President Obama spoke at a memorial service for the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Some believe his speech was political. I agree wholeheartedly but I’m not going to pile on that right now. People are grieving.
But something he said jumped out at me. He said “We can’t tolerate this anymore.”
When has our society ever “tolerated” mass murder?
What we do tolerate are the movies and television shows that glorify gun violence. I’ve read a few reviews of the latest Quentin Tarantino film, Django Unchained, and it sounds like a glorified blood bath. Of course, Tarantino makes no apologies, saying “I just think you know there’s violence in the world, tragedies happen, blame the playmakers. … It’s a western. Give me a break.” Talk about a cop out.
The star of the movie, Jamie Foxx, recently joked about how he got to kill all of the white people in the movie on Saturday Night Live. But now he’s saying Hollywood needs to examine the influence gun violence in movies has on people.
The timing is pretty poor for Foxx’s comments, considering his latest film may be the year’s most violent yet.
Foxx stars as an avenging slave in “Django Unchained,” the latest orgy of blood and mayhem from director Quentin Tarantino of “Pulp Fiction” fame. Foxx sees little irony in using the new film’s promotional circuit to pin some blame on violent movies for the massacres we read about far too often in the news.
Foxx said his peers ”can’t ignore the fact that movie violence can influence people.”
“We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn’t have a sort of influence,” Foxx said in an interview on Saturday. “It does.”
That didn’t stop him from starring in the movie, and it probably won’t stop it’s release in theaters where the lunatics among us can see their fantasies come to life on the big screen. The violence depicted in the movie certainly didn’t stop it from leading the pack in Golden Globe nominations.
Even if you don’t go out seeking violent movies and TV shows, just watching a football game can bring the violence into your home during commercials. It happened yesterday when ads for Gangster Squad, starring Josh Brolin ran. Brolin also defended the violence in movies. He did make a few points that are also worth noting.
“When you’re doing something like that, you’re lending to the story that you already decided to do, so it’s not something like, ‘How do we treat this in a way that may be more respectful than not?’ You’ve already decided to do that type of film. It was a lot of fun doing it but at the same time, for a guy who doesn’t have any guns myself…I get a little nervous during that thing.
“Of course there’s a sensitivity. But you have to look at the grand scheme of things, from a universal standpoint,” he continued. “You have video games, you have psychopharmaceuticals, you have the lowest employment, you have parents that aren’t at home. There’s many, many different factors. You have CNN, which gloms onto the worst of what’s going on and not necessarily the best. There are many different factors, there’s no one reason. There’s always been violence in movies and there always will be violence in movies. And whether it lends to the one psychotic who’s out there and thinking the worst thoughts you can possibly think will always be a mystery.”
So, in his grand scheme of things, does piling on with increasingly explicit gun violence in movies help matters? I think not.
But there is something we can do about Hollywood – we can tune it out.
More Hollywood Hypocrisy, as usual, coming at us. By the way Fox had Foxx “introducing” their their pre-game show yesterday. He’s the best they could get?
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Not only violence on TV….
Today, major computer games which millions play daily on line are games in which the only way to advance is through violence, destruction and the slaughter of enemies by the thousands. Looting dead bodies is a totally acceptable method of gaining wealth and valuable items.
In many instances, a player only needs a suggestion from an angry peasant farmer or innkeeper to go kill all manner of presumed enemies to gain reward without consequence.
Most adults can play these games without being warped by the violence and the lawlessness, Most adults understand that these “games” generally do not represent reality in any way, shape or form.
Most adults understand that the real world does not have things like Mages and Shamans running around hurling fireballs that burn people alive, or lightning bolts that kill as effectively as an electric chair.
But kids? In their minds, these games can be reality, Magic can be real. Hurling fireballs is only a matter of knowledge and training. Penalites are passed out only when you die. BUT.. if you do get killed, it;s OK…. you get resurrected! Endlessly! Far better than being Jesus, he only got resurrected once.
In my view, these kinds of games are a deadly toxin to youngsters and should be as off limits to them as alcohol. Alcohol has it’s own fast-acting penaties attached to it,.. vomiting, sickness, hangovers, Not so computer games. Computer games can completely poison a youngster’s mind without a single external clue to warn parents or friends – until they go on a killing rampage with automatic weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
It’s no surprise to me that today’s mass murderers are teenege kids that kill themselves. Perhaps – in their perceived reality, endless violence is the solution – they perhaps believe they will resurrect and the only penalty will be the loss of some gold or health.
