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Well, you had to know this was coming from the gun crowd. A bunch of celebrities got together to speak out for gun control. In this video making the rounds, their pleas are superimposed with footage of the same actors taking part in gratuitous and sometimes cartoonish scenes of gunfire carnage in movies they’ve made over the years. This video goes overboard, but Hollywood has put itself on rocky moral footing by relying so heavily on violence, and when rampant gunfire is such a staple of features, TV shows and the commercials that sell them. We are not just talking about cheesy action films here–when I was at Variety and we had issues overstuffed with ads for AFM and Cannes B-films, it seemed like every one showed someone holding a gun–but also major film releases.
While Jack Reacher pulled back the gun violence in early trailers and now just shows Tom Cruise breaking the bones of bad guys even though the film’s plot is triggered by sniper fire, it seemed like every movie trailer I saw over the holidays had gunfire galore. That included Gangster Squad and The Last Stand, the latter an Arnold Schwarzenegger film where he and his cohorts are seen shooting a machine gun out of the back of a school bus (talk about tacky). I still maintain it’s the height of lunacy for an organization like the NRA to blame Hollywood for the carnage in Newtown, Connecticut while it acts as the lobbying arm for a firearms industry making a fortune on weapons that are only good for warfare or carnage. But can’t Hollywood cut back on these violent images, and can’t marketing executives find more clever ways to sell films and TV shows than simply depicting hails of bullets? Violence is such a staple of films, TV shows and ad campaigns for them that this cannot happen overnight–films depicting warfare or contemporary mob films would hardly be believable if people were throwing rocks at each other–but maybe it takes a wake up call like Newtown for filmmakers to make a conscious decision to tone this stuff down and trust that audiences want stories well told more than high body counts. Heads of studios and other distributors have control over what they release, and maybe it is high time they started insisting that films on their slates show more sensitivity when there seems to be another gun massacre in the news every week somewhere in the United States.
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“Do like I say…not like I do” doesn’t really work…does it?
So in other words what you’re saying is that it isn’t violent images that cause gun violence – it’s lack of mental healthcare and the prevalence of guns on our streets? Good! I guess both sides are agreed!
The only problem with that argument is that every other country that sees Hollywood movies and TV shows don’t have the nearly as many shootings and violent acts committed with guns. I mean, MAYBE we’re better than Afghanistan…but is that who we should be comparing ourselves to??
In response to this video and the NRA, Hollywood should agree that they’ll stop using guns (or dramatically reduce the use of guns) in TV shows and movies if Congress will agree to pass better gun safety legislation. That’ll shut up the pro-gun lobby REAL fast.
MAYBE we’re better than Afghanistan? Let’s just say someone who fancies himself or herself to be as open minded as you do has a high potentiality of coming to a bad end there.
Did you do any research to come to your conclusion? Or did you just jump on the bandwagon of those who are simply promoting their long-time anti-gun agenda on the backs of grieving families who were victimized by a madman?
From the Washington Post: “The dubious distinction of having the most gun violence goes to Honduras, at 68.43 homicides by firearm per 100,000 people, even though it only has 6.2 firearms per 100 people. Other parts of South America and South Africa also rank highly, while the United States is somewhere near the mid-range.” They also stated we have, by far the highest rate of gun ownership (so why aren’t we the highest in gun violence?).
The films are not real, that’s the different
Obviously, sane gun owners know this… How exactly do you think a paranoid disturbed individual who everyone already knows is a nut (As has been the case with all the highly publicized mass shootings) sees the massive amounts of violence and anti-social behavior portrayed by these hypocritical hollywood stars (Star = A performer who is prolific at profiting off the masses)? The violence in movies will continue because while they like to be seen as caring, they are about their paycheck first. By far, gun owners use their guns to engage in shooting sports such as target shooting, not to perpetrate crime (That is reserved for the criminal element, who will disregard any new laws you make, as they do with the existing laws).
Neither is a little boy with a water gun or pictures showing guns.How are they harmful?. Does a 5 year old child have criminal intent?
This is sounding like someone wants to Censor the movies, which is taking away creativity.
Also sounding like others want to ban guns, which is taking away our security.
Whoever designed that one-sheet should be shot.
So much for wanting to see that movie.
Ouch! That’s about as in-your-face, take that you filthy hypocrites as you get. Those actors look like complete fools.
You are so correct! They are fools. This is the best thing i’ve ever seen. I hope it goes viral! Everyone has got to spread this every where!!!!
