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I just woke up (4:00am) to review a little bit before my 7:30am Chemistry lab section for the midterm we have today, but decided to take a small detour through my blog links to see if anything new was being posted. I came upon Mark's recent entry about the movies he watched this weekend and realized that I didn't write about the movie I saw (happens to be the same one), Man on Fire starring Denzel Washington last Friday. Washington plays the character of an ex-government operative (an assassin) who takes on the job of a bodyguard down in Mexico upon the request of his friend. Essentially the plot of the story lies in the "fact" (stated in the beginning of the movie -- although no sources were credited, hence the quotation marks) that "every 60 seconds there is a kidnapping taking place in Latin America. And of those, only 70% of the victims survive." Just when Washington and the little girl, played by, Dakota Fanning, start to develop a nice relationship, she gets kidnapped and Washington goes out on a wild spree of revenge.
Aside from the short plot summary, what I really wanted to comment on was how I also noticed people cheering on the violence. And well, although most of us tend to do it subconsciously or at least not in the open -- a lot of the movie-goers that night were yelling out encouragements to, Denzel. "Yeah, you get 'em Denzel," or just simple, (but nonetheless irritating), clapping, whistling or "Yeah!"s floating around the theatre. Last Friday was probably my first movie outing during the past 7 or 8 months (I usually rent movies with Korean captions so that my parents can also enjoy it) so I couldn't help but ask, Is that what they do nowadays? I don't remember people doing that months ago when I watched action movies at the theatres. People tend to keep things to themselves. But funny how every time someone yelled a comment out for the rest of the audience to hear, the screen just before the movie reading "Silence is Golden" kept appearing in the back of my mind. Silence is golden.
Well, Mark does have a point. Most people say that they do not support violence, yet their actions don't support their words. And not only actions, since sometimes our thoughts don't agree with our words. And even if I were to assume that the audience that Friday consisted of the younger crowd, that doesn't go to say older adults aren't included. I'll have to give the example from the first playoff game between the Sharks and the Avalanche when there was a fight that went on between two players. After practicing at the driving range with my dad, we decided to watch the rest of the Sharks game at the golf clubhouse when the small fight ensued between the players on the ice. At that moment, the seemingly quiet clubhouse who only expressed their delight when a goal was shot, began roaring with cheers and encouragements to the Sharks member who was throwing fists at the other team member. These adults who were probably in their mid- to late 30s were feeding off of the violence on the screen. People in the clubhouse who didn't seem to even be following the game started getting into it too.
And while most of us have an affinity to a certain character in a book (Odysseus, let's say), or a movie star, a hockey player, etc. when he/she takes on a fight, could the encouragement of a one type of violence be acceptable than another? The media probably knows that people tend to be more compelled to watch brawls and violence, which is probably the reason they kept replaying (over three times that I counted) the small fight between the hockey players.
Considering I took more time out of my "reviewing" session than I had originally alotted to write this entry, I'll have to stop and go back to my Chemistry book.
--aesun
Posted by Aesun Kim on 4/26/04; 4:55:47 AM
from the dept.
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