Hell of a way to run a railroad.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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You’re right. Those games are awful, and I think I read that the deranged shooter in Newtown spent a lot of time playing video games.
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Maybe Dear Leader had an epiphany. He just came to the realization that more constraints on the second amendment are counterproductive because it wasn’t written for deer hunting. No?
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There is no evidence that Mr. Lanza got his ideas out of computer games.
There is increasing evidence that Mr. Lanza got these ideas from his mom, a gun enthusiast of the survivalist persuasion.
Not all gun enthusiasts have guns for sport or collectibles or self-defense from criminals. There are quite a few who actually think they need to arm themselves for the “Red Dawn” scenario, in which they stand against a totalitarian Washington government.
If parents are that paranoid, don’t be surprised that the kids are too. They’re learning from their parents that institutions can and should be resisted with violence.
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” just watching a football game can bring the violence into your home during commercials.”
There are plenty who argue that the football game itself promotes and glorifies violence (along with–variously– boxing, pro-wrestling, mixed martial arts fights, …).
In a similar vein, some applaud the fact that Little Rascals” shorts and copies of Disney’s “Song of the South” are so hard to find as a blow against racism. (And a subset of these folks remove “Huckleberry Finn” from school libraries, too.)
The key is what WE individually tolerate. I trust no one here is advocating government or corporate censorship of violent films–or having someone like Bill Cosby buy them up and lock them away, either–but there is something to be said for asking why WE support these violent films and video games with our entertainment dollars. The less money these things make, the less those in charge will choose to make or bankroll them.
We have to decide where to draw the lines for ourselves and for our children–I wouldn’t want the government preventing films from being made or marketed, and I doubt any of you would, either–but there’s always going to be someone advocating against “violence” (or “racism”) that you find perfectly acceptable.
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@sinz54
Not all who are survivalist types are crazy. And maybe, just maybe, we really DO need to prepare for the Red Dawn scenario. Our border are porous, there is evidence that Muslim terrorist types are leaking in through Mexico POSING AS MEXICANS, and teaching Mexicans their ways. We have China working to have missiles that are trained on the West coast of the USA. We are going to have civil unrest of unprecedented proportions as the government creates greater unemployment, more homelessness. People will be on the prowl trying to survive, and they will NOT have the civility that people had during the “Great Depression” of 1929.
When it comes down to “me or you” it is not crazy to choose “me first”.
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[...] reform their own conduct. (Read More)I don’t expect the media to reform themselves, just like I don’t think Hollywood is going to end its glorification of violence. But I can turn them off and tune them out, and that’s what I’m doing. My children are [...]
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Sinz54, does it make you feel safer to blame this kid’s mother? Like it’s a failure of parenting, and therefore you needn’t fear your own kids or your neighbors kids because “we’re not like those people”? I gotta tell you, as someone who has experienced a vicious murder in my family, it’s not so easy as to point at his mother and blame her. You still do not know the facts of this family, you’re relying on neighbors getting their 15 minutes of fame and a media that got almost literally EVERYTHING wrong in their reporting. It seems that you fear weapons and you fear bad parenting. You should fear mentally defective people who cannot be addressed until they kill someone. It’s really that easy.
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I have a question: why can’t Hollywood produce any sort of entertainment that isn’t debased? Once upon a time, talented writers offered movies, etc., that glorified the good in mankind, stories that were uplifting to the spirit. When did they descend into this mindless storytelling? Why are they unable to offer anything that is decent and heroic? Because THEY are not decent and heroic?? Hollywood is predominantly Leftist, and the Left has no value system; it’s that LACK of a value system—respect and decency and compassion and admiration of great things and people–that is being reflected in society right now. When you look at what the Left wants for our kids and our country—give them an “A” instead of a “C” because we don’t want them to feel bad, let them wear t-shirts reading F*OFF because it’s freedom of expression, let them defecate in public as a “brave political protest”—it is no surprise whatsoever that we are raising a nation of empty, self centered, violent kids. Gun control will do NOTHING about that. Nothing. But they can fool themselves into feeling safer, because we know that with the Left it’s all about perception and not reality.
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[...] the NRA “enablers of mass murder.” Our side could say the same about the media and Hollywood, but you don’t hear us calling for their deaths.Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)Phineas at Sister [...]
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[...] takes out multiple lives the cries for more gun control get louder. They don’t talk about how Hollywood glorifies violence on a regular basis, or how the media turns these violent killers into heroes for their fellow [...]
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