Wednesday, January 2, 2013

How Hollywood glorifies violence

Kinda something that's been kicking around in my head since Wayne LeOutoftouch made his infamous post-Newtown speech blaming video games and Hollywood for the massacre.

I can't honestly say that either of the movies Wayne picked depicted violence positively. In both cases, violence was depicted as insane, horrible, and unpleasant.

But I can say numerous John Wayne movies have depicted it positively. That is, they've described violence as a tool, to be used legitimately under certain circumstances, largely something about killing "bad people". And here's the thing: the speech affirmed those values. The only person who can deal with a bad guy with a gun, said the NRA's chief, is a good guy with a gun. Add some swagger and a pseudo-Texan drawl, and you've got something that'd sound exactly like it was said by John Wayne himself.

Could it be Wayne's right, and that Hollywood does product influential pro-violence movies, but that he, not numerous mass murderers, is the victim of them?

1 comment:

  1. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/history_if_violence_Ra85TP9vbnuQoBy5LjiKDK
    "* Andrew Kehoe, a farmer crazed about taxes for schools, blew up a Bath Township, Mich., school on May 18, 1927, killing 38 children, two teachers, four other adults and himself."

    "Could it be Wayne's right, and that Hollywood does product influential pro-violence movies, but that he, not numerous mass murderers, is the victim of them?"
    An entire culture poisoned? Enough of the culture poisoned that it matters? Perhaps.

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