Brought up on Decadent American Violence. Am I Tainted? Are You?
Patrick Lockyer
October 25, 2009
Brought up on decadent American violence.
I did not give it a thought as a ten year old in Wales watching cowboys and Indians movies. The slaughter of the native was not an issue. The cowboy riding and shooting skills were the awesome feature. Sliding down the side of the horse and leaping aboard on the run. Never occurred to me at the time that the Indians were people also. America made fortunes from the violence of it around the world. It was a violent industry. If I ever treated my younger sister like a captive squaw and dragged her around I guess we know where the influence came from. No I don´t think I dare go that far but mentally I might have tied her to a tree and let the ants eat her. I did treat here like a squaw at times I guess in fact.
No I did not turn out to be a violent person courtesy of ´Saturday Morning Pictures´ and neither did I become like one of my friends who liked to pick up an egg or two from the outside display on our walk to the cinema and just plop them over the edge of the balcony seating. Mostly, many of my friends just determined what I would not turn out like. Back to movie violence. It was only later that Buffy Sainte-Marie gave a name to American violent destruction of whole nations of Indians. Soldier Blue movie of the Sand Creek Massacre was enlightening. Violence was never worse depicted I thought. At least never seen as white violence before. People used to just drop to the floor one time and not a drop of blood to be seen. My favorite Shane is good example. I loved the messages from that movie and from High Noon. Stand up manliness and self pride. I hope that I got my value system from things like that. My American wife Barbara might concur with some degree of bias I know. She could not be furtherest from the aggressive and mean American woman frequently depicted. Being a RN might be part of the answer?
Violence on film has always made the American nation money and one can´t but wonder to what extent it will evolve. I mean that Schwarzenegger killed hundreds in his movies but now we can take violence in a direction that only horror films went and the public love it. The CSI movies for example. Firstly we take a racist thread and make it look like the older cop kills the black cop out of revenge. The black cop is defending one of his ´stools´ from being hit. He is shot from behind by an older cop and given no warning? Extremely hard for the UK to make any similar movie in competition as guns are not routinely used and cops almost never get shot. Hard to compete with this CSI weekly scenario that the world are advised of eventually? Why oh why do the world get this adverse opinion of good ole America anyway? Back to this particular plot. It looks like a straight forward case of cop against cop racial bigotry and the white cops earlier bigotry comes into play. But now we need to add to the violence and we see that the black cop was a good cop and that his ´stoolpigeon´ was assassinated by a gang and we get a close replay of his neck front and back after being shot in the throat as is the way of the LA gang for ´snitches´. Then to fluff the plot out some more the older cop feels tainted and shoots himself in the head in his car to a further bloody scene. I always wonder who cleans all this stuff up in movies and in reality situations. I mean? Can I buy a good running car on the cheap that just needs a damn good ´detailing´?
So now we all feel sorry for the cop who shot the cop who shot that gang member who shot the ´snitch´. We are now running out of bloody scenes so now let´s go to the laboratory and the cop in charge just solves the whole deal by taking a circular saw and cutting the old cops brain out. Now we see how senile he was and when we get his eyes out he turns out to have impaired vision which explains all the coffee table height bruises on his legs. The violence he has endured to his shins. The hiding of his bad eyesight.
The obvious conclusion that he could not possibly have recognized the black cop when he shot randomly at his back and killed him so luckily. So clearly shooting a cop in the back who is shooting a villain is OK? So nowadays we have to have chainsaw massacre violence incorporated into the simple story of a man hiding his aging to pay his bills. God did he not have health care to fall back on? As a Brit I know what UK cops are like and where they come from and they are simply ´one of us´. Of course the one who cost me my neat sail boat here in Jax was not ´one of us´. He lives in County Dock Rd close to the water in gifted accommodation and enjoys the life style of the doctors and attorneys that surround him and they probably influence and are the reason he has a powerful huge boat and a huge RV and has no embarrassment at his Marie Antoinette lifestyle compared to the average Jacksonville citizen. I was once told that this guy did not like me as his ten year old daughter found me sarcastic. I was hauling my Victoria along the mud and the kids were watching. I apparently made some comment about policemen where I come from not owning cigarette boats that took a grand to fuel up. Just the facts guy. Just fact. This cop had my boat hauled away cos it was lying in its side. He said it had a hole in it when it was the deck drain. I had a friend just stand in awe at this cop brutalizing my collectable Vic 18.
