A horror documentary: John Carpenter, John Landis, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, David Cronenberg and Tom Savini give insight into the politics, war and turmoil in America that influenced their films. Good stuff and makes me wonder about other stuff. As restrictions were lifted more and more and films became more violent, some have said it made the public desensitized to horrors and less likely to be horrified by real horrors. With the wars we were in, I wonder if there were any politics behind the lax restrictions.
Anyway, I figured I'd post this, I wasn't expecting a political documentary when I watched it but it turned out very political and I thought it would be just something different to post on rather than the same old stuff.
Without watching all of the documentary the end result whether intentional or accidental has worked to desensitize the masses to violence, to gruesome pictures, to fear, to irrational or reasonless actions. Television shows people on shows such as COPS, SWAT etc, actually being shot dead, brutally beaten, handcuffed children, homes broken into, lack of habeas corpus and so many violations of ones RIGHTS it is not even funny. The end result is a passive, pacified, placated populace and fearful society who once reacted with outrage to such disturbing images, who now does not react at all. In some cases horrendous events are spoken by reporters and citizens with smiles on their faces and even mass killings can conjure up giggles from the person who witnessed or reports the event.
Even now as the continued wrongful attack on Iraq goes on, which the masses are all to well aware of the wrongfulness of it, news reporters tell of and show images of cities being carpet bombed and american military talks of "continued bombing" of areas to supposedly route out the invisible/non-existant Al Qaida. No one seems to react to the fact that many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis are murdered/destroyed by each of these bombing episodes and the after effect of homelessness, orphaned children, dismemberment, insufficient/non-existent medical care, schools, religious institutions, nourishment, hygiene, agriculture etc etc are all brought to an end while america shows and feels NO SYMPATHY AT ALL. This is REAL LIFE...not a horror/thriller/action movie where the actors get up after the scene is over and go on with life. In this movie LIFE REALLY COMES TO AN END... sadly the TV viewer doesn't seem to get this.
I can't say the emotionless society is directly the result of movies, TV, various print media etc, but it has definitely played a part in making the masses care less about the goriness, decimation, destruction of humanity. The newer reality shows put the masses in a JUDGEMENT SEAT where the viewer feels like they have the power to decide WHO DOES AND WHO DOESN'T, WHO CAN AND WHO CAN'T etc etc. This once again plays with the psyche of people by getting them to set an unattainable standard by which they will judge all persons. Ever notice the complaints from concert goers now about the performer who at certain parts of the show must lip sync their own music? These "judges" never stop to think that there is no way in hell a performer can dance and sing to the same intensity during a concert as in a music video and maintain their ability to perform and sing at this level for two hours. While music videos are great, they have warped reality and even turned concert goers against performers who failed to live up to the unattainable standard.
Now as of late there has been a great amount of apocalyptic, war, disease/plague, world wide destruction, aliens invading, natural disaster/nature gone wild, military control type movies being made. These are the "prophetic type" movies that are being made to sway the viewers/populace into believing "THE END IS NEAR AND TO SURVIVE YOU MUST DO THIS"...with "THIS" meaning anything from get your gun to give up your rights to government/military. I can not watch a single movie any more without the thought that I am seeing hidden messages in these films informing me of upcoming planned events by various world governments in order to reduce population, gain control over people/nations, tell of biological experiments that can take BIOWAR to an unimaginable level, demonize religions/people/nations/ cultures/political beliefs/governments etc and raise ones mindset to the level that because these differences exist or events that might happen it is justified to destroy the next person/nation because of it.
Now that i think about it...these movies, films, videos, print media etc have a tremendous impact on the populace, politics, thought process and actions of people and nations.....
