Are we REALLY desensitized to movie violence?

[skypilot]

American movie-goers are often described as desensitized to the violence in movies and I wonder if that is necessarily true. I ask this because every now and then I'll see a movie that seems to get the essence of violence just right and it is truly disturbing to behold. I just saw the movie "Wonderland" about the porn star John Holmes and his involvement in the Wonderland murders in the early eighties. The murder sequence was truly horrific. This may sound like a strange way to put it but sometimes filmmakers get violence just about right. Rather than serving up the typical BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!BOOM! fare, a director will occasionally capture the very noisy, chaotic, desperate, nightmarish essence of violence and it is something quite different from the contrived shootouts of most action movies as well as the graphic, gratuitous, in-your-face gore of most horror films which I think a lot of people are "desensitized" to simply because they are somewhat familiar with the special effects involved and so are able to "disconnect" to some extent from what they are seeing on the screen, no matter how gory. I don't know how else to describe it but sometimes a director will direct a violent scene and damn near puts the fear in you; effectively conveying the savagery of the killers and the fear and helplessness of the victims in their last moments and there is nothing titillating about it. "Wonderland" had just such a scene in my opinion. Has anyone else seen this movie or any other that had a truly unsettling violence sequence?

[LTR]

1. I had thought I'd seen it all

Until I saw "From Dusk 'Till Dawn".

If that doesn't desensitize, I'm not sure what will.

[veganwitch]

6. i just wanted you to know...

i keep wanting to "close" your sig line.

[CanuckAmok]

13. OMG, I was thinking the exact same thing!

It aired uncut last night, and I watched it. How's that for a coincidence?

[bobthedrummer]

2. I knew we are like Ancient Rome and Pre WWII Germany

when our videostore started offering the "Traces of Death" series or whatever it's called.
We are numb to horror now IMHO.

[arwalden]

3. Absolutely NOT (As Far As I'm Concerned)

Human to human bloody violence disturbs me greatly. But, oddly enough, human to alien (and vice versa) violence does not bother me.

I was watching an episode of "Keeping Up Appearances" the other day and a character known as "the Commodore" was making awkward, repeated and persistent UNWANTED ADVANCES on Hyacinth. --- The laugh track indicated that this scene was supposed to be hilarious, but I found it to be callous and distressing. Apparently we were to believe that this situation was Hyacinth's own fault for being so preoccupied with taking advantage of ANY opportunity to socialize with ANYONE of a higher social status than she. I saw nothing funny it it at all. It made me very uncomfortable.

-- Allen

[Kamika]

4. Yes absolutely

No doubt about it. I dunno what I can add.. but I mean 13 year old boys are watching new jack city or scarface and think it's totally normal stuff

[bobthedrummer]

5. Too many 13 year olds are strapped

the worst violence really comes from the youngest with equalizers.

[Deja Q]

7. Depends

If you show things blowing up and people getting shot and slaughtered and NOT showing the gore and especially NOT showing other people looking at it in disgust, people will get desensitized.

Worse, once the desensitization begins, you have to come up with more and more outrageous things in order to instill the fear in people?

Why else did people think, on 9/11, that the first impression of the atrocity was that of "astonishment, like something out of a hollywood movie"?! The horrendousness of the crime came later.

It's also why you don't see people like Michael Moore on TV more often. A TV show pointing out corporate crime on a weekly basis, and it could be done for decades and outlive "Cops" in a heartbeat? People would get desensitized to that... and that's worse than people thinking that corporate profits are always good for everybody in society, regardless of how they're obtained. :eyes:

[ConcernedCanuk]

8. Reluctantly I admit I am, and suspect too many others are too

.
.
.
It's not by choice,

But when I can watch all the war stories, bodies flying, limbs severed and so on,

and then I get disturbed so much that have to switch the channel when an commercial comes on from a World Organization asking for help for the needy, showing pictures of emaciated children, or babies crying -

Yah, sadly, I think I've been "desensitized"

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. Children

is where I draw the line -- and you too, it seems.

I read somewhere that, in the movie "Butterfly Effect", a toddler is blown up. I won't touch the movie with a ten foot pole, ever.