Back to violence of another kind. I watch Masterpiece Theatre on the weekends on PBS and wonder at who could possibly watch this Inspector Lewis stuff? Rarely a gun involved but just like Sherlock Holmes a brilliant plot that requires that you follow it fastidiously. Just who drowned the guy in a red hot bath with chemical gloves on? Who followed up by killing some other character in the group? And also quite up to date. No bloody autopsy scenes quite like the circular saw of CSI but it needs a bit of artistic license to accept that the wonderful city of Oxford has that many guns and murderers but we can overlook that in the name of drama. Oxford has great buildings like Florence to help the plot along and even the cop Inspector was threatened being beaten with a rock by the felon who was not the real felon and the inspector was brave and flinched as he had to let his man vanish into the shadows for another day. No America cop would be seen so wimpy? But the Inspector invariably gets his man or he is killed.
I don´t know what my point is? Yes I do. How far do we take entertainment and is our bloodlust just getting out of hand. Are our populace influenced to making gains in life in criminal ways? Do we not just sow seeds of violence with these shows and don´t think that under age kids don´t see it. I only have basic TV and see more than I would have wanted my kids to have seen and one of my step kids got hooked on violence to the extreme through karate training and the lust to drop kick people which lead to paving stones being broken over victims heads and my daughter being influenced and being violent as well.
Is entertainment and making money all that matters here and if there were no guns there would be no stories? It seems to me that the downward spiral will continue and the terrible story of the poor young child in my city of Jacksonville being used and abused and thrown in a landfill is fair warning of where it is all going. There has to be controls. There has to be limits to TV violence. Stop breeding it in hearts? Does the American economy need this violence thing to survive or do the American people need this degree of violence to prop up their lives and as an alternative the American Idol. What happened to the people who sat around together and watched the Walton´s? Do we smirk and smile at the naivety now?
Will we smile and smirk at the naivety of CSI shows in ten twenty years time? How decadent can we actually get? How decadent does a capitalistic nation need to get to ´pay the bills´? How big a car do you need? How big a boat and RV does and ordinary cop need? Watch Inspector Lewis on PBS and weep?
I did not give it a thought as a ten year old in Wales watching cowboys and Indians movies. The slaughter of the native was not an issue. The cowboy riding and shooting skills were the awesome feature. Sliding down the side of the horse and leaping aboard on the run. Never occurred to me at the time that the Indians were people also. America made fortunes from the violence of it around the world. It was a violent industry. If I ever treated my younger sister like a captive squaw and dragged her around I guess we know where the influence came from. No I don´t think I dare go that far but mentally I might have tied her to a tree and let the ants eat her. I did treat here like a squaw at times I guess in fact.
No I did not turn out to be a violent person courtesy of ´Saturday Morning Pictures´ and neither did I become like one of my friends who liked to pick up an egg or two from the outside display on our walk to the cinema and just plop them over the edge of the balcony seating. Mostly, many of my friends just determined what I would not turn out like. Back to movie violence. It was only later that Buffy Sainte-Marie gave a name to American violent destruction of whole nations of Indians. Soldier Blue movie of the Sand Creek Massacre was enlightening. Violence was never worse depicted I thought. At least never seen as white violence before. People used to just drop to the floor one time and not a drop of blood to be seen. My favorite Shane is good example. I loved the messages from that movie and from High Noon. Stand up manliness and self pride. I hope that I got my value system from things like that. My American wife Barbara might concur with some degree of bias I know. She could not be furtherest from the aggressive and mean American woman frequently depicted. Being a RN might be part of the answer?
Violence on film has always made the American nation money and one can´t but wonder to what extent it will evolve. I mean that Schwarzenegger killed hundreds in his movies but now we can take violence in a direction that only horror films went and the public love it. The CSI movies for example. Firstly we take a racist thread and make it look like the older cop kills the black cop out of revenge. The black cop is defending one of his ´stools´ from being hit. He is shot from behind by an older cop and given no warning? Extremely hard for the UK to make any similar movie in competition as guns are not routinely used and cops almost never get shot. Hard to compete with this CSI weekly scenario that the world are advised of eventually? Why oh why do the world get this adverse opinion of good ole America anyway? Back to this particular plot. It looks like a straight forward case of cop against cop racial bigotry and the white cops earlier bigotry comes into play. But now we need to add to the violence and we see that the black cop was a good cop and that his ´stoolpigeon´ was assassinated by a gang and we get a close replay of his neck front and back after being shot in the throat as is the way of the LA gang for ´snitches´. Then to fluff the plot out some more the older cop feels tainted and shoots himself in the head in his car to a further bloody scene. I always wonder who cleans all this stuff up in movies and in reality situations. I mean? Can I buy a good running car on the cheap that just needs a damn good ´detailing´?
