And thanks Potter. I getting less concerned aboout movies and more concerned about the interactive video games. Every year the screens get bigger and the pixels get smaller…the immersion into the unreal is becoming so real…it’s errie.

Maybe ROS can do a sequal to “Second Life,” – the Dark Side.

….the discussion of popular culture has a way of slipping from the particular to the general. Pious denunciations of movie violence can be expected to continue, even as it is unlikely that any serious attempt to curb it will ever be undertaken or that any causal or correlative link between on-screen mayhem and its real-life counterpart will ever be established (particularly since the Asian countries that produce gory and graphic movies, cartoons and comic books tend to have very low rates of actual violence). As “The Sopranos” and “The Departed” are worshiped and rewarded and the latest horror and serial-killer movies dominate the box office, scolds will continue to insist that representations of violence are not a matter of taste but of public morals and public health.

Millions of people meanwhile will continue to be entertained by spectacles of murder, indulging for a few hours in the visceral, amoral thrill of cinematic brutality and then going back to their peaceful, sane, non-threatening business. That we know the difference between reality and make-believe is evident in the shock and horror we feel when confronted with events like the one last Monday in Virginia.

I believe in Karma Squads. As well I have apologized several times for my own ill-considered remarks on these threads ( and have been deleted) and I can tell anyone who cannot bring themselves to apologize when they offend, that it does NOT hurt to do so.

Thank you also to Ben- I have appreciated your comments on this thread. Though few they are meaningful. I thought we WERE being much too judgmental about others’ responses to viiolence in the beginning of this thread. We obviously each have our own tolerance levels based on what we have been through and psychological make-up. When you said that mediated violence is a tool it struck a chord. A hammer can pound a nail in too.

You reminded me of the violence of nature….specifically one day when I was looking out of my window a red-tailed hawk swooped down in a flash and grabbed a grey squirrel in such a way that it was instantly killed. In one moment that life was out. I rushed out to try to save the squirrel ( too late) and that hawk an I stared at each other for an eternity before he gave up and flew away leaving me with a pounding heart. I have to say it was shocking but also beautiful- what it did to me, what it made me realize.

Anybody want to check out the Language, Class, Racism thread? I believe I’m the only chick over there at the moment.