Shooter Games, Shooter Films, and Moneyshots

Today is the one month anniversary of Sandy Hook, and the discussion of the causes behind the shooting continues. One topic has been the possible link between violent entertainment and violent real-life behavior. This topic always surfaces after such incidents.

What is the relationship between death on the screen and death on the street? Put it this way: I frequently hear people say that Rudy inspired them to keep playing when people said they couldn't or that The Pursuit of Happyness inspired them to brush themselves off and follow their dreams. I also hear folks say they watch certain movies or scenes from movies to "pump themselves up" for certain activities. So why are we so afraid to consider that Die Hard might inspire something comparable in the other direction?

Look at kids and pro-wrestling. Nearly every kid sees the wrestling moves on TV and tries them in real life. I speak from experience on this. I doubt I would have invented the camel clutch on my own.

I also know I'm not the only one who has been involved in conversations about how the ubiquity of harcore porn has altered sexual expectations and responses.

If seeing something on the screen didn't influence your behavior, there would be no such thing as commercials.

When I went to the movies recently every single preview was for an upcoming explosion extravangaza. People love this stuff. Hollywood wouldn't keep sinking money into big budget bloodbaths if there was no demand. The vast majority of viewers walk away without seriously mimicking the carnage. But for a deranged viewer, why couldn't it be one of the contributors to his ultimate meltdown? If people are going to claim that uplifting, inspirational entertainment has a positive impact it seems like a stretch to say that violent, nihilistic entertainment can't have a negative effect on viewers' perceptions and behaviors.

Obviously humans were violent and aggressive before violent movies and video games. But does that automatically mean that continual exposure to certain kinds of violent entertainment can't help shape the way that aggression is expressed? People also had sex drives before the pill came along, but once it began to circulate, behaviors changed.

If violence on the screen doesn't desensitize people, then why has movie violence escalated so much? Go watch the darkest, most existential noir film from the fifties and see how tame it is compared to today's PG-13 films (to say nothing of R-rated ones). If our expectations and reactions weren't changed by continuous exposure to violence, we wouldn't be experiencing dimished returns when it comes to onscreen blooshed. 

If you like nonstop death, you'll love The Hobbit!

***Multiple spoilers alert.***


I went to see The Hobbit in 3-D. I haven't read the book, but as a very young child I saw the animated Hobbit many times. My memories of it were faint, so I went into this new Hobbit fresh.

The visuals are spectacular. But what those visuals amount to is bloody eye candy. There is constant, brutal violence. There are detached heads raised in triumph. It's Rambo with Orcs.

Yet the movie still shoehorns in a token nod to Bilbo's gentle nature:

Gandalf: Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay... small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? That's because I am afraid and it gives me courage.

But the second that line finishes, it is back to the constant carnage. So basically we have a movie named after the gentle creature who has never killed, in which he is used as a wacky neighbor character to set the stage for scores of goblins, mountain trolls, and Orcs to get mowed down. It is like making a film ostensibly about a virgin where every other scene is an orgy. That sole line about Bilbo's purity is a dandelion in an exploding minefield. So much for the message about small everyday deeds.

Maybe it was just being faithful to the book. Still, I prefer the takeaway of the cartoon Hobbit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2gE7-J9B6w

It's the Quiet Ones You Gotta Watch

What can silent horror films teach us about what makes horror work? Why should any modern horror fan watch a silent horror film? Though I'm glad the talkies fad is still going strong, I do think silent horror films have one minor and instructive advantage over their talkie counterparts.

When you are watching a silent film, much of the narrative is transmitted through title cards (the original text messages). Yes, action is happening, but often the context of the action is unclear until the title cards explicate it. Some silent films don't have many title cards, so the action can persist for quite a while without explicit explanation. In the case of a silent horror film--the almost silent Vampyr, for example--the mood can build and build as you await the next title card, the next slice of dialogue, to interrupt the momentum of gloom. And as time passes, every movement on screen becomes part of a slow burning, dream-like anxiety; where every dart of the eyes and every cautious step forward seems to have tremendous import. You forget that it's just a scene with a guy walking through a field.

What it comes down to is misdirection. In a talkie horror, with the constant dialogue (and with it, explanation), things are much more on the surface*. The advantage of misdirection that you find in silent horror films can also be found in effective horror novels. There are all kinds of distractions; minor characters, minor character details, location details. These distractions help magnify the story's ending because you're diverted by all the dead-ends and false starts leading up to the ending and therefore less likely to see it coming.

When you read horror short stories, there is less room for misdirective details, so the ending and direction of the plot is easier to guess. Same goes for horror anthology TV shows like "Tales From the Darkside". Because of time constraints, the expositions are necessarily abrupt. The dialogue must come right out and announce what is happening. There are no extraneous details to obscure things, so you fixate purely on the story. And let's face it, it can only end a few different ways. And because the story is so predictably compressed, you know that after that last commercial break, it has to end somehow. And if you have seen a few horror anthology episodes, you can pretty much guess the ending to all of them.

I think these mechanics partly explain why there are so few decent (let alone great) horror films, and why there are so few horror anthology episodes that are even worth watching all the way through. There is a reason why every classic horror film list pretty much has the same handful of titles on it...not that many classics to choose from.

 

*The Blair Witch Project and the Bela Lugosi Dracula are two talkies with creepy, silent film-like pacing. Many early talkies of all genres were short on dialogue as the medium made the transition out of the silent age.

Fall Down and Be Counted

Vince Vaughn's performance in Swingers is one of the most impressive comedic performances ever. And while people often mention how funny his character Trent is (and it is well written), it is never ranked among the great comedic performances. I think this is because Vaughn's character is confident. A winner.

