Note: A review of “District 9” will post on Friday

[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img] The science-fiction film District 9 earns its R-rating. Bursting heads, exploding bodies, beatings. None of it gratuitous or sensational. Nevertheless, there it is on the screen; graphic, bloody violence. As my wife and I watched the film, we were surprised to hear a child in the row behind. A child! Who brings a child to an R-rated film? But that isn’t what really shocked us.

In one particularly disturbing scene – minor spoiler warning! – the film’s protagonist is coerced (and tortured) into using his tragic affliction to test alien weaponry. After experimenting on inanimate objects and animals, one of the movie’s sentient insect-like aliens (derogatorily called “prauns”) is brought to the firing range. Arms in the air, fearful, pleading, with a big red “x” painted on its chest, the praun looks on in terror at his human captors before exploding in a shower of blood and gore. The scene is a harrowing demonstration of human cruelty and callous disregard for innocent life. My wife and I were horrified; a perfectly sensible moral reaction. The child, however, laughed. Laughed!

Maybe the child didn’t understand what it was seeing – another reason not to bring kids to R-rated movies. Maybe the kid is so hopped up on video games that seeing exploding bodies on screen is nothing new. Whatever the reason, it seems to me there is something seriously wrong going on. The most obvious question involves the kid’s parents. Yet what does it say about our culture that violent, murderous death provokes laughter?

Comparing ‘Idea’ and ‘Reality’

Many fans of horror movies, violent video games, and the like point to the distinction between reality and fantasy. Oh, no, they’re not enjoying watching a masked maniac brutally murder pretty young girls in various ways. They’re enjoying watching a fictional masked maniac brutally murder fictional pretty young girls in various special-effects-driven ways. To some extent, the distinction is fair: Fantasy and reality are not the same and no one is really getting hurt in a movie. However, the distinction also strikes me as irrelevant. For one thing, we judge reality based on abstract reasoning. When we say “killing people is wrong,” we’re not referring to any specific death; we are articulating the value by which we judge the moral quality of a specific, real death. In other words, and at the risk of getting into philosophical trouble, the metaphysical provides the standards by which the real is measured. To illustrate the point, consider the following questions, which I raised in a past column last year:

What happens to entertainment value when it’s not possible to distinguish between reality and fantasy?

What is the difference between being entertained by non-violent scenarios and being entertained by torture and violent death?

It boils down to why the reality or non-reality of a violent event should make a difference between whether it is entertaining to watch or not. Shouldn’t the “idea” of violence be at least somewhat as disturbing as the “reality” of violence?

There is something to the notion that our culture is desensitized to violence. Mention non-violent action as an alternative to military solutions and most people will give you a disbelieving stare, as if the idea of solving a dispute without fists or guns is so ridiculous you might as well say the moon is made of green cheese. Not a new idea, I know.

With the recent case of William Kostric openly displaying a gun at an Obama Town Hall meeting – and the display of a gun, drawing on the cultural iconography of weapons and the fact that a gun is design for the sole purpose of killing, can’t be anything other than the implied threat of violence – now seems like an especially good time to think about how violence and the language of violence are influencing us. And not just physical violence. The violence of uncivil discourse that demeans and shouts down disagreement. The violence of anger and hatred that infects our careful considerations of policy – as exemplified in the debate over health care. In the year since I last wrote about violence in culture, it doesn’t seem like anything has changed. A child laughed at the scene, however fictional, of an innocent creature violently murdered.

Frédérik invites you to discuss this week's article at his blog.