Does violence in the entertainment media beget violence in real lif?

Great Debates
1

Does violence in cartoons and movies cause violence in children? I grew up watching the 3 stooges and all the cartoons, and it did not make me a violent person.

I say no they don’t. I believe children learn more from what they actually experience in life. I have 3 children, 15, 12 and 5, they all know movies and such are not real. We watch gore movies and discuss how they actually did the f/x.

Perhaps they should be shielded from watching the daily news.

What’s your take on the subject?

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.
Harry S. Truman

2

I think it might depend on the context in which the violence is presented. It used to be that violence was always resolved by the subduction of evil by good, i.e., a morally justified defensive or retaliatory force. What bothers me is the modern context for violence as an initial force, sometimes with a recognizable motive (like hedonism) but often as a purely random act: a man kills just because it is fun or just because someone got in the way. The worst thing that children can learn is that there are no consequences to violence. You know, it’s society’s fault. Crap like that.

3

I used to think, no, but after several years of consideration, reflection, observation and comparison, I think I need to say yes.

The three Stooges (may these wonderful men rest in peace) had a violent but mild form of comedy. It was all in fun and their dialogue displayed this.

Cartoons were cartoons, obviously, especially during the 60s and 70s when they became cheaply and poorly produced (like a character standing still and talking and ONLY the lips changed while the mouth area would be a slightly different color during this).

Later, with the advent of cable and HBO, suddenly there was a rush on gory, detailed movies like the Chain Saw Massacre, Night Of The Living Dead (parts 1, 2, and 3), then came the shoot 'em up where one got to see the brains explode from a persons head and either A: martial arts, B: a high powered automatic weapon or C: various forms of explosives made killing graphic and easy.

Got a problem? Shoot the bastard. Pissed off at someone? Here’s how to make a bomb and here’s where to set it and see how good it works? A gun settles all problems if you cannot physically beat the crap out of someone you dislike and, notice, how in most movies the ‘hero/killer’ never runs afoul of the law.

Then came the very graphic video games where one has to kill everything in sight. Movies then started raising gang membership and actions to a new height, followed by the glorification of organized crime and various westerns showing much more bloody detale than before, followed by real nitty, gritty war movies where GI Joe no longer just grunted when shot, clasped his hands to an unseen wound and fell back, but his chest explodes in bloody glory, he screams, is tossed back and lies in a bloody heap. Then his buddies turn loose astonishing fire power from weapons which NEVER run out of bullets and hurl explosives which graphically eliminate the enemy in a magnificent display of violence, blood spray, flying body parts and dangling guts.

Add to all this the sudden decrease in parental authority for whatever reason, the increase in children’s ‘rights’, the decrease in teacher authority and the increase in kids screaming assault or molestation if a teacher touches their arm and things snowball.

Toss in more ‘macho’ movies about being in da hood, da gang, add to it pathos, romance, angst, urban heroes, unfair racial stigma, lost causes (everyone loves the fighters of lost causes) and the alarming ability to gain access to military style weapons and horrifically lethal ammunition and PRESTO – violence increases.

McGuyver showed – for a time – how to make nuclear bombs from two paper clips and a car battery. Writers of books started detailing how to make home explosives and the Internet allowed the Lunatic Fringe to let everyone know how to make anything from guns to plastic explosives.

Need I say more? Suddenly every minority was shown ways to equalize things and how to make the weapons needed. Every psychotic learned how to kill at a distance. Remember James Bond? He had great weapons but DID NOT TELL HOW TO MAKE THEM. Nor did his ‘kills’ show graphic impacts from his slugs.

TV showed bullet proof cars and vests. Then, shortly after, they come on and show HOW people can kill people in bullet proof cars and vests. THEN ammunition makers started selling bullets designed to pierce armor and bullet proof vests and NUTS started buying them because movies showed them that their neighbors, especially if Black, might attack them.

Now toss in my personal favorite, Black Gangsta Rap, where Black guys and girls glorify the beating of women, the being in a gang, hating Whitey, the oppression of Da MAN, police brutality and righteous Black revenge followed by the glorification of using and dealing dope and you kinda have a dangerous mix there.

