Doug,
thanks for helping me clarify my rambling thoughts - I'm sort of making this
up as I go along. I was working on a paper on violence in American film,
dealing more specifically with instances in which characters run amok (Taxi
Driver being a prime example), and tried to get an overview over the
literature on film/media violence. Traditionally, there have been two lines
of inquiry: on the one hand, social scientists investigating the "effects"
of movie violence on viewers, and coming to the conclusion (almost in
unison) that the well-known "catharsis theory" (Aristotle) is untenable and
supposedly refuted by empirical data (gleaned from quantitative studies); on
the other hand, in the humanities, particularly in film studies, the
"catharsis theory" is for the most part very popular, the argument being
that you cannot do justice to the specificity of individual films and their
reception through quantitative methods, but should approach the subject from
a more qualitative perspective, i.e. one that is descriptive/
phenomenological rather than normative; intensive research in this area by
film scholars, however, has only really been taken up in recent years. One
of the most interesting anthologies in this respect is Christopher Sharrett
(ed.): Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (Wayne State UP, 1999).
Sharrett is strongly influenced by both a radically left-wing political view
of Hollywood and Rene Girard's cultural anthropology of sacrificial violence
and scapegoating.
What I meant regarding the "reality of violence in the imaginary" was this:
in my opinion, film/media violence cannot be seen as a reflection of real
violence in society/reality (violence here being understood as being
physical, interpersonal) - that would be the naive approach. This is because
of a variety of reasons, film's traditional reliance on violence as a form
of spectacle, as functional aspect of the character's (especially the
protagonist's and antagonist's) agency, violence's conventionalized/codified
aspects, etc. But there is in my opinion a correspondence between film
violence and viewers' "inner reality" (maybe not 1:1, as I asserted). That
Hollywood films are and have always been so full of violence does reflect,
not necessarily on real violence, but on the AGGRESSION and AGGRESSIVENESS
inherent in American society and its cultural imaginary (the American Dream
is inherently aggressive, as is the mythology of Manifest Destiny, etc.).
Okay, none of this explains the - supposedly recent - upsurge of torture in
movies. (Thinks....)
Henry
>
> Henry wrote this, which mystified me:
>> 3. Media violence - torture being one particular expression thereof - must
>> be seen, in my opinion, as corresponding 1:1 in its reality with the
>> IMAGINARY - i.e. with what takes place (for instance in fantasy) IN PEOPLE'S
>> HEADS:
> I'm not arguing. I just don't get it.
> Are you saying that every act onscreen has been imagined? Or that the
> same amount of violence, 1:1, takes place onscreen as people fantasize
> about?
> These are provocative thoughts, but I'm not receiving you clearly.
>
> Cordially,
> Dv
>
> Doug vanderHoof
> Producer/Owner
> Modern Media
> Bucktown, Chicago
> (773)394-0029
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