Isn’t it really a pleasure thing? I mean, the pleasure of logic that pervades the arc of a good story — even if its a story about a mess — has been replaced by the pleasure of competition…or maybe even a lust for dominance. Who knows what it’s breeding in life strategies our young men and women. Competition has an ages-old allure. And now that it’s profitable…. How long has it been since anybody took a financial loss for the greater good of the populace? Education used to provide a wide variety of intellectual pleasures. But even today’s educational tactics seem to arise more from technicological stimuli than the written or even spoken word. Parenting? Boundaries? Any hope there?

By the way, Ms. Joan, for months afterward, I wandered around singing, “It don’t worry me, it don’t worry me. You might say that we ain’t free, but it don’t worry me…. It don’t worry me…. It don’t worry me…..” Please please keep writing because as the kids are showing us, there are ways to make film that are democratic with a small “d” and you are brilliant (in my well-informed, totally cultured humble opinion).

Yup - I have always thought violence was a cheap shot - and a substitute for plot/story/character. It stimulates & then just demands more gore next time. I liked Gangs of NY, but had to provide my own censored version by putting my hands to my eyes when all the bloody slashing took place, as I couldn’t stand the shock. But then, I found Raiders of the Lost Ark exhausting!In a culture where extreme sports and extreme amusement park rides rule, movies have been demoted to the shock biz - and what’s more - aimed at the teenagers who frequent the multiplexes on the first go, too. I have to admit that I resent paying $20+ for the 2 of us to see a movie, as much as my husband likes to sit in the dark - when it will come on cable in a few months. But I LOVE the movies and gobble up all the period stuff on Turner Classic movies - I want grace, and escape and costume drama! And some stories about ME, now, the aging female boomer. I want catharsis. I want to see women on screen instead of little girls all dressed up in their mothers’ clothes. That’s why I adore Judi Dench. She is holding up the torch for so many of us! Wasn’t there a time when women’s personalities were cultivated to create movie stars like Bette Davis and Merle Oberon and Heddy Lamarr and Ingrid Bergman, to name a few - all so very different - not the pale febrile clones we see today. Frankly, I have trouble telling one from the other…

Well, Annie Hathaway is giving it a shot. But then with Meryl Streep as a mentor, she’s going for the real deal. I’m so appalled that anyone would WANT to be Paris Hilton’s BFF, let alone admit it on national television.

LIFE’S IMITATION OF ART—OR VICE VERSA? Regarding NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, THERE WILL BE BLOOD (inspired by Upton Sinclair’s 1927novel, OIL!), and IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH (based upon actual events), eager consumers/customers queue up at bookstore cash registers, movie ticket box offices, and DVD rental shops for doses of violence—or enlightenment? Daily, the senselessness of human cruelty is thrown into our faces with every turn of a newspaper page, click of a mouse, or flick of a remote control. Muslims and Iraqi puppies handily disposed of as we voyeuristically watch. Pulp fiction emerges as telling reality while lunching at Wendy’s, browsing at Von Maur’s, purchasing underwear at Lane Bryant’s, or matriculating like a herd of cattle into almost any college/university lecture hall or classroom. Ah, yes—massacres occurring right and left during this recent season, this HUNTING season, where annihilation of Life reaches commonplace status. All three mentioned movies might be categorized as extolling violence, but none of them, nor the blood-letting depicted, conjures comparatively as much audience quaking as once did those rough walks home from school while taunted and harassed by snot-nosed bullies. Remember? These films astonish with their eerily accurate portrayals of the human condition and resonate with total horrible believability. Villains seem difficult to easily identify as life-forces swirl randomly around all characters’ interactions. Classic novels once adhered to the rules of triangular structure, i.e. introduction, climax and conclusion. “Once upon a time” followed by build-up to a significant crisis/dilemma resolved itself into a denouement of “happily ever after”. Modern fiction nearly uniformly breaks from that pattern and for good reason. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN recently garnered the Oscar and, thus, alerted the public to the film’s existence—with mixed results. Advice? View this quirky cinematic endeavor as “a real page-turner”, for the Coen Brothers innovatively transferred the movie’s script from author Cormac McCarthy’s galley proofs somewhat directly to the screen. How dare any of us sanctimoniously sniff that “the book is better than the movie” when the book IS the movie, though no longer held in your own two hands nor upon your lap? This trilogy of 2007 cinematic terror hammers home important themes—allow Muslims to be Muslims, Christians to be Christians, armies to be armies, corporations to be corporations, politicians to be politicians, tribes to be tribes, cults to be cults marching to the beat of the drummer heard, whether singly, in pairs, groups, or clusters. Beware though, upon review of the films, several troubling questions tenaciously haunt the mind. Does group-think somehow create more monsters than usual, either as part of the cliques/gangs themselves—or consequentially produce loners, mavericks, rebels, loose cannons quite simply frustrated with the collective status quo? Also, the ultimate query remains that time-honored cliche’ “Which came first?”…(Forget the chicken or the egg!) violence or the movies? As NO COUNTRY’S dispassionate slaughter-house-foreman-type dispatcher of death, Spaniard Javier Bardem, that soulful skillful young coin-flipping actor, demands of a cross-sectional bewildered member of the family-of-man, ” Call it, friendo!”

Pam, Well said!

I don’t spend my money on violent movies. I had enough violence in my childhood to last me the rest of my life. If you have ever been in a violent situation, these movies wouldn’t be so attractive. Now….a well written, and well directed, movie is a delight. That’s where I’ll put my money.