Then the NEWS media became corrupt, started going for sensationalism, not reporting BOTH sides of the news and displaying more and more graphic images. On top of that, add the movie makers love of chase scenes, only make them more graphic where the bad guys flee from the law, plow through everything and drive seemingly invincible cars. (Man! If Detroit EVER made such cars, they’d go out of business because we’d only need to buy one!) Toss in the often clumsy and dramatic wrecking and destruction of the often dumb acting police and the eventual escape of the crook, hero, whatever without worrying about anyone or anything he, she or it plowed over in the scene and one has a GREAT role model there.

The cops come up with ways to stop a car in real life and TV promptly displays it so crooks know what to look for and avoid. Like spike strips. Then a tire maker comes up with a tire which will not go flat!! Kinda eliminates the spike strips or the cops shooting out the tires. In old movies, the crooks stopped when their tires were shot out. In real life clips they show how cars and trucks can KEEP GOING on flat tires. (A whole lot of people went ‘REALLY??’ and felt safer when knocking over all night stores.)

Hell, I learned how to pick locks from TELEVISION! I wondered how car thieves started cars without keys, until a real crime show nicely showed me how to use a screwdriver or a set of vice grips to do it! I had thought that house and car alarms would defer such criminal activity until TV documentaries pointed out that most people ignored car and house alarms going off because they often went off accidentally!! Some other TV program showed me how to tow a luxury car WITHOUT setting off the alarm because of a SAFETY device installed in it to keep it quiet during police towing!! (It works, by the way. I tested it out on my car.)

The NRA did not help anything at all because they stand firm on the right of the people to bear and own any form of arms they desire, including military weapons designed only for mass killing. In a gun show, where I went to buy guns, right under the eyes of the watchful police, several sellers of semiautomatic weapons offered to sell me plans and kits for turning the weapon of my choice into fully automatic. PLUS several dealers, knowing well that paperwork was required for the sale of their weapons, offered to sell me guns at the end of the show without seeing my ID and only a bill of sale. CASH!

Yeah, I’d say television has a lot to do with the current state of violence in the US.

By the way, I also learned, from detective shows, how NOT to leave clues if I do a crime and how to buy fittings for a pipe bomb and NOT have them traced to me. From the Internet I learned how to make black powder (no sense in buying it from a store since the makers now often put in trace elements to identify their product – learned from a detective show) and C-4. PLUS, to make it more devastating, TV showed me how to strap nails to it, score the metal to produce massive fragmentation and – this had me stumped for a bit – rig up a simple switch of cardboard and tinfoil to detonate it when someone opens the box it is in. COOL HUH?

TV even showed me the basics for making my own coke, speed and various other drugs via home labs AND what materials to buy and WHERE to get them!! I never knew how Heroin addicts liquefied their drug and shot it up until TV showed me the whole process, including how to make a syringe! It showed me how to grow POT!! INSIDE YET and pointed out how the sneaky power company could detect the presence of grow lights.

TV is great on showing how searial killers get caught and showing future serial killers how NOT TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES! It even shows how NOT to make mistakes in committing the casual murder. (Basement burial is OUT. Dismembering and scattering through dumpsters over 50 miles is IN.)

TV even showed the very real possibility of bodies being dumped into grinders for hamburger, buried in the foundations of massive buildings, turned into mulch through wood chippers, and processed into cattle feed.

ARRGH! You’d better not piss me off becauz I know 100 ways to maim and kill you AND dispose of your body and NOT make any mistakes. I have television and the Internet to thank for

4

Wow. Preach on, Brother Sentinel.

There is no doubt in my mind that TV and movies, if they don’t actually cause violence, at least desensitize people to it. Which makes me wonder if the question behind this question is, Why do people want to watch all this violence and identify with all the hyperthyroid sociopaths up on the screen? All I can think when I see all this crap is “bread and circuses”. The bulk of the population of this country, it seems, is frustrated, stressed, and generally dissatisfied with the state of the world. So they get shovel-fed the most irresponsible of escapist fantasy for some sort of Band-Aid brand catharsis that keeps 'em quiet for another day while the underlying problem just festers. I hate to sound bleak, but bleak is exactly how it looks to me, and I, for one, am at a loss as to what might be done about it.

“Are you frightened of snakes?”
“Only when they dress like werewolves.”
-Preacher

5

Rodimus – Garth Ennis fan, eh?

No explicit violence on TV or in the movies when I was growing up. When violence began to be more graphic, it was in a genre that I enjoyed (horror, suspense, etc.) so I watched it, but either did a fast-forward or cover-the-eyes when the brains started oozing.