At least Stallone and Schwarzenegger were smart enough not to partake in the video.
How could they? They made millions shooting up everything in sight. Everyone in that clip looks like a complete ass now.
I bet their bodyguards are packing.
“Hypocrites” nails it on the head.
Hollywood never ceases to amaze me. They make this video despite having raked in millions on the very content of the films they claim to be against. HUH???
This reminds me of the interview Will Smith — a HUGE Obama supporter — did with the French reporter. The reporter informs will of what taxes are like for the rich in France and Will Smith’s response? “Uhhh… wow. Yeah, I didn’t… GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
You can find the clip easily on Google or YouTube.
These “celebrities” need to keep their mouth’s shut. So pathetic.
You make an interesting and valid point, Mike, but considering I have seen (maybe) thousands of people gunned down in films I have still not got the urge to do it to anyone in real life. Okay, scratch that, I have the urge and the list to go with it! But I am not about to act on it because I am aware I have been watching movies and not real life.
That’s where it’s at Ripsnorter
I’ll believe they’re serious when these phony blowhards give up their armed security, but that will never happen. Face it, celebrities and politicians, well they’re just better than you.
No harp they just can afford it we can’t
Hey folks if you have a problem don’t watch the TV shows don’t pay to see the films.
i.e. BOND just made a Billion
Yes.
The NRA is just pointing out the obvious: leftist Hollywood is only too happy to profit off of the image of guns and gun culture while at the same time pointing fingers and demanding that real, law-abiding gun owners give up their rights to assuage their consciences and help them feel like they’re “doing something”. The reality is that there is no easy answer and there is no place to lay blame in these situations except at the feet of the perpetrators.
Right on!
leftist Hollywood? Hey idiot most producers are Republicans
Hi there friend,
I won’t call you an idiot because I don’t know you, but regardless of what you claim the morals and ideologies that are most prominently displayed and claimed by Hollywood and its brightest stars are flagrantly left-wing. Whatever the personal political beliefs are of “most producers”, it certainly doesn’t come across in most of their products.
But they still love money more than people!
What sitcom do you write for?
Most studio heads and upper management are Republicans.
You know, the ones with the brains?
If you really think the studio heads and upper management are the ones with brains, you have obviously never worked in Hollywood.
Name me 10 producers that are Republican. Even you could, that wouldn’t qualify as “most.” Cause if it were true, we would see more stuff out of Hollywood that appeals to the Red States in fly-over country…
YOU CANNOT BLAME HOLLYWOOD.
Hollywood makes more money off of GLOBAL sales (that means NOT in the United States) than it does in DOMESTIC sales (that means JUST the United States.)
If Hollywood is selling more of its violence to the rest of the world than to the United States, then why is the United States so much more riddled with gun violence? It’s not violence in movies. Wake up and acknowledge the facts.
Dude, YOU’RE NOT GETTING IT.
Hollywood is ignorantly blaming GUNS for violence and this video is a response to that.
Only those foolish enough to not be able to distinguish real life from fantasy would find actors and actresses, some that have never acted in any show or movie including gun violence, to be hypocritical for wanting more gun control. Other countries have violent, gun-laden movies and they’re no where near as violent or messed up as we are.
Right On!
You are missing the point. The purpose of the video in question was to highlight the overt hypocrisy of these celebrities speaking out about gun violence, yet they glorify it in their onscreen escapades.
Kevin,
I think YOU’RE missing the VERY clear, VERY obvious point.
This video is an embarrassing piece of propaganda geared toward motivating people who’re often stereotyped as being somewhat slow.
They’re actors. Actors who often times get paid large sums of money to portray FICTIONAL CHARACTERS in FICTIONAL SETTINGS.
As noted by a few people above, there are MANY foreign countries who have American TV and Movies and their gun death rates are far lower.
The celebs in this vid were making a plea to help stop the deaths of innocent children and victims.
I have no idea who created this video, but based on the music and language skills alone, they should be praised for trying to breakdown the stereotype mentioned above.
This video is idiotic. Crafted to pander to those who are the same way unfortunately.
No, the video was excellent. Every single celebrity in it is playing a fictional character, yes, but also a gun toting one. They are playing characters that are violent, and profiting handsomely from that very portrayal. Then people are asking why there’s violence in our society? That’s the image that the NRA was concerned about. It’s o surprise that Congress is getting their ideas for stuff to ban from Hollywood movies. Where else would Feinstein get the idea that an AR-15 can “spray a room with bullets?” As McCarthy what a barrel shroud is or why it should be banned, or why Feinstein’s ban actually lists a *grenade launcher* as a banned feature.
