Dejan
> Is it possible that cruelty in entertainment is a constant? Unless
you
> meant the sex aspect of cruelty, which may wax and wane in public.
I thought about this on the occasion of ''A History of Violence'' by
Cronenberg, which infers that violence is in-born, a genetic component of
the sexual act, and even has the ability to attract people, like moths to a
flame,
and spread like a disease - not a very original thought, but carries weight
nevertheless.
So it might be a constant because violence is a constant of human nature !
You have a point that the sex aspect of cruelty waxes and wanes in public.
It recently read in Sight And Sound that two of my favorite
directors, who specialize in sexualized violence, Brian De Palma and Paul
verhoeven, had to flee the U.S. and move to Paris, because there is no
American
market anymore for explicit sexual-violent content.
But on the other hand, we are talking about the MAINSTREAM there -
what about the enormous market for snuff porn which was opened by
internet, to name just one of the new venues for cruel things?
> The question of boredom is another poser. I wonder how you'd judge
it's
> prevalence in history or even today. That's a tough one.
I moved once from the East to the West of Europe, and I must tell you,
boredom is very present in the West. And I mean the
existentialist boredom, stemming from an inner sense
of vacuousness. But if we are to get deeper into this, I think a new topic
must be opened.
>>
> Cruelty in entertainment may be a constant, but it has evolved
nonetheless.
> I'd like to throw in three aspects for consideration:
>
> 1. Torture as a form of product differentiation, which in recent years is
> perhaps especially relevant for independent and art films (Haneke, Miike,
> but also early 90s Tarantino)
I do not quite understand what product differentiation means here.
> 2. Akin to the horror/slasher films of the 70s and 80s, the function of
> adolescent initiation (how much cruelty, gore, and depravity can you bear
to
> watch?)
Though here you must remember that the 80s horror movies turned the
initiation rite into camp comedy, and for a long time thereafter horror was
practically a sub-genre of comedy, or at least a sort of a simulacrum.
Only now with the new reality horrors,
some of the old, ''real'' horror seems to be coming back (the Return of
the Real in the Lacanian sense, for example, which is central to the RING
trilogy).
In an odd way violence is REALITY nowadays.
> Film violence (in all its many facets) is a fascinating and complicated
> subject, especially if you transcend the conventional and simplistic
> moralizing of the "repressive" movie violence discussion (i.e. the
> film-violence-is-bad-and-has-negative-effects-on-viewers strand of
> reasoning).
Though this conventional moralizing acquired a strange new resonance in
the new century - see my previous remark on the Return of The Real.
When McLuhan's ramblings on the TV image coming back from the set
to become Real...actually became a reality, the possibility opened that
the conventional moralising MAY BE RIGHT ON TARGET !
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