Wanted my kids to like the same things I liked (naturally), so they grew up with splatter. I don’t think any of them are serial killers, but the boys like the violent video games, and one of my daughter’s favorite movies is Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Guess I desensitized them. None of them are in any way violent, however, unless you’d count kicking a tire when the car battery dies.

6

Auntie Pam: Oh, I am indeed an Ennis fan.

I guess I should add that I too enjoyed Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and regard Die Hard as the greatest Christmas movie of all time. My invective shouldn’t really be against violence in the media, I suppose, since I enjoy it as much as the next guy, and am no more inclined to perpetrate heinous acts on my fellow human beings than I would be otherwise. It does indeed desensitize, in theory, but I was looking at it more as a symptom of our general cultural malaise than a cause. If you want a cause, I blame Oprah.

“Are you frightened of snakes?”
“Only if they dress up as werewolves.”
-Preacher

7

Are imitates life. Not the other way around.

Sure, there are some people who are stupid, have problems, and will latch onto something like a lyric, or a movie, or a book, and decide that really is life.

But they are in the minority. Obviously a vocal minority, because they seem to get the media’s attention for their acts.

The question is if we, as a society, need to regulate artistic expression on the basis of a few nut-jobs who take it all wrong.

I would say, no, thanks.

If we do that, it’s time to regulate the Bible, because how many people have died, killed, or decided that racism was cool because of how THEY interpreted that piece of literature?

A lot more than became serial killers after Silence Of The Lambs, shot up a school after hearing Marilyn Manson, or bag Steve King because of rage.

Yer pal,
Satan

8

I guess I’m wondering if technology matters at all. I hear all the time about how blood and gore are supposed to be a recent phenomenon, because of TV and video games. I’d say, the TV and the video games are a recent phenomenon; the blood and gore are ancient. Christian kids get told over and over again about a fella who got nailed to a cross; ancient Greek kids got told over and over again about a fella who got his liver torn out every day while chained to a rock. A little girl hacked off her own finger in a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. A little mermaid walked on the earth, though it felt like walking on the edge of a knife and her feet bled.

The point could be made that old-fashioned blood and gore had a moral message. I’d retort that modern blood and gore often has a moral message as well. The most celebrated example of senseless amoral blood and gore seems to be Pulp Fiction. (Apparently its name didn’t effectively warn people as to its subject matter.) The thing about Pulp Fiction is that it has a very strong moral message - of the two starring criminals, Jules is saved by paying attention to an omen and choosing to go straight; Vinnie ignores the same omen and gets gunned down.

I’d really like better examples of stuff in the modern day in which killing is portrayed as fun and without consequences. I’m sure there are some examples out there; the post-modern world is full of examples of everything. I’m just not sure what people are talking about when they say “the media glorifies violence”. What exactly do you mean by “glorify”?

9

Here’s what drives me nuts about this whole thing: the fact that no one wants to put the blame where it is due. People are having children and throwing them into day care at 3 months. Kids are growing up with both parents working 40 hours a week, and are all-too-often taking a backseat to their parent’s work. Both my parents had to work, but I was blessed with a mom who was a pre-school teacher. I was with her all day from age 2-5. But my father also made a commitment to me as a child. Whenever I asked him what he did for work he’d say “My job is being a dad. I make money being a social worker.” That made a HUGE difference to me as a child, knowing that my parents put mine and my sisters’ well-being ahead of work. But I think I got lucky.

Did the Columbine kids pull it off because they listened to Manson? Nope. Manson’s songs are about the anger created from being an outsider. They are about anger directed at people who judge, people who blindly follow the rest of the herd. I’m not a huge fan of the dude (butt-less pants? please…) but I can apprechiate that he’s making people uncomfortable to make them question WHY he makes them uncomfortable. He’s a clever guy, read any interview. Nope, the reason Columbine happened is because the parents were SO unattached to their children’s lives that they were able to build bombs in the garage. And as far as the whole “oooh, they were dressing like Keanu in The Matrix…” My parents paid attention to what movies I saw. We had one VCR in the living room, so they always knew what I was renting and watching. Kids can’t just magically understand what is real and what is not. Values are not inbred, they are taught. And we are not teaching them the value every human life has.

Combine that with the able availablity of assalt weapons, bomb making materials and directions, and you have a militia of armed, pissed off kids.

We’ve got a serious problem, a generation of American kids who have raised themselves. And while I adore children, they are not cabable of doing a good job of it. And that’s why I think they are blowing each other away.

