men and women of violence, part 1

I saw this tweet late last night:

nprnews Explosion At Pennsylvania Zinc Plant Kills 2 http://n.pr/cpj7ig

I actually took the time to read about the two people that died. And I was shocked at my indifference. I remained completely unmoved by the story. This reminds me of something I wrote for school last year. For those of you who enjoy slasher/gore movies, please bear with me on this one:

Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?

At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes

Mama said

It's just make believe

You can’t believe everything you see

So baby close your eyes to the lullabies

On the news tonight

Jack Johnson, “The News”

We are a confused culture. Much of our media (movies, games, music) interacts with violence. We are accustomed to seeing violent images in war-movies and other R or M rated media. We laugh at violence in movies such as Hot Fuzz. We admire twisted masterminds such as The Joker or Jigsaw.

And yet, many of us are left untouched by the hell that murder, untimely death, and brutal violence produce.

My deceased grandfather and my step grandfather both served in WWII. One of them was a pilot; one was an infantryman whose last active combat was the Battle of the Bulge. After returning home, neither one could watch war movies or violence on TV. They could hardly bear to talk about the death and suffering they witnessed. To this day, my step-grandfather refuses to watch war movies.

I think that the destruction and mutilation of fellow men and women is a horribly evil and heartbreaking aspect of life. I also think that we, as a culture, have a false conception of this mutilation. It is not a laughing matter. Due to lack of experience, however, few people understand violence in its raw, nightmarish form.

In my opinion, Jack Johnson’s song “The News” (quoted above) is brilliant. “A billion people died on the news tonight/ but not so many cried at the terrible sight… Why don’t the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?/ At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eye.”

Johnson is right- we do close our eyes and ears to suffering. Perhaps it’s because we hear about incidents of murder, rape, and war every day. Perhaps it’s because we’re selfish and we only cry about the things that directly hurt us.

Perhaps we’ve forgotten that people cannot be defined by statistics or in a three-minute news update. They’re people.

My whole point with this journal entry was to raise this question: if you or someone you love had experienced violence in a personal way, do you think your view and enjoyment of violence in media would change? Say you’re walking downtown with your significant other one night and a serial murder walks up, slits his/her throat and them proceeds to cut you to pieces, laughing the entire time. You survive; he/she dies. Would you even want to sit through another Saw movie? If you lived in Sudan, where extreme violence is a daily reality, would you find violence entertaining?

This is an issue that I’ve been exploring and wrestling with for a while now. To clarify, I've never been a victim of a violent encounter that I've been discussing. And I've never witnessed one. I'm unable to fully relate because of my lack of experience, but it's something I wonder about.

I’m sure of one thing: I’m not against violence.

And I’ll explain that last statement the next time I write something to share with you all J