Violence is Fun

***I wasn't happy with my first draft because it sounded rushed and didn't fully explain what I wanted to say. I edited it and this is the second draft I'm more happy with.

While most people have a certain limit to what they can watch before it starts to either gross them out or offend them, I seem to be missing that trigger. I think those sensitive to fictionalized violence should be like me and forgo their tendencies to react to explicit content from a very critically moral perspective. What I find interesting is that many liberal minded people I've witnessed watch something taboo in a movie will react to it like it's psychopathic. Shock, realism, and other uses of explicit content are utilized to further the film art form. A directors purpose is to give the audience a certain perspective they want them to live in and explicit content many times is the means to achieve this.

An example of a situation that represents this is when at school I watched the movie Happiness with some friends in my room. The movie, while not visually graphic, deals with a lot of taboos. One person in the movie is a lonely chronic masturbator, another is a pedophile that lives a normal suburban life, and another is a stalker with a few deep secrets. Some really perverted scenes take place, such as where the pedophile drugs his son's friend with roofies or when he finally confesses to his son that he's a siko. The movie is a comedy too, so everything is done with such a tone that if you understand the direction and accept it, it's a very hilarious movie. One of my friends thought the movie was funny, another was kind of apathetic, and another thought it was disgusting and that I needed to be psychologically checked.

If a movie is directed well, I think the inclusion of graphic violence, taboos, and sex, as opposed to just suggesting it, can really enhance the experience and I see no limit to what a director should be allowed. That is of course, it's all acting and no one really gets harmed, and these elements are used artistically and not exploitative. The one example of a bad exploitative movie that comes to mind is Audition. The beginning and middle of the movie is rather run of the mill, with nothing warranting an unrated rating, or even a PG-13 for that matter. Toward the end however, there is a torture scene where a man gets his foot amputated as well as pins stuck slowly through his body. I see this as exploitation because the movie was popular through word of mouth for its violence, and it's only toward the end that you see any violence, which is more than enough to make up for the rest of the movie. I felt like the anticipation of the violence is what the movie was based on, because underneath the violence is a mundane movie. Without that shallow anticipation, the movie is not thrilling and actually rather boring. Nevertheless, Audition is looked on as a cult classic, which I don't understand why.

But when a movie is well directed and violence or other taboo elements are used to make the world seem more realistic, or even surrealistic, then I welcome it. Some well done movies I like with these elements include Man Bites Dog (violence is necessary to explore the character studies), Ichi the Killer (directed by the same person that did Audition but this time he did a good job), A Clockwork Orange, Battle Royal, Milk (I know people that found the gay love scenes too disturbing to watch), World's Greatest Dad, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, and Clerks (for its language). I even enjoyed Cannibal Holocaust. While it may be one of the most graphic movies ever and has spotty acting and production, it has a great concept and the violence added very much to the message of media exploitation.

As if they're scared to accept the world they live in, the average person is easily offended by violent movies. I will separate this from being squeamish because that is a different situation. Squeamish does not necessarily relate to offended. Nor does being critical of this content from an artistic argument have anything to do with my argument, for I'm referring to being blind to statements made by explicit content just because it's explicit and not seeing it from the directors perspective. Explicit content does not always work and can often become self indulgent to the plot.

If anything I'm offended by in movies, it's the nonartistic crappy mainstream directors like Michael Bay who stereotype hoping for cheap laughs (I cant' help myself, so I'm also going to point my finger straight at Seth MacFarlane. American Dad and The Cleveland show are two of the sorriest excuses for popular broadcast TV ever). I could write another article on stereotyping, how sometimes its portrayed wittily and raises questions or is just realistic and funny, and other times it's like a minstrel mockery. There is so much more offensive out there that goes under the radar because it's given the support of loud voices, and when the loud voices oppose it then there is trouble. Even a movie such as Audition I wouldn't go and boycott as much as I dislike it. There is freedom of speech, a cliched expression but very forgetting in how true it is. The media, religion, and other watchdog groups, as well as many ordinary people, can't seem to distinguish an artistic expression from an insult.