LETTER: Movie violence shocks us into seeing reality's problems

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by Pete Irot

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This letter is in response to the letter about violence depicted in movies and its effect on society in the Sept. 13 issue of the Thresher ("Media violence harms society's morals").

I take extreme exception to the condemnation of a film (in this case, Fun , a film about two teenage girls who kill an old woman) that the author of the letter hasn't even seen. He simply rejects out of hand the notion that a film that depicts violence can't serve any purpose whatsoever.

It is just this attitude that has permitted censorship (a true evil in our society) of works that sometimes show violence in a starker way than one is used to (the evilness of which is open to debate). One must wonder about such an attitude.

 A conclusion that may be drawn from Andrew Sendonaris' argument is that a work in which people are killed, often for no other reason than the pure pleasure of the killers (or in which animals are sacrificed to a tribal god, incest is discussed matter-of-factly, the ruling government permits the execution of men at the whim of what amounts to lynch mobs, etc.) shouldn't be allowed to seep into our minds despite whether or not it has other, more redeeming qualities. That's it, then -- the Bible is illegal!

"But wait a second," someone holding Sendonaris' point of view would say. We didn't mean to exclude the Bible and other religious texts. Perhaps it would just be better if we were to decide first which works society could be exposed to, and then release them on the impressionable minds of mankind. But there is an error in that logic.

Under such a censoring regime, Sendonaris would probably want Pulp Fiction to be completely erased, or at the very least, restricted. His argument for this is based a statement of his own: "[ Pulp Fiction says to society,] `Look, I am a normal person just like you, with deep thoughts, feelings, etc. However, instead of being a teacher or a grocer, I am a hired murderer.'"

Sendonaris is wrong in the assumption that Pulp Fiction is advocating that our children grow up to be hit men and rend apart the fabric of society. He is right, though, in seeing that the hired killers are very much like us "normal" people in society.

Though all movies like Pulp Fiction have more than one message and may be digested on more than one level, Sendonaris concludes that there is only one message, and one that Pulp Fiction was never meant to have. The hit men's lives are indeed parallel to our own, but one must realize that this is meant to shock us into realizing how close we are to them and to reinforce the message of an ordered society, not to advocate that we become them.

Thus, the arguments used against violent films are symptoms of a mentality that is so lethargic that it wishes to blame something like the media for the dangers of society. Sendonaris refuses to recognize that there is something beneath the violence, that the violence was meant to shock you into seeing.

Pete Irot

SRC '00

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the September 20, 1996 issue.

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