Violence

I went to see Batman last night.  Yes, Heath Ledger did deliver an amazing performance, but that’s not really what’s on my mind to discuss.  I was just thinking about violence on the screen.  I mean, I know that’s what super hero fighting crime movies are all about, but I was still somewhat shocked at the beginning at all the death and darkness.  Something in my brain said, “I don’t really want to sit through this,” at the first scene with the Joker and his band.  When I started listening to the speeches he made, I could see the art in it and appreciated it a little bit, and by the end I was more comfortable, but I started off a little unsettled.  I wonder if other people go through that.

The weird thing is, I seem to be getting more sensitive about watching violence.  There was a time when I watched things like Silence of the Lambs, or listened to Sweeney Todd and I was sort of like, “Yeah! Blood!”  (I guess I still have that reaction from Sweeney Todd).   Gruesomeness was sort of funny, or at least amusing.  I can go back further to when I was about seven or eight and my friends and I tied Barbies to the ceiling fan and painted blood on the necks with red lipstick and the dolls spun slowly around when we turned on the fan.  We were trying to scare my friend’s younger siblings but, obviously,  it was too funny to be frightening.  And back even further,  I remember trying to make my room a haunted house and taking the legs off this big doll I had with removable limbs and lying them across the floor with a red silk scarf.  My mother came in and asked what I was doing and then scolded me and told me to put that stuff away.  But now, I seem to flinch more than ever at movies.  Even the new Indiana Jones surprised me a little with how much I flinched.

Really, I’m just writing all of this down because I’m thinking about how, even in the course of watching Batman, I lost some of my sensitivity that I had when I sat down and now I am wondering, what really do I gain from watching a bunch of  people get killed–sometimes in pretty disturbing ways?  In light of the fact that we are a country at war, isn’t it a tad strange that we flock to theaters and watch people die?

All of that said, I thought the movie was great.  I enjoyed the writing and the acting and well, just about everything about it.  And the violence was probably necessary to get the point across–though I think I need to watch it again to really understand what all of it was getting at.  But there is still something in me that wonders about the violent content–whether it’s some kind of indication.