Have we become de-sensitized as movie viewers?

Otis Driftwood

Ive watched alot of movies down the years across the different genres from horror to drama by way of comedy and Im at the stage that I believe I am virtually unshockable.Im interested to know what other members think.Obviously as a society we have moved on in tastes and in culture so our boundries/limits have been extended but what does it take to get a reaction from you in modern day cinema?
Take the comedy genre.In the 60s and 70s the "carry on" movies were deemed pretty risque,the 80s had the likes of Porkies or Screwballs and in more modern times the American Pie franchise or Road Trip.All these types of movies are that bit riskier than their predecessor's and they have been embraced by pop culture.I remember growing up and been allowed to watch Beverley Hills Cop 2 with my parents when it came out on video and thinking I was the bees knees cos i saw a bit of boob.Nowadays unless its full frontal nudity virtually nobody passes any remarks.
The same could be said for horror.The 60s and early 70s had stuff like the Hammer Horror flicks,late 70s and 80s(horror's golden era IMO) had a huge rush of horror like the Friday the 13th,Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street series' and countless other slashers,the 90s had Scream,I know what you did last summer,urban legend etc and the 00s have the Saw series or all the remakes like TCM or the hills have eyes.These generations have consistently raised the bar in terms of violence(with the exception of the 70s/80s which have never and I dont think will ever be topped when it comes to nastiness---prime example been the new york ripper)
Ive become so jaded that when I watched the

castration scene

in Hostel 2 that I had to stifle a giggle.Why is that?
The only thing I can think of that still gets any kind reaction out of me is violence against women.It doesnt have to be graphic torture or murder but something like in once were warriors when

Jake beats the crap out of Beth

still to this day,even after countless viewings gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach.Stuff like that is about the only thing though.
I can sit and watch men been dismembered all day and not bat an eyelid but when a man raises his hand to a woman I go cold.

The question Im asking,in a very meandering way is basically does anything shock us anymore and what are the reasons(in your opinion)for our acceptance nay lapping up of the more extreme,be it in horror,comedy,drama or anything else.

Galvasean

Strange point about violence against women. I've noticed a tendency in the media at least to recoil at such things, labeling films containing such subject matter as 'misogynist' while not batting an eyelid at films with violence against men.
Similarly, violence against animals in film makes people recoil. For example in Equilibrium no one seems to care that people are killed in their droves, but the scene with the dogs makes people uneasy.

Fysh

We're certainly more desensitized now than the previous generation would have been, but it's not just down to the generation shift. There's a natural tendency to want to push the boundaries compared to what has gone before.

However, I think that a big influence in the increase in explicitly-depicted violence is a social one - not only do people have access to a lot more avenues of entertainment now compared to 15 years ago. Where before you had cinema, video rental/purchase and then television, now you've got cinema, dvd rental/purchase, television, satellite or digital television (extra channels and subscription services), online specialist dvd retailers, not to mention free video sources like youtube and much greater access to pirate copies. All this increased availability of information has led to us being relatively desensitized to violence. Where before you might only hear about a village being massacred in a newspaper article, now you've got snippets of video online. The best example I can think of is Ken Bigley - just look at how many people were scrambling to get a download of that video. It never would've happened if they'd had to send away a coupon from the back of a magazine, but because they could find it online countless people watched what amounted to a snuff film released by terrorists.

The question of what shocks us as a society is tied in to what our taboos are, and I think that's currently in flux. Sure, the obvious ones aren't likely to change - I don't think there's ever going to be a mass audience for films with detailed and explicit depictions of cannibalism, necrophilia, bestiality or child molestation for example. But given that Western society is as a whole quite immature when it comes to the information-sharing avenues we've suddenly discovered to be available, it's going to take some time before we as a culture figure out what taboos are going to be left behind and what ones remain current. Consider how many celebrity sex-tapes have hit the news, and in particular how many have turned up at just the right time to generate publicity for someone with a vested interest in being a focal point in the news. Where artists would previously claim exclusive access to the use of shocking material as a way of making their audience think, suddenly you've got marketing and PR people getting in on the act.