Instead, when opinion makers (who have a knack for not getting comedy) make their lists of the greatest comedic performances of all time, they typically praise performances that are either nerdy/wimpy, self-deprecating, hapless, or dumb. They dote on the lovable losers and ignore the cool guys.

Some of the performances they celebrate:

Nerdy/wimpy like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, nerdy, wimpy, and self-deprecating like Jack Lemmon in The Apartment or Woody Allen in, well, every movie he has ever been in. They also celebrate hapless, like Chaplin as The Tramp and dumb, like Belushi in Animal House.

Why is this? Let's first think about the term comic relief. The second class nature afforded to comedic characters is evident in the term itself. He is a relief from anything substantive or real. He isn't fully realized. He is the clown intermission while we wait for the more important events to resume.

And to provide comic relief to the majority of viewers, comic relief characters must be something they can laugh AT. And because the majority of folks are nerdy, wimpy, and dumb, comic relief characters must be hyper-nerdy, hyper-wimpy, and hyper-dumb. The comic relief character must be sliding on a banana peel as he takes a banana cream pie in the face (not sure why it has to be banana cream, but a plantain pie just wouldn't be as funny).

Comic relief characters might be better known as comic reassurance characters, as they reassure the majority--the mob--that there are people who are less than they. They are smarter than Belushi in Animal House and cooler than C.C. Baxter in The Apartment. Very reassuring. They are not better than Trent in Swingers. And the opinion makers who rank such performances aren't even cool enough to have a friend like Trent (hence the snub).

The emphasis on the lovable loser ties in with the annoying truism that "good comedy must be vulnerable." Not true. Vaughn in Swingers isn't vulnerable at all. He is cool, sharp, and hilarious, which helps him to carry the film (much like Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, another underrated performance). But apparently Trent isn't "vulnerable" enough to convince opinion makers that Vaughn's is a great performance. To opinion makers, you're not vulnerable unless your character is a perennial victim...though said victim will still somehow get the girl in the end, because we can't have movies telling the truth that women don't find losers lovable.

IT'S ALL TRUE!!!

I hate it when someone tries to get me to see a movie, and when I tell them I have no interest, they say, “But it’s based on a true story!”

So what? Not all true stories are interesting. Hollywood must agree with me; otherwise they wouldn’t make their “true stories” 98% false.

So you like true stories, do ya? GREAT, check this one out: Today I woke up and had a sandwich. What, not entertaining? That sweet anecdote came straight from the headlines. Only way it could be truer is if I dropped the sandwich crumbs on your plate.

Bullying on the Big Screen

You didn't ask, but I recently saw the film Never Let Me Go, and being the Pauline Kael of blogs that go unread, I thought I'd share a review.

***MILD SPOILERS (can't be too careful)***


Like The Road, Never Let Me Go has an ambiguous, science fiction backdrop that is referenced but never mapped out.

The film centers around an English boarding school deemed "special." We follow a small group of children as they tackle the travails of pre-teen, adolescent, and young adult angst; jealously, loneliness, crises of identity. It is as young adults that the characters watch these travails accelerate in messy directions.

What is refreshing is how these travails are depicted. Unlike those much loved 1980s teen flicks, Never Let Me Go showcases real adolescent jealousy and real pre-teen insolence. It is an adult look at the road to adulthood.

I suppose you could say those cartoonish 80s films are adolescent movies intended for adolescents, but then why on God's red Mars do so many adults lap them up? And not merely for nostalgia's sake. Unintoxicated grown-ups have told me that Trapper Keeper pathos was "the way it was." Really? I was a runt in a high school that wasn't a utopia, yet I never witnessed or experienced anything like the POW-style trauma those movies present as endemic to every high school in the country.

Never Let Me Go reminded me of an even better film that gets adolescence right: Let the Right One In. Let the Right One In showcases teenage bullying without the tired and contradictory motifs normally ascribed to silver screen bullies. Cinema bullies are usually thickheaded, soft-brained, and more vicious than a torturer with a hearing problem ("No really, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!"). Yet despite being so, so, so very stupid (which is why they're soooo jealous of those big-hearted nerds who brim with inner-beauty!), these bullies are nearly omniscient in the way they always know exactly when to strike and precisely what everyone's innermost weaknesses are.

In reality, a good bully has to be fairly clever, or else he won't manage to keep his bullying from being detected. And bullies don't always play football. They don't all come from the wrong side of the tracks or the biggest mansion in town. Let the Right One In recreates the terror bullies inflict without portraying them as idiot gods.

While we're on the subject, if so many adults remember high school as being Lord of the Flies, why all the disbelief each time there is a school shooting? If 9th grade homeroom taught Alcatraz everything it knows, then bloody, unfocused retaliation should not continually catch the nation off guard.

Anyway, go see Never Let Me Go and Let The Right One In. And keep things in perspective. What you experienced in high school was a bad year of gym class, not the Rape of Nanking.

2012: A Pyramid Scheme

In the new movie 2012, John Cusack plays a science fiction writer. Appropriate, because to Mayan doomsday believers, science fiction is interchangeable with science fact.

You'll remember that back when the millennium was approaching, Nostradamus-linked doomsday forecasting was all the rage. Then the millennium came and nothing happened. Now chumps who know even less about the Mayans than they did about Nostradamus are convinced that this time, it's for real!

Well unlike other popular doomsday scenarios like global warming, if the 2012 apocalypse is true, nothing can be done about it. It is basically preordained. So why sweat it? Why not just party accordingly? Hell, buy a new car. Chances are, your first payment won't be do until 2013.

Many 2012 believers even seem to be rooting for the world to end. If you're one of them, why wait for 2012? Why not just off yourself now? Like that old saying goes: Think globally, act locally.