so much desensitization to violence as certain minds/personalities wanting to act out the movies playing in their heads, thinking everyone else will want to watch.
But what do I know? I'm the wimp hiding my eyes behind my hands during every gory movie scene, begging my husband to tell me when it's over.
That’s a great question (The porn/sexual function comparison).
I think there's a point to be made about "knowing it's fake". In my experience real footage of violence or from war zones truly hits differently, somehow your mind recognizes that it is real and that people that are being hurt and killed. I can watch war movies all day long no problem but even if the real killing is only "implied" it's absolutely haunting. There was a video from Mariupol of a Chechen soldier walking through the ruins of an apartment building and you could hear a woman screaming off-camera followed by a gunshot and silence, you could get a hundred of the best actresses of all time practicing their best blood-curdling screams for a month and not capture that emotion. On the other hand, watching the D-Day beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan really messed me up as an 11-year-old, so there has definitely been desensitization in that respect and I suppose the same could be true if one were to decide to regularly consume real graphic violence. Although I cannot imagine how one could do that without either becoming totally numb and nihilistic or overwhelmed with sadness and anguish.
That’s true to an extent regarding people disassociating entertainment violence as being “fake/cgi”, but for the last, say, decade, it has been very, very, easy to find websites that are just mass compilations of real life graphic violence videos; from cartel & terrorist executions to convince store murders, police shootings, and even mass shooters who live-streamed themselves. There’s whole internet communities out there who treat that stuff as entertainment in and of itself, and even though they know it’s real, they treat it as consequenceless entertainment.