I hate Watchdogs. Not the vicious rottweilers that the local tracksuited nutcase keeps in his back garden in case of, well, the urge to brutally murder someone - though they're pretty hateful as well - I mean the goody-goody wanky crusaders against TV violence that turn up every now and then and try to take away a perfectly good tale about vicious and brutal murder because it might 'glamourise violence'. This time they're having a pop at the Angelina Jolie flick "Wanted", for having her posing about with a great big gun in her hand on the poster - not suitable for children, they say. Might glamourise violence, they say.
Piss off, I say.
Violence is glamorous. It just is. There is simply no way you can portray a gun-toting sportscar-crashing society of secret agents taking on international terrorism (or whatever it was) as the least bit mundane. Not even if you cast Dawn French as the lead. Sure, you could go so far as to replace all the assault rifles with child-friendly paintball guns and make the entire thing about as interesting as a 5-miles-an-hour loop of the M25 in a car full of screaming children, but then that would simply prove my point about proper guns being exciting. The thing is, I fully admit that there is no logical reason for why we think like that, which is why these terrible 'watchdogs' can usually leap all over us. When they ask us why we like films with guns and death and killing, we sort of just stare at them, wide-eyed and confused that there could be someone out there that doesn't fall off their chair at the idea of shooting someone's eyeglasses off with an UZI submachinegun all while firing off acerbic quips like a gatling gun filled with little reformed pieces of Jimmy Carr. They walk all over us by calling us neanderthal, primal, primitive, and we have no responses because, well, that's precisely what it is.
There is something deep in the psyches of all of us that derives a massive amount of pleasure from seeing violence in which the guys on 'our side' win. It's a simple chemical release, our psychotropic replacement for getting up and going to war every day with the next tribe over. The sort of thing where if we didn't have it to stimulate that sort of release, we'd have strung the neighbours up to a tree and be whipping their testicles with a length of flex within about three weeks. In fact, the reality of the situation is exactly the opposite to what these groups claim; TV violence doesn't provoke real violence, TV violence prevents it, and most people - i.e. those not confined to padded cells in padded hospitals - are more than capable of distinguishing between TV violence and real violence. I love violent movies, and love violent video games more, but hate real violence. I will spend my free time running around digital starbases blowing the green alien shit out of Invaders from Zarg or the beaches of Normandy flamethrowering computer-generated Nazis, but refuse to even look at 'gore sites' where real people have been killed. To suggest that I or anyone else with a full set of mental capabilities cannot distinguish between the two is comically disingenuous.
Parents, you shouldn't care if 'Wanted' or it's ilk glamourise firearms - firearms do a fantastic job of glamorising themselves. The news glamourises firearms. War glamourises firearms, even if the war itself isn't glamorous. It's the tribal instinct in us all that makes us love guns, and would make us love something else even more if it came along and was better than guns. How many of you ran around in school playgrounds playing 'Army', waving machine-gun sticks about above your head, before the PlayStation 3 or the DVD player was but a twinkle in a Japanese businessman's eye? If any of you didn't, then you're probably some sort of lizard.
Don't shield your children away from these things, and especially don't get the government to do it for you - it won't work, and your kids will resent you for it. There will always be that one parent, the parent that doesn't mind when their kid smokes marijuana because they want them to 'find out for themselves' and explained 'the birds and the bees' with the aid of Google and the words 'fuck' and 'video', who will let their child have the latest, greatest, murderously deviant game or film, and if you go so far as to stop your children seeing them, they will not only resent you, but lie to you as well, and if your child is going to be away from you, it's better that you know where they are and precisely what they're doing than risk them being somewhere completely different because they felt the need to lie to you about going over to Timmy's to play Death Crash Cancer Rifles XIV.
Be sensible, and shut up.
Goodnight.
Piss off, I say.
Violence is glamorous. It just is. There is simply no way you can portray a gun-toting sportscar-crashing society of secret agents taking on international terrorism (or whatever it was) as the least bit mundane. Not even if you cast Dawn French as the lead. Sure, you could go so far as to replace all the assault rifles with child-friendly paintball guns and make the entire thing about as interesting as a 5-miles-an-hour loop of the M25 in a car full of screaming children, but then that would simply prove my point about proper guns being exciting. The thing is, I fully admit that there is no logical reason for why we think like that, which is why these terrible 'watchdogs' can usually leap all over us. When they ask us why we like films with guns and death and killing, we sort of just stare at them, wide-eyed and confused that there could be someone out there that doesn't fall off their chair at the idea of shooting someone's eyeglasses off with an UZI submachinegun all while firing off acerbic quips like a gatling gun filled with little reformed pieces of Jimmy Carr. They walk all over us by calling us neanderthal, primal, primitive, and we have no responses because, well, that's precisely what it is.
There is something deep in the psyches of all of us that derives a massive amount of pleasure from seeing violence in which the guys on 'our side' win. It's a simple chemical release, our psychotropic replacement for getting up and going to war every day with the next tribe over. The sort of thing where if we didn't have it to stimulate that sort of release, we'd have strung the neighbours up to a tree and be whipping their testicles with a length of flex within about three weeks. In fact, the reality of the situation is exactly the opposite to what these groups claim; TV violence doesn't provoke real violence, TV violence prevents it, and most people - i.e. those not confined to padded cells in padded hospitals - are more than capable of distinguishing between TV violence and real violence. I love violent movies, and love violent video games more, but hate real violence. I will spend my free time running around digital starbases blowing the green alien shit out of Invaders from Zarg or the beaches of Normandy flamethrowering computer-generated Nazis, but refuse to even look at 'gore sites' where real people have been killed. To suggest that I or anyone else with a full set of mental capabilities cannot distinguish between the two is comically disingenuous.
Parents, you shouldn't care if 'Wanted' or it's ilk glamourise firearms - firearms do a fantastic job of glamorising themselves. The news glamourises firearms. War glamourises firearms, even if the war itself isn't glamorous. It's the tribal instinct in us all that makes us love guns, and would make us love something else even more if it came along and was better than guns. How many of you ran around in school playgrounds playing 'Army', waving machine-gun sticks about above your head, before the PlayStation 3 or the DVD player was but a twinkle in a Japanese businessman's eye? If any of you didn't, then you're probably some sort of lizard.
Don't shield your children away from these things, and especially don't get the government to do it for you - it won't work, and your kids will resent you for it. There will always be that one parent, the parent that doesn't mind when their kid smokes marijuana because they want them to 'find out for themselves' and explained 'the birds and the bees' with the aid of Google and the words 'fuck' and 'video', who will let their child have the latest, greatest, murderously deviant game or film, and if you go so far as to stop your children seeing them, they will not only resent you, but lie to you as well, and if your child is going to be away from you, it's better that you know where they are and precisely what they're doing than risk them being somewhere completely different because they felt the need to lie to you about going over to Timmy's to play Death Crash Cancer Rifles XIV.
Be sensible, and shut up.
Goodnight.
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