From Michael Cieply's "After Virginia Tech, Testing Limits of Movie Violence," today's NYTimes:
Given [Hostel II's] subject matter and the marketing campaign that has already come with it — posters featuring a woman’s severed head and other grisly images are now scattered on the Web — the Lionsgate film is emerging as a test of continued audience enthusiasm for such onscreen brutality, which some commentators have connected with the Blacksburg gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s video and its possible echoes of the Korean revenge film “Old Boy.”
“What might have been traditionally acceptable exploitation in one period can be seen as stupendously bad taste in another,” said Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, which examines the links among entertainment, commerce and society.
We know some commentators will always say some funny stuff about media and violence.
But the New York Times and its staff should better understand and, more to the point, since I'm sure they do understand, better represent the origins of art that deals with bloodshed. As I wrote earlier, there have always been works of art about violence because there has always been violence. Old Boy does not advocate, prescribe, inspire, or even really comment on violence. It is a movie about revenge (and incest, and potstickers, and eating raw octopus--again, a great movie). So is Kill Bill. So are many other movies--good, bad, and stupid.
We hope the Times more carefully addresses artistic violence in the future. For my part, I'm not going to see Hostel II, but not because I believe it will inspire me or someone I know to go on a shooting rampage. I'm not going to see it because it's going to be poorly written, badly acted, and probably more than a trifle boring.
(Kill Bill Vol. 3, on the other hand...)
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