Regarding the violence against men vs violence against women/children/animals: I think that's a symptom of the cultural delination of masculine and feminine values, with the masculine values (metrosexuality as a phenomenon notwithstanding) being mostly physical and often violent ones compared to the feminine values being more sensitive/empathic in nature, more often than note imbued with a sense of sexuality and/or vulnerability. (I'm not saying those are accurate or healthy perceptions of the merits of masculinity vs femininity, btw, just that a lot of cultural perceptions and marketing drives seem to be based on those ideals). Thus showing two men killing each other is ok because it's actually secretly an ironic commentary on the futility of violence (or some such crap), whereas showing a man beating a woman to a bloodied pulp is considerably harder to justify partly because it hasn't been established as a trope in escapist fiction and partly because it has uncomfortable real-world resonances that we're less able to ignore than we would if it was a man getting beaten up (because clearly a real man would be able to defend himself, or some such crap).

Karl Hungus

I would say no.

I mean, do we become desensitized to comedies if we watch too many, do we use up all our laughter?

In relation to horror/violence, there's some things I've just never gotten used to, no matter how many times I've seen them. For one, if someone gets their achillies tendon cut... makes me shudder just thinking about it! I've never, no matter how many times I've seen it, have been desensitized to that.

TheIrishGrover

Karl Hungus wrote: »

I would say no.

I mean, do we become desensitized to comedies if we watch too many, do we use up all our laughter?

In relation to horror/violence, there's some things I've just never gotten used to, no matter how many times I've seen them. For one, if someone gets their achillies tendon cut... makes me shudder just thinking about it! I've never, no matter how many times I've seen it, have been desensitized to that.

Bloody hell, audition must've been a hard watch for ya so. That whole

piano wire/ankle scene

makes me cringe. Great show though.

Karl Hungus

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Bloody hell, audition must've been a hard watch for ya so. That whole

piano wire/ankle scene

makes me cringe. Great show though.

Wasn't exactly a hard watch so to speak, absolutely captivating film, but the ending certainly did have it's impact on me more so than a dozen slasher films or so.

Otis Driftwood

Karl Hungus wrote: »

I mean, do we become desensitized to comedies if we watch too many, do we use up all our laughter?

I get what you mean with this point but I guess my OP was in relation to movie violence in general,be it in horror movies or drama's,war movies or whatever.
Take Saving Private Ryan.Very violent for a 15s rated movie and more violent than alot of horror movies.One scene in particular was mentioned a couple of times in the disturbing scenes thread.
And then take the latest Rambo movie,arguably the most blood thirsty movie to get a huge cinema release in the last 10 to 15 years,I could be mistaken but I dont think it was mentioned once in the other thread.Women and children get blown up,set on fire,shed loads of people shredded by the bigass gun at the end but no-one found it disturbing,well,at least no one mentioned it.
I know the scene in SPR and Rambo are contextually different but personally I would find the Rambo scenes more disturbing but thats probably going back to my OP on violence towards women.
Rambo is unrelentingly violent from start to finish but for most it was quite acceptable where as when SPR came out there was alot of coverage about the opening scene and how violent it was.
It was only 10 years ago and attitudes just seem to have changed.IMO.

irish_bob

untill last sunday night i thought i was unshockable when it came to cinema , i watched HOSTEL 2 and cannot believe this movie wasnt banned , the bit with the woman bathing in her victims blood was the stand out scene but watching a guy have his cock sliced off and then fed to dogs was another particular treat , it was also the 1st movie where i saw a child executed , that is usually a no no in movie , i thought this movie was going to be something akin to SAW which i admite i quite liked ( the 1st one anway ) but it made saw look like barney the dinasaur

a disgusting piece of torture porn

Galvasean

irish_bob wrote: »

a disgusting piece of torture porn

Can open, worms everywhere!

c - 13

nedtheshed wrote: »

... Ive become so jaded that when I watched the

castration scene

in Hostel 2 that I had to stifle a giggle.Why is that?
The only thing I can think of that still gets any kind reaction out of me is violence against women.It doesnt have to be graphic torture or murder but something like in once were warriors when

Jake beats the crap out of Beth

still to this day,even after countless viewings gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach.Stuff like that is about the only thing though.
I can sit and watch men been dismembered all day and not bat an eyelid but when a man raises his hand to a woman I go cold ...