I consider myself a middle of the road consumer of MOVIES, a much maligned term now. I love quiet little movies about ‘nothing’, epics, westerns, sci fi, mystery, Japanese comedies, Hong Kong kung fu, Ballywood, 30’s screwball comedies, 40’s noir, I don’t care what genre you talk about I’ve given them at least a taste. The ones I keep and see again are all ones that give me enjoyment. For some it’s because they’re perfect little movies, where everything magically blends, others because they have wonderful storyline or character or even design ( Joe and the Volcano with Hanks made it onto my shelf for that reason alone ) Violence has no attraction for me, much less gore, but I have violent movies in my collection when they work for me on one level or the other. I’ve found the most successful, shocking violence has been created in my mind rather than graphically portrayed in gore. Basically I agree with you anything that replaces sensation alone for character, storyline and place fails as a movie.

“Illness is a story. It calls us to healing beyond our physical selves. A strange contradiction. Suffering from an affliction invites us to step into a realm of healing that can benefit ourselves, our communities and the world. Illness is, therefore, at the very core of healing. Not a contradiction but the strange dance of creation.” —Deena Metzger. In this case, I would substitute violence for illness.

Violence sells tickets, so it is difficult to find a movie to see if you happen to think a plot is important. The same could be said for humor since that is also reduced to the lowest common denominator. I did however see two good French films recently… “Priceless” and “Flight of the Red Balloon”.

I’ve often heard the reason we’re in a mess as to media, a decent book, mag., movie, advertisements, and even mainstream TV and news that the problem is that porn is difficult to define. Well viewing these things after an absence of several years, over the last 3 years, I’ve got a definition: If it doesn’t raise the culture up, evolve it for the better culture, —then it’s porn. The advertisers, unaccountable politicos, and all those wounded childs from the 70’s seem to have grown big bodies to act out from, caling it artistic licence, free speech, and free expression, —and no limitations including responsibility. And it stays and it gets worse and it takes each group of kids down down to the deep and a whole bunch of Moms and Dads to addictions that aren’t parent promoting. I’m shocked that parent’s don’t know enough to unplug and turn off and recognize their power, if they can see the problem. But I wonder if they can anymore? All the science that has been put out there, supposedly, in child development and it’s as if the parents know less than the Mom’s and Dads’ of the cave days! And even worse is the legislator who says: ” the parent’s can watch the child to be sure they don’t download or click or remote on the wrong stuff.” Bas——! Most Mom’s and Dad’s are out workin’ even when the kids are home. It takes a nano second to get off a bad internet sight. Not only are our legislators heavily invested in chemical and agri-pharming I guess, but big time one way or another in the ‘communications’ industry.

No longer go to the movies unless it’s been throughly checked out by women like you.And as for television,and I have everything but sports,go through all 500 stations and usually end up turning it off.Sundance and one or two others occasionally.What a waste of a great medium!

Hollywood and the entertainment industry have always put out pap for the masses…that’s always been their stock in trade and they made an industry out of it. Whenever they get around to making something half-way interesting, it usually had to do with placing a group of people of certain ethnic persuasion either in a sympathetic or positive light.. Then they give the movie an Oscar from an academy so they can call it “art” and legitimize it in America’s cultural subconscious. The end result has never been money or if it has, it has only been a means to a more important end….control! Now that the entertainment industry (movies and TV) has attained their desired goal in American society, they can do anything they want and get away with putting out even more junk in the form of technical blockbusters and pap in the form of the “40 Year-Old Virgin”. Americans have been eating it up and still don’t realize this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when an industry is controlled as a monopoly. It’s no different than the solitary control by another ethnic group of the waste management industry. As it turns out, the products aren’t all that much different either. When can you ever remember seeing a Hollywood or TV movie from the past 50 years when German soldiers weren’t depicted as complete bunglers, or when Japanese weren’t depicted as maniacal war-mongers, or when Italians weren’t depicted as gangsters or thugs? Before 9/11 we hardly heard about the Arab peoples even though they comprise 21 countries and have made significant contributions to world culture and civilization going back to the days of the pyramids, yet after 9/11 the air waves were saturated with news about the Arab peoples…of course portraying them solely in a negative light not so much with words but often more subtly with pictures showing them throwing bombs or blowing up market places and Americans have been eating that up too. Why then, all of a sudden has so much air-time been set aside for the Arabs who up until then were completely ignored by the news and entertainment industry? Isn’t anybody connecting the dots out there or does everyone think violent movies and biased news just pop out thin air because that is the way the world? Grow the “bleep” up!

Joan, Thank you for posting this most insightful article that you so eloquently presented at the Foundation for Mythological Studies Annual Conference: The Mythology of Violence in Santa Barbara April 4-6. I believe that you have hit upon a core issue with regards to violence - be it to the self, others or the planet and that is: the LACK OF STORY. You have already shown that films many times substitute violence for a good story…any story and this is in fact true psychologically as well. When the story - the myth that makes up our life fabric is so flawed - so lacking in Eros - that we feel we do not have a story, then there is inner turmoil and eventual implosion and / or explosion. Without a story or myth, we live in a void and have nothing to hold on to. This is one reason mythology is so important to understand. Mythologists are always asking: What is your story? This is not the place to go into all the mythological and psychological clues and signs given by one who is on a path of self implosion, but suffice it to say that many of the young kids that took the lives of others and themselves left statements, poems, websites, or letters stating that they wanted their story to be remembered and the only story they had was what they WERE ABOUT TO DO - kill people and then kill themselves. If we look back on the lives of the people before the tragedy, we could find the depth psychological and mythological tracks that led to the eventual violence. This is not to say that mythologists or depth psychologists have all the answers, but we do have a much deeper understanding now (due to research) about HOW the story is created in an individual who will perhaps engage in a violent action be it homocide, suicide or both. This is so much more than can be said, and we can continue the conversation on this great site or the mythologists blog at www.mythplace.org. Thank you Joan for your most insightful recognition! Lori Pye www.mythology.org