What’s really going on with violent entertainment has deep roots in the American psyche. In some respects the present-day United States is a nasty place: look at the amount of gun violence, the grotesque influence of the National Rifle Association, the amount of violence by other means, the astounding number of people in jails and prisons, the number of people executed each year, the proliferation of domestic poverty, the ability of wealth to shape public policy, the accelerating decline of the middle and working classes, the horrifically large number of innocent people killed as a result of the Iraq invasion, the use of torture as an interrogation and punishment device, the embrace of indefinite detention for people not convicted (or even accused) of crimes, the acceptance of a permanent state of war against anyone declared to be The Enemy, and on and on.
I find it hard to imagine how anyone can place those factors on one side of the scale, and put violent films on the other, and then say the Columbine or Virginia Tech or Batman shooters did what they did because movies got them all excited.
What’s needed now is not just a less violent cinema but a more intelligent cinema that dares to think about issues and to encourage thinking in its audience. We are the beneficiaries of the most advanced audiovisual systems ever known, capable of moving our emotions, challenging our ideas, and opening our imaginations. Is it right that the most technologically sophisticated and financially expensive products of this system are entertainments like the Batman movies, designed to deliver their gratifications not to the mind but to the gut? Surely our entertainment industry can aspire to greater things.
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