</end rant>

One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. -Nietzche

10

“McGuyver showed – for a time – how to make nuclear bombs from two paper clips and a car
battery. Writers of books started detailing how to make home explosives and the Internet
allowed the Lunatic Fringe to let everyone know how to make anything from guns to plastic explosives. Need I say more?”

Actually, IIRC, in “McGvyer” (notice the absence of a “u”), the lead character refused to use a gun and never used explosives to kill or wound, solely as a diversionary tactic. The writers of the show made a point of leaving out one or two crucial steps from any process that COULD have been used to kill or maim someone.

As to the availability of formulas for explosives and such, they have been readily available in chemistry and engineering books at public and university libraries for decades. And before you retort “Who would legitimately need to make or use explosives, that the formula and directions are in those chemistry and engineering books at all?”, may I remind you of the many productive uses of explosives in construction and demolition.

“The cops come up with ways to stop a car in real life and TV promptly displays it so crooks know what to look for and avoid. Like spike strips. Then a tire maker comes up with a tire which will not go flat!! Kinda eliminates the spike strips or the cops shooting out the tires.”

So, you cannot imagine a completely legitimate reason for making and selling puncture-proof tires? Garbage doesn’t fall off trucks? Glass bottles don’t end up broken in the roadway? No tradesman has ever had a box of nails fall off of their truck onto the pavement? You really believe that the manufacturers of puncture-resistant tires think the primary market for their product is criminals who want to be able to evade the police? Or that most people buying puncture-proof tires have police spike strips in mind?

I take it in all of your sainted and pure existence that YOU have never had to change a tire on the side of a tollway, with traffic flying by two feet away at 75mph, when you are wearing a new tan suit and a brand-new pair of shoes?

11

Er, don’t you need plutonium or something as well?

12

Yes, you DO need plutonium (or U-235) to build an atomic bomb.

One of the things the writers on MacGuyver were careful about was to never have MacGuyver make anything dangerous that would actually work in real life. They did not want some hicks in East Dogbreath, Nebraska suing the studio for a gazillion dollars because their kid built a bomb “just like MacGuyver showed him” and blew his own face off.

The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

13

Well, war has usually been glorified. But in this context, “glorify” isn’t the best word choice, is it? How about “prettify”? Or “palatify”? (Just invented a new word.)

If you’re a kid (or just ignorant, like Satan said), you aren’t capable of seeing past the superficial.

If more bad guys in movies and TV were portrayed like they really are – homely and stupid like Steve Buscemi in Fargo – instead of super-intelligent and attractive like Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects – maybe some impressionable kids would see them in a different light.

It’s like the anti-smoking commercials. They show a skinny nerdy pimply kid turning up his nose at the cute girl cuz she’s smoking. Cute girls all over are thinking “Hell, I wouldn’t date him anyway.”

Just a thought. Simple, but a thought.

14

Just what exactly were you watching, anyway?

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.

15

While personally I deplore the violence of the media, particularly the way in which it is presented(there are good guys and bad guys. the bad guys are really really bad. whatever the good guys do to them is ok because they are good and the bad guys are bad), I find it hard to believe many of the things said by people who claim that the media is making people act violently. Yes, televisions and movies are more violent than ever. This is because violent movies and violent television shows(and I include the news in this, in fact I especially note that the news has more than it’s share of violence) are popular.
The underlying assumption under much of the “media causes violence” theory is that there is more violence now than there was previously. After all, there is more violence on television, right? Unfortunately, this is not true. In fact, despite what seems to be the prevailing attitude in the media and amoung most Americans, violent crime in America has in fact dropped in recent years. On the other hand coverage of violent crimes has, or at least it seems to me, risen.
Situations such as Columbine, while horrendous, are nothing new. Only recently however have they been reported on to the extent that they are being reported on nowadays. Similar to the “epidemic” of road rage( another media created phenomenum(incidents of violent crimes on the roads are not on the rise)) a few disgruntled students have been taking their frustrations out upon the people in their schools in much the same manner as the students at Columbine for as far back as these methods have been available to them.
The real tragedy about these events is how they are portrayed by the news services. And their causes are, as they have always been, the inherent cruelty of High School society, combined, of course, with the one cause that, though it seems rather obvious, and is mentioned every time the issue is discussed by anyone other than majority of the media, poor parenting.

16

I don’t think that it’s the media that causes violence, so much as it’s violence that causes media. Hehe, I love formulaic platitudes.

