The Big Picture
Monday, 2nd August 1999Hollywood, California [NotS]
It’s times like these that I realise exactly how dumb the majority of homosapiens really are.
At the moment, one of the hottest, most sellable controversies in the land is the violence inspired by Hollywood. And the sad thing is that no one seems to have given it any real thought at all.
For that matter, no one seems to realise how long this controversy has been going on.
Once upon a time, homosapiens figured out how to draw. The first things they drew were depictions of homosapiens killing Smilodon californicus [sabretoothed tigers] and Mammut americanum [woolly mammoths] and each other [each other]. Violence in neolithic times, long before the FCC were created.
In more recent times, magic lanterns evolved into celluloid projectors, and films evolved into talkies, television, videocassette, and DVD; and mankind evolved into a brainless collective with a yactometric attention span.
A small minority of homosapiens have heard about the 1914 blockbuster Gertie the Deinosaur–a cartoon about a brontosaurid thingy which acted nothing like an Apatosaurus exculsis and which is often misidentified as the first cinematic release. It wasn’t. That would be Carmencita Dancing–a film of a belly dancer shot in 1892. Which gives you an idea where Hollywood really got its start.
More recently still, the MPAA have begun telling us what they think of films. In 1984, Gremlins was released and underrated as PG, inspiring the PG13 slot, which, ironically, was first affixed to Red Dawn, which wasn’t as violent as Gremlins. In 1995, Showgirls was released and wedged into an NC17 rating, which seems to be the only reason anyone went to go see it.
And now, it’s gotten worse. In 1999, Eyes Wide Shut was sliced up and optically altered to ensure a R rating, while The Phantom Menace only got a PG rating because LucasFilm sent the MPAA a copy in which Darth Maul wasn’t sliced in half. And that makes me wonder why in hell we’re listening to this organisation at all.
Meanwhile, long after Hays declawed Betty Boop, Beavis was prohibited to say ‘fire’ because some idiotic kid got hold of a lighter. Which brings back memories of the nineteen forties, in which people were constantly dropping anvils and pianos on each other after watching Bugs Bunny.
Now here’s what you don’t know. Standard practise in violent films includes such things as subliminal foleys over gunshots–when the arbitrarily good guys shoot someone, the sound of a lion roaring is often mixed in with the blast; the badguys’ gunshots are spliced with women screaming. Just another way you’re being manipulated by the powers that be.
It’s funny: I was reading a book last night purporting to explain the filmmaking process [and written by the director of ExecutionerII, if that tells you anything] which mandated exactly how a film is to be made–twenty minutes of Act I, followed by an hour of Act II containing two plottwists, concluding with a fifteen minute Act III in which the Question from Act I is satisfactorily answered. Don’t tell me how to write a filmscript. I write things because I want to, not because I give a damn whether anyone else likes them, or thinks that the appropriate amount of time is spent on the various elements within.
But, lucky us, we live in a world where a malfunctioning mechanical shark set the standard for filmmaking–hint that the monster exists, let a few people be eaten by the monster OC, look for the monster, compare scars, meet the monster at the end of the film. It never used to be that way; only since Jaws was released, despite the filmscript, in 1975.
On the subject, a record number of Carcharodon carcharias have been killed since Jaws was released, putting them onto the endangered species list. Not that endangered species lists impress me much, but I haven’t heard any complaints about the mistreatment of the mutated makos in Deep Blue Sea yet–just that the sharks weren’t very nice to the cute, fuzzy homosapiens. Which I find really funny, since everyone’s so concerned about overpopulation [though you can easily fit six billion homosapiens into Montana at once] and the extinction of inhuman life [id est, a school of Isurus sapiens] is considered so devastating.
So that seems to be the controversy here: modern films are inspiring sharks to eat people, and people to shoot other people. Or something.
Which fails to make much sense.
The big concern seems to be the dead issue of Littleton, Colorado. For those just tuning in, a couple of smart kids killed a bunch of annoying kids and made it a lot more fun for the rest of the smart kids to wear black trenchcoats and listen to Marilyn Manson. That was Littleton. Again. It’s not the first time it’s happened. It’s just the first time is hasn’t been called Darwinism. Don’t believe me? Which is more fit to survive: someone who lives alone, or someone who lives alone, counting on help from a god they’ve never met. Darwinism.
Because sometimes we get pushed too far. It’s not because Manson did a cover of the Eurhythmics; it’s not because the badguy shot the goodguy in a film; it’s not because Bugs dropped a piano on Fudd. It’s because the idiots who are taking over the world couldn’t tell you the world’s mass [six sextillion kilogrammes, plus 0.0000001% of its mass through accretion per billion years] but would like to tell you that homosapiens wouldn’t be so violent if they spent less time sitting narcoleptic in front of a television screen–like it was back in the shiny, happy times of Richard the Lionhearted and Alexander the Great.
That’s just my opinion; this opinion has been rated NIQ127.
–Gremlin