A couple of weeks ago I saw the movie "The 300." I meant to blog on that experience but was busy with other things, but today is a good day to rethink my reaction to the movie.
In watching the movie I came away seeing that I would be breaking ranks with a lot of people I like who gave the movies good reviews. Indeed there was virtue in the movie - comraderie, courage, brotherhood and sacrifice and other things. But I came away thinking to myself that the main character, the star of the movie was the blood. There was nothing subtle about it, nothing was left to the imagination, in fact since the movie followed the graphic novel format on which the movie itself was based, the blood and gore was even more graphic than necessary.
If you have read about the battle of Thermopylae in something like Pressfield's Gates of Fire or a straight historic account you will know that this is truly one of the most inspiring stories of history, as this small band of 300 held off the massive Persian onslaught. Yet, in the movie, it just seems to me that the thing that is most embedded on the mind is the bloodshed, not the story and characters. Subtlety is a key to great storytelling - leaving things to the reader's or viewers imagination enhances the story, in this case the bloodshed became the story.
Which brings me to the events of yesterday. Given the carnage at Virginia Tech, can we all come to some kind of agreement that bloodshed is not cool, is not fun, and is not entertaining?
It occurs to me that people who experience this kind of carnage in real life probably aren't the ones who are making the graphic movies and writing graphic descriptions of this stuff in novels. From yesterday I heard of the police officer who could only say that this was the worst thing he had ever seen. I heard of a surviving student who was in one of the classrooms who can't sleep because of the the things he saw - everytime he closes his eyes he sees the blood.
I have never been in the military but I have known many who have and known many who have known people who have served in the military and could tell their stories. Often these people can't speak of the things they witnessed in war. Often they wrestle with post traumatic stress syndrome. So why, when it comes to entertainment, do we treat things as cool that people who experience them in real life find unspeakable?
I guess the point I am making is that police officers, soldiers, medical personnel and real life victims of violence don't speak of that violence and bloodshed as something entertaining or cool or glorious.
I've never wanted to be simplistically prudish about this. I've let my kids play games like Halo and others, and I have watched most of the standard war/warrior movies. Sometimes I have come away from those things genuinely moved by the story and the characters and have been able to keep the bloodshed in context.
But it seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong if we can engage in entertainments that graphically portray violence and bloodshed and walk away from them thinking those things are cool. People in real life don't say "wow, that was awesome the way he wiped all those people," or "did you see that guy's head explode - cool!"
Given the events of 4/16 (another date that will probably live in the same kind of infamy as 9/11) can you imagine having a discussion with your friends about how cool the bloodshed in "The 300" was or how awesome the graphics are in that new first person shooter game if you knew that one of the survivors of this massacre, or maybe one of the parents who had lost a child, was listening over your shoulder? I think anyone would realize this was out of line. My question is "under what circumstances does it then become 'in-line'?"
I'm not going on a crusade here and I'm not arguing that violence in entertainment is necessarily the cause of violence on campus. I'm also not arguing against any portrayals of violence in literature or entertainment. If I were to argue that I would have to stop reading the bible. Pollyanna is not my hero - it's a violent world that we need to come to grips with.
But yesterday's events are a graphic reminder to me that violence and bloodshed are not to be glorified - they are not cool, they are not fun and are not entertaining.
Related Tags: Current Affairs, News, Film, Movies, The 300, 300, Violence, Bloodshed, Virginia Tech
I'm really glad you wrote this, David. You're on to something important. I think the popularity of violence in entertainment is a symptom, a consequence, of our increasingly casual attitudes about death, and a decreasing sense of the holiness of life. By casual I mean that abortion, euthanasia, AIDS, war and famine in Africa, etc. have all combined with our modern utilitarian humanism to deaden our senses, to kill our sense of outrage.
Fewer and fewer think of human life as sacred. In fact, some are suggesting that human life is more like a planetary virus that is killing the truly sacred, the Earth.
In such an environment, it seems to me that death can become thrilling rather than tragic. I have a hard time differentiating between the Janjaweed in Sudan who kill without a thought, or the suicide bombers in Iraq who target innocents, or the high school kids who delight in causing murder and mayhem in Grand Theft Auto.
All share a certain delight in bloodshed and death (and the thrilling power to take away life?) that I believe arises from a common, God-denying world view.
So, I come down to putting the blame on secularism and its utilitarian views about human life. I'd be interested in your own take on the spiritual causes.
Posted by: Charlie | April 17, 2007 at 04:06 PM
Bravo, David, for speaking out on this topic. I have nothing to add.
Thank you for putting into words what I have long struggled to say.
Posted by: Steve Sensenig | April 17, 2007 at 09:00 PM
Charlie, you asked for David's take and not mine, but today I've led a discussion with my students in a secular university about this tragedy and I feel compelled to respond.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah speaks of "the" heart. I can't. I can only speak of mine. And try as I might to not believe it (and believe me, I am no more convincing to anyone than myself), I know that I am in the dock and that verse is the charge that can be read against me.
I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
And grace upon grace, there is my Savior. He has loved me and not meted out to me the fruit of my doings.
I have a God-affirming worldview and in my most lucid, Romans 7 kinds of moments I know that I need look for no external cause for such violence. Worldviews, convictions, beliefs, and actions spring from the heart, and deep within its folds are our true loves. One of things I love is to be the recipient of grace but not the bearer of it. Within my heart is a great Hall of Justice. There, from my stone judgment seat, I whisk through my daily docket and render "unjust!" and "guilty!" and "unworthy!" with ruthless efficiency upon all who sin against me.
Whatever forgiveness, hospitality and peace issues from me does not originate in my heart, unless the Spirit has been at work there without my permission.
And so my heart now turns to these fragile souls in my home, my church, my neighborhood, my job, my community. I wonder what small word of gospel peace, what seemingly casual gesture of care, what gentle glance from my sin-weary eyes, can be that glimmer of hope, that note of support and solidarity, that window into a way of being with one another that refuses to deface the stranger?
I am an ungrateful debtor to grace. The causes you cite should be examined, but I'm frankly weary of them after 9/11. Yet I do believe we have a prophetic role to speak against those things that we know God hates. We know what stirred his wrath in Noah's generation: the earth was filled with violence on account of the corrupt ways of all flesh. We should take His side on behalf of the widow, the orphan and the alien, and all like them. When we look into the face of our fellow human beings—especially those we'd rather not notice, those we'd rather ignore, those we'd rather not be bothered with, those whose very existence is of some irritation to us—I think we'd rediscover that sacredness toward life which loss you rightly lament. My frequent failure to be on God's side is a result of my own spiritual astigmatism, my selective outrage, and my inerrant Inner Moral Bookkeeper.
Posted by: joel hunter | April 18, 2007 at 12:02 AM
Also, once the flashbang wears off and the movie looks even a little dated, people will realize what a lame movie it is - poorly plotted, poorly written, absurdly acted, etc.
Posted by: Austin Storm | April 19, 2007 at 04:35 PM
I'm not sure I'd say secularism is the culprit, so much as a heart turned against truth. I've been out of town, but caught dribbles about him turning against the faith of his youth- Christianity.
Turning from truth begins a downward spiral. Some clutch the lifevest of morality, which holds them up for awhile. But some descend into darkness, and quickly. This allows him to know what he is doing is wrong (why else blame others), but pass the buck like Adam & Eve.
It is scary to remember that I was once on that path to self-destruction- and thought I was cool. Okay, not really... but that the things I did to avoid my alienation and isolation were.
Posted by: cavman | April 20, 2007 at 08:44 PM