Anyway, my point is that people have always done violent things and, in general, have always been very adept at killing other people. People tend, for some reason, to remember childhood as an idyllic time and thus probably don’t remember violence on their own media. If we looked at the cartoons and tv shows and movies of the past, they would probably have a bit of violence in them (hey, Psycho. A killer with no reasons. Sociopath.).

17

Movies which glorified violence? Let me think now.

Almost ANY Arnold Schwartznegger film.

MOST of Bruce Willis’ films. (Die Hard 1, 2, 3.)

Assorted war films.

Freddie Kruger films. (Nightmare on Elmstreet and so on.)

Clint Eastwood westerns and ‘Dirty Harry-like films’.

Any home-boy, Gangsta- type film.

Assorted martial arts films. (You recall the times when it seemed that EVERYONE on television knew martial arts and would cheerfully take on odds of 100 to one and win.)

QUOTE

As to the availability of formulas for explosives and such, they have been readily available in chemistry and engineering books at public and university libraries for decades. And before you retort “Who would legitimately need to make or use explosives, that the formula and directions are in those chemistry and engineering books at all?”, may I remind you of the many productive uses of explosives in construction and demolition.

True, but many people would not take the time to look them up and even if they did, they would not know how to make fuses, switches or timers. The Internet, plus several detective shows I’ve watched on the Discovery Channel as well as on other stations, have shown HOW pipe bombs are made and HOW they were made to be much more deadly. Plus I saw a program where detectives showed how they traced down the maker of pipe bombs by serial and identification numbers in pieces of the bombs – I never knew they were there. They tracked them back to the store where they were bought and got the sales receipt. Solution: go to stores in different cities at much different times.

I’ve never bought gunpowder but don’t you have to sign for that? If so, tracers in the powder, showing which store carried it, could produce the sales slip and such. Most people I knew did not know that gunpowder makers added things to their product.

I do recall a MacGuyver episode where he used a piece of a magnesium bicycle to make something explode because magnesium burns. I know I never put two and two together that the magnesium bike frame was the same type of metal which burns.

There have been several programs about serial killers with interviews where the nutcase described how he managed to dispose of the body without being found out and then detectives going into great length telling where he screwed up and they caught him.

A good way for new serial killers to learn how not to make mistakes?

Plus, with Americans being as nuts over guns as we are, all of those films showing how to solve problems with guns and what forms of exotic and incredibly lethal guns are out there will most certainly give the local psychotics ideas. (Add to the picture that TV let everyone know for ages that kids committing felonies could NOT be tried as adults, that they would go to juvenile jails or no jail at all, would have their records cleared after reaching 18 and you have a formula for kids to do violent crimes, KNOWING their punishment will be minimal.)

There was a book sold on the Internet on how to commit murder. A guy bought it, followed the instructions and blew some other guy away. The cops caught him and a suit was brought against the writer and seller by the government. That caused a freedom of speech snarl for a time, but the writer and seller lost.

Question here.

I write, hopefully to get published. If in one of my books I go into great detail about how to kill someone and get away with it by making one’s own weapons and some nut or two out there copies my stuff and kills someone, who is responsible? The nuts would not have known how to do it unless I told them. Freedom of speech gives me the right to say what I please. Writing is also covered under artistical freedom. Now if my book gets made into a movie (HA) and those instructions are left in, are the producers of the movie responsible if more nuts copy the stuff and kill more people?

In my opinion, I’m responsible because I let nuts learn how to kill with a minimum risk of getting caught and the movie makers are just as guilty for not changing the story line. Many would fight lawsuits by claiming realism was needed in the movie and that they are not responsible for what people do with the information given to the public. In my work, if I need to go into detail about potentially real violence, I leave steps out. I know how to make nitroglycerin at home, BUT I don’t want to expose all of the process because some stupid kid might decide to try it and blow himself and others off of the face of the Earth.

(Remember the kid who decided he could make some form of radiation emitter or proton gun at home and actually found legal ways to get radium from old watch dials and other sources and essentially nearly created a nuclear accident in his own home shed? The government stepped in when they found out, took the shed, as well as some of the ground, and carefully disposed of it. The kid was nonplused, stating that he felt that he had only taken about 5 years off of his life.)

IF the information is out there, in violent films or on the Internet, SOMEONE will try it.

