Although there's no justification, when we go out and enjoy our action-filled violent movies, what price are we paying for it with our souls? I must admit that I enjoy an action-filled movie, but I’m beginning to query myself about that enjoyment. Is it the acts of violence themselves that I enjoy or simply the thrill of witnessing graphically violent imagery?
Lately some of the really gory movies have been making me sick to the stomach. Movies specifically about killing victims in the most horrific ways have ceased to be entertaining to me. When nearly everyone in the plot dies so gruesomely and there is no message of redemption you wonder why are we watching such movies and calling it "entertainment"?
What message is the movie industry sending us? Better still, what messages are we, in turn, sending to the movie producers? Their bottom line is making money for the producers, so when they produce those bloody violent movies they do so with the understanding of what’s most marketable. Violence sells “big time” so let’s not blame business people for delivering what the people willingly pay to see.
In the same manner violent video games are very popular among our youth. Blowing away people, making the most horrific destructive scenes and the like is the attraction. The more graphically depicted the better it sells. Do we blame the game creators for delivering to the purchasing public what they are most eager to possess?
Pornography has long been a very lucrative market. It is like a plague that seemingly focuses on those males who have a problem in dealing with their sexual appetites. It gives these men what they want to see in order to scratch an itch they can’t reach as readily or as easily in real life. Are we to blame the producers of such graphically explicit material that even involves minors when there is a market that quickly sucks up all they produce?
Wherein lies the problem? The movies and games are usually fictional, but the actual people that cater to this sort of material are real. We may cut up the films and destroy the games but the only way to eradicate the source of the problem is to eradicate the people that are carrying the problems. Since we can’t go around killing everyone that is causing the problem where is the solution?
I am part of the problem because I have either willingly and intentionally purchased or participated in the production or purchase of such product. To the degree that I have participated is the degree of blame that I shoulder.
Perhaps I should be stoned for my crime against morality, but whom could we find that would be worthy of my stoning? Let he or she who without sin cast the first stone. Make sure that their violent action in my stoning does not find making them guilty of evil as well.
As I read of the Connecticut man who was condemned to death for a night of terror inside a suburban home in which a woman was strangled and her two daughters tied to their beds, doused in gasoline and left to die in a fire, I wonder who is to blame.
These were not actors in a violent movie or game. These victims will never come back. The criminals were among the sickest of the sick. Are we not a bit culpable here?
Even though we don't condone such behavior, if we're the consumers of violence that is sold to us as entertainment, where does our appetite fit in this equation?
Until we stop being the willing consumers of violence and in essence thereby condoning it, we are part of the problem and not the solution. I am not worthy of even casting the one hundredth stone here. What about you?
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