[m-jean03]

10. I'm a wimp, I admit it

I can't handle "Apocalypse Now", or anything with prolonged machine gun fire. I hate machine gun fire. There was a website I was on, researching the Vietnam War, and it played machine gun fire and I felt like crying, my eyes welled up. Don't know anyone else who reacts this way. :shrug:

The WORST movie I've seen was "Final Destination 2" which had a non-plot which seemed to have been contrived ONLY to justify showing people die bizarre and gruesome deaths. When the kid was totally splattered by a sheet of glass falling from 6 stories up -- I mean, there was a kid, then there was a sheet of glass and a enormous pool of blood -- I just walked away. Some idiots I was with kept watching it.

[skypilot]

11. I guess that to an extent...

...I have been desensitized to most horror movie violence, especially if the movie involves the supernatural. I guess it's easier for me to automatically "disconnect" because the invents depicted are so far from the mundane. I supposed I'm more disturbed by violence that emanates from more mundane circumstances. "Mundane" might not be the right word but I hope you'll understand what I mean.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

17. The baseball bat murder in Untouchables

makes me cringe every single fucking time. Moreso because it actually happened.

[scottcsmith]

12. America is nothing compared to Japan

If you think American cinema is too violent, you should be glad you don't live in Japan. In that country on-screen violence is the norm, and we're talking hardcore, graphic violence. It's reported that the movie Faces of Death earned more at the Japanese box office than Star Wars. Japanese pornography is primarily of the S/M variety, and in most cases it is a woman that is the subject of the violence. Graphic comic books are popular with teenagers. Nudity on television is not unheard of.

Now the paradox: despite horrific, graphic violence being a staple of Japanese cinema, and even Japanese television, the crime rate in Japan is very low. In America we try to tie violent behavior to violent movies, television shows, or music. I don't know what it is about Japanese culture; are they desensitized to the violence? I don't know the answer.

As for me, violence in movies does not bother me. I became interested in movie special effects in my early teens, so when I see violence on the screen I know, in most cases, exactly how the special effect was achieved. If I purchase a DVD of a violent or graphic movie (like Day of the Dead ), I always watch the behind-the-scenes documentaries, where they show the F/X guys hard at work, and you know exactly how they were able to blow up a head or dismember a limb.

[Spirochete]

14. Depends on what kind of violence, I think

movies like Rambo movies or the hockey-mask-slasher type movies etc, with mass cartoonish violence, don't affect a lot of people, while seeing Michael Madsen cut off someone's ear in Reservoir Dogs, for instance, makes everyone cringe. The fact that the Wonderland murders was a true story makes a difference, too, IMO.

[skypilot]

16. The ear scene in "Reservoir Dogs"...

...actually didn't disturb me. I was actually kind of annoyed that that song was playing during the scene. I guess it's just very subjective. To me, that song distracted from what should have been the horror of the scene. A lot of times violent scenes with no accompanying music are more effective for me. After all, ominous music and 70's pop tunes don't suddenly start playing when people actually get into bad situations.

[Az]

15. No (thats not the issue)

The problem with American violence is one of consequences. Bugs Bunny steps off a cliff and plumets only to bounce. A man opens fire with a machine gun and bullets fly everywhere but no one gets hit. A bomb goes off near a car and the car flips and the driver hops out. There are no consequences to violence in much of Western film.

Japanese and Chinese films by comparison may have more violence but there are consequences to the violence. If a person's arm gets chopped off they are in pain and may die. If someone falls off a ciff they are not necissarily going to get back up. When bullets go off people get hit. There are consequences to violence.

[Nikia]

18. I see that as a problem too

What really bugs me is how the "good guy" goes vigelantly and kills a lot of people who aren't necessarily even thrreatening him in order to get at and kill the "bad guy". The "good guy" suffers no consequences or even an investigation. He usually feels nothing bad in regards to killing people.
The truth is that the lines between good and bad are usually not so clear, there will usually be some kind of investigation and arrest when people get killed, and all but the most psychopathic killers will feel some sort of remorse or conflict even if they did kill someone who was trying to kill them. They usually don't show any of those things in the movies.

[MrSlayer]

19. Probably to movie violence but not to real violence.

It's easy to laugh at it on the screen but, for most people, when you see it close up and for real it's a whole new ballgame. By growing up in the street I am desensitized to both.

[Solly Mack]

20. There was this study..well, more like an experiment

Where a group of people watched horror/violent movies , one after the other..such things as amount of flinching, screaming, eye-covering, etc., were measured. The first movie got the most reaction and each subsequent movie had less and less reaction ( of the type such movies should have garnered)...

Words like gross, ouch, damn..were replaced with words like cool, neat and wow as the movies were continually shown...to describe the gore.