Guns have been glorified for years as quick ways to solve problems with. Once people settled differences with fists, clubs or knives, but now the .9mm and .22 make it so much easier. Gang fights used to be done with baseball bats, knives, chains and fists but now they spray each other from a distance with weapons and involve innocent people.

Remember that cool movie with one of the Sheen guys in it, where a fired weapons worker went nuts and got his hands on a bag of guns from some gang members and walked around shooting up everything. It looked so SIMPLE!

Arnold often winds up carting around a portable armory and blowing up every bad guy in sight, along with a lot of acreage.

Didn’t Bruce in his Die Hard series manage to wipe out the crooks with machine guns?

Guns shown on television make it look so EASY! Why face down some thug who is liable to beat your ass thoroughly because he is a better fighter when you can grab up a gun and dispose of him from a distance?

What? Me worry?’

18

Our mom enforced a zero-stooge policy after my brothers and I began to imitate them. Did it stop the violence? Definitely not, just the 3-Stooge style violence.

I’d have to say that the kiddie violence has decreased, while at the same time the adult violence has increased. I remember a 30’s cartoon where Porky Pig told his cat that they were going fishing. The cat put on such a super-charged display of enthusiasm that the canary says, “well, now I have seen everything!” And then he pulls out a pistol and shoots himself in the head! Needless to say, when this cartoon is replayed that part is deleted, as are the parts of other cartoons where, say, a character gets its face burned black except for two giant white lips and the sound track plays a riff of “Negro music.”

At the same time when they made that cartoon, cowboy and gangsters would be shot, only to cover cigarette-burn-size hole on their body and slowly sink to the ground. No exit wound or blood spray or sudden shitting & pissing. The argument was made by Sam Peckinpah & others that this was changed in the interest of realism, and who can argue with telling the truth? Show Romeo and Juliet throwing up on each other in their death throes, and maybe some kids wouldn’t see suicide as a glamorous option.

That being said, I’d have to weigh in on the side of the media being a non-influence in a society’s violence level, and also a non-reflection thereof. If there seems to be too much of it in the media, I think it’s due to producers going for the easy buck. I know you can live largely free form gunfire (and entirely free from anvils falling on your head) here in America. I’d be willing to bet you can get through your day in Hong Kong without receiving a kick in the face.

Your deep sea diving suit is ready, me brave lad.

19

I think some folks are looking through the wrong end of the telescope (binos, microscope, pick your metaphor), so to speak.

Even with the greater proliferation of seemingly senseless violence in the mass medias, I think most kids still know it isn’t real, or even right.

But in a small handful of emotionally or mentally disturbed kids, there’s no discontinuity between the boob-tube and real life (whatever the hell that is.

I grew up in the '70s-'80s watching Clint’s spaghetti westerns and Dirty Harry, the Terminator, Red Dawn and other violent movies, as well as the usual Road Runner/Coyote stuff, and the Stooges as well. I imagine quite a few hundred million people have. And we realize that all that violence is only entertainment, with about as much bearing on real life as your average political debate.

But for a few, a very small few, all that violence is “cool”; thugs that do whatever they want and the cops seem unable to catch or stop are “strong” and they want to be like them. Gangstas and Mafiosi are protrayed as smart, cool people, while cops are portrayed as stupid jerks, sending the message that it is better to be “bad” than “good”. Just look at the evening news report to see which professional athlete is being busted for drugs, guns, prostitution and general thuggery; then see how long it takes for that same athlete to show up in a commercial for “Cool” kids gear.

Most people, kids included, know the difference; it just a tragic few that don’t and do stupid, even deadly acts of violence.

IIRC, Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” was one of the first movies to graphically and accurately portray the gore of gun violence, with the climatic battle being a blood-bowl of bullets and bodies. Pretty graphic for 1969.

<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
<FONT COLOR=“BLUE”>“Give 'em hell, Pike!”</FONT>

20

Completely OT, but none-the-less amusing. After watching Swingers, my sister and I decided we needed a word that was “money” but that was THEIR word, so we couldn’t use it. I came up with MacGyver, the rationale being anyone who can get out of a Ukranian prision with nothing but a toothpick, a paperclip and a piece of floss deserves his own slang word. I am happy to report that I have spread the McGyver love far and wide, and there are people using it in all corners of the world. It was later decided that the antithesis of McGyver is Kathie Lee Gifford, ie: That is SO Kathie Lee.

Back to your regularly scheduled intelligent conversation.

One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. -Nietzche