I'd be the same as this but I think the reason for it is not the fact that i've become de-sensitised but moreso the fact that I draw correlations to reality and fantasy from each piece.

The Once were warriors scene

and daughter suicide later

give me a horrible sick feeling in my stomach because these are issues I know happen.

Whereas scenes like that in Hostel I can disregard and laugh off becasue the chances of them happening in reality are minor (if at all).

As to the actual content of the films being more risque, in order to be cutting edge and push borders each film does something new to try outdo the last ones and it has come to this that full frontal nudity and buckets of gore are nothing unusual for a film-maker to use.

Karl Hungus

Galvasean wrote: »

Can open, worms everywhere!

I'm not even gonna bother, if you're gonna use that fecking stupid term at this stage it's like announcing you're a moron.

Fysh

c - 13 wrote: »

As to the actual content of the films being more risque, in order to be cutting edge and push borders each film does something new to try outdo the last ones and it has come to this that full frontal nudity and buckets of gore are nothing unusual for a film-maker to use.

I agree 100% with this, and I think that it applies beyond just the depiction of violence - it's also relevant in comedy to some extent.

You don't become inured to jokes or stop finding them funny, exactly, but if you were to spend a period of time listening to the likes of Billy Connolly, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and Bill Hicks doing stand-up you might well find that listening to Brendan Grace doesn't make you laugh as much this time around as it might have done previously. It's a progression that happens to people on an individual basis but it also happens on a wider cultural level.

I think it stands out most with violence in film and television because it's got an immediate and visceral impact.

Karl Hungus

Another thing we have to take into account is originality.

Quite a lot of horror films are very unoriginal, and it's not so much violence we get desensitized to, as much as it is the context and setup. I mean, how many films do you watch and instinctively know that a bus is going hit someone before it happens, just by how the scene is set up? You can nearly spot a scene like that a mile away, and it's not a case of someone being hit by a bus is shocking, but rather that it's so trite and overused a cliché in a lot of films now that it's lost all effect. To use the comedy allegory again, it's like the same fart joke over and over again in different films. Re-used jokes aren't funny, and unoriginal scenes of violence aren't shocking, I don't think that's anything to do with being desensitized in as much as it's an unoriginal filmmaker or poor script.

Fysh

Karl Hungus wrote: »

unoriginal scenes of violence aren't shocking, I don't think that's anything to do with being desensitized in as much as it's an unoriginal filmmaker or poor script.

This is kind of what I was getting at in my earlier post about access to information; because of the much wider access a lot of us have to "real" video footage of violent events (be they muggings, shootings, warfare or torture) the bar has been raised for filmmakers who want to use a shocking and provocative instance of violence to provoke a reaction. It would have happened over a longer time period anyway, I would imagine, but has been accelerated by the relatively sudden introduction of new data channels which allow access to much more information than we had access to previously.

HalloweenJack

I don't know how desensitised I am to violence.

I remember being pretty shocked at the graphic nature of TCM but then I never winced when watching American Psycho (although the book is another story). I remember seeing this Korean film called The Isle which had a pretty gruesome scene where

a girl puts fish hooks up her fanny and then rips them out

. That shocked me but a similar scene happened earlier in the movie (

a guy put the fish hooks down his throat and yanked them out

) didn't. That said, I don't think violence to women will always shock me as American Psycho didn't shock me.

I've seen a few real murders on the internet and the only one that shocked me was where a women was begging for her life before being shot. I saw the Budd Dwyer suicide which didn't shock me. I don't think I can really explain what does and doesn't shock me.

More often than not, violence won't shock me unless it is something completely unpredictable or something I didn't think could be done but I wouldn't know until I saw it.

I think, like most things, it's all objective. I don't believe that being exposed to violence desensitises all people. It depends on the individual.