So now we all feel sorry for the cop who shot the cop who shot that gang member who shot the ´snitch´. We are now running out of bloody scenes so now let´s go to the laboratory and the cop in charge just solves the whole deal by taking a circular saw and cutting the old cops brain out. Now we see how senile he was and when we get his eyes out he turns out to have impaired vision which explains all the coffee table height bruises on his legs. The violence he has endured to his shins. The hiding of his bad eyesight.
The obvious conclusion that he could not possibly have recognized the black cop when he shot randomly at his back and killed him so luckily. So clearly shooting a cop in the back who is shooting a villain is OK? So nowadays we have to have chainsaw massacre violence incorporated into the simple story of a man hiding his aging to pay his bills. God did he not have health care to fall back on? As a Brit I know what UK cops are like and where they come from and they are simply ´one of us´. Of course the one who cost me my neat sail boat here in Jax was not ´one of us´. He lives in County Dock Rd close to the water in gifted accommodation and enjoys the life style of the doctors and attorneys that surround him and they probably influence and are the reason he has a powerful huge boat and a huge RV and has no embarrassment at his Marie Antoinette lifestyle compared to the average Jacksonville citizen. I was once told that this guy did not like me as his ten year old daughter found me sarcastic. I was hauling my Victoria along the mud and the kids were watching. I apparently made some comment about policemen where I come from not owning cigarette boats that took a grand to fuel up. Just the facts guy. Just fact. This cop had my boat hauled away cos it was lying in its side. He said it had a hole in it when it was the deck drain. I had a friend just stand in awe at this cop brutalizing my collectable Vic 18.
Back to violence of another kind. I watch Masterpiece Theatre on the weekends on PBS and wonder at who could possibly watch this Inspector Lewis stuff? Rarely a gun involved but just like Sherlock Holmes a brilliant plot that requires that you follow it fastidiously. Just who drowned the guy in a red hot bath with chemical gloves on? Who followed up by killing some other character in the group? And also quite up to date. No bloody autopsy scenes quite like the circular saw of CSI but it needs a bit of artistic license to accept that the wonderful city of Oxford has that many guns and murderers but we can overlook that in the name of drama. Oxford has great buildings like Florence to help the plot along and even the cop Inspector was threatened being beaten with a rock by the felon who was not the real felon and the inspector was brave and flinched as he had to let his man vanish into the shadows for another day. No America cop would be seen so wimpy? But the Inspector invariably gets his man or he is killed.
I don´t know what my point is? Yes I do. How far do we take entertainment and is our bloodlust just getting out of hand. Are our populace influenced to making gains in life in criminal ways? Do we not just sow seeds of violence with these shows and don´t think that under age kids don´t see it. I only have basic TV and see more than I would have wanted my kids to have seen and one of my step kids got hooked on violence to the extreme through karate training and the lust to drop kick people which lead to paving stones being broken over victims heads and my daughter being influenced and being violent as well.
Is entertainment and making money all that matters here and if there were no guns there would be no stories? It seems to me that the downward spiral will continue and the terrible story of the poor young child in my city of Jacksonville being used and abused and thrown in a landfill is fair warning of where it is all going. There has to be controls. There has to be limits to TV violence. Stop breeding it in hearts? Does the American economy need this violence thing to survive or do the American people need this degree of violence to prop up their lives and as an alternative the American Idol. What happened to the people who sat around together and watched the Walton´s? Do we smirk and smile at the naivety now?
Will we smile and smirk at the naivety of CSI shows in ten twenty years time? How decadent can we actually get? How decadent does a capitalistic nation need to get to ´pay the bills´? How big a car do you need? How big a boat and RV does and ordinary cop need? Watch Inspector Lewis on PBS and weep?
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