# Schadenfreude, movies, and latent violent urges

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/schadenfreude-movies-and-latent-violent-urges/671291>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 15, 2013, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/schadenfreude-movies-and-latent-violent-urges/671291 "2013-10-15T07:35:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/schadenfreude-movies-and-latent-violent-urges/671291/1 "2013-10-15T07:35:16Z")

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This issue has indeed been a sore point with me–and others–on this message board, specifically in a post in The BBQ Pit I started years ago about movies.  
However, I’m raising a question from the **opposite** viewpont: The hypothesis that violence, even contrived violence as in movies as on TV, is necessary.  
To illustrate this I am using an article I found (of all places) in \*MAD, _that appeared in about 1971, titled “Get-It-Out-Of-Your-System-Land,” written by Sy Reit and luridly illustrated by George Woodbridge. (I found it in a MAD Special Number 16.) Here is the introduction:  
 **ABUSEMENT PARK DEPT.**  
Go to your local newsstand, pick up a newspaper, and what’s the first thing that hits you in the eye? The newsdealer, dummy—because you didn’t pay for the paper! But the next thing will be all those scary headlines about “law and order” and “crime in the streets”! Incidentally, we can’t figure out why there’s so much fuss about “crime in the streets”! Isn’t that where it belongs? Where should we have crime, for Pete’s sake—inside our houses? Anyway, violence in America is becoming a serious problem. Everyone agrees that something must be done to curb all the crime, rioting, and other forms of mayhem. But we here at MAD think that the Establishment is going about it all wrong. Instead of trying to suppress violence, the powers that be ought to find a nice safe outlet for it. Let’s face it, people_ need ways _to express their anti-social urges. And everyone_ has _these secret urges. So why not channel them harmlessly by seeing up a special area where folks can get_ rid \*of these terrible impulses and natural aggressions in _completely safe and acceptable ways?_ How would this work? Well, why not join us as MAD escorts you through uninhibited, satisfying…  
GET-IT-OUT-OF-YOUR-SYSTEM-LAND  
(Formatting in original.)  
The “abusement park” features attractions such as kicking headstones over, stomping on a white carpet with muddy boots, looting a store, cursing out a cop, sending poison-pen letters and so on.

And my question is: Is this the same kind of anodyne that is such a prominent feature of movies and TV these days? I want to account for this situation and I figured that this equivalent, if it is such, would make it easier to assess movies properly and make them less of a bugaboo.