These celebs really *do* need to shut the f–k up. Or each of them needs to vow to never hold a gun in a movie ever again.
YOU are the one that misses the very obvious point.
Hollywood has a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality. We see it with copyright issues, we see it with cultural issues too.
In response to Chael and Mi, among others:
The key words in your response are “not be able to distinguish real life from fantasy”. I believe that is the legal requirement for an “insanity” defense. Honestly, there are 3 main reasons why these crimes happen:
1) We have been morally desensitized. It is commonplace anymore for parents to not only spoil their children as a form of rewarding them, but also giving them a “reward” after they are disobedient to their parents. For instance, Bobby’s dad tells him to have good manners at a company dinner, and as a result, Bobby’s dad gives him a game for his Xbox 360. When Bobby disobeys or his downright disrespectful, the parents either let him continue his behavior, let him play his video games/listen to music/watch television so that they don’t have to deal with him and he can calm down, or merely neglect him. That happens all the time anymore. I’m am not in any way advocating spanking, I am pointing out that discipline is at an all time low.
2) Lack of social interaction. It kind fits in with the moral desensitization aspect. People are not as “face to face” with people anymore, in terms of social interaction. When someone wants to talk to someone, it is through facebook. There’s no “let’s meet up at a restaurant or someplace”. It’s “post your status and what brief messages you have”. Other than people being around others for school/work, people do not communicate in person as much. You want to see how desensitized someone is, when it comes to internet/social media, look online at all of the people that make fun of others anonymously. Those people they are making fun of are human beings, just like them. But since they are not around them in person, they are not empathic. It takes something like “KONY 2012″ for people to be empathetic on the internet. Even then, there are PLENTY of detractors.
3) Culture. We have a violent and demeaning culture, and that desensitizes people without them even knowing it. The same people that want firearms taken away, are often ones that watch movies with shootouts, or movies that are like the Saw or Hostel series. Look at how popular those films are, that people find enjoyment out of films where people are dismembered and tortured. Here is an honest depiction of our culture. For music, we have Justin Bieber, Nickelback, and other bands/groups/singers that are either AVERAGE at best, or lack true talent. There are songs that are good, but they are too few, far, and in-between. For films/television, let’s look at some of the highest rated television shows. Breaking Bad, 24, The Walking Dead, Criminal Minds, Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, and the list goes on and on. Then you have your pick of the 100 million raunchy, low brow comedies out there. Oh, let’s not forget the ratio of “reality tv” shows to people that most of the world seems to watch, where people love to make fun of and belittle other human beings, regardless of how idiotic or saddening they may be. With films, look at all of the violent films out there that people flock to. Then look at all of the anti-gun celebrities that star in those movies. Let’s name a few: Sean Penn, Jamie Foxx, Mark Wahlberg, etc… that “hate” guns, but wouldn’t have a career if they were not in movies where they used firearms. That means that Sean Penn would not have won an Oscar for Mystic River, Foxx would have not been nominated for an Oscar for Collateral, and Wahlberg would have not been nominated for an Oscar for The Departed. These are just 3 popular actors that are anti-gun. The same could be said for ANY anti-gun actor/actress. If they hate firearms so much, then why don’t they set the example and not be in any films that have firearms used in them. Unless they do that, they are hypocrites. The funny and ironic thing is that most of these celebrities either have armed bodyguards, or they themselves own firearms. I felt that the “Demand Celebrities to go F#@! Themselves” was utterly honest. Anyone that feels that it is completely fine to ban guns, but keep violent films intact, needs a psychological examination ASAP.
For the record, I am a gun owner, and I love all sorts of movies. But, I find it sickening how people can say that firearms are evil and should be banned (as if the guns went off by themselves), yet films/television that contain record amounts of people being killed “don’t have an effect on people”. I agree that films/television have no mass murdering effect on most of the population, but for those who are mentally ill that have encountered Points #1 and #2 above, media can get them “pumped up” enough to become angry or view things differently, and then they get ahold of firearms, many times illegally or dishonestly. For instance, you know how in a climactic scene you are often getting agitated wanting the “good guy” to kick the bad guy’s butt? Well, now think about how someone who is mentally ill that wants to commit a mass murder, views this scene. How often did one hear of mass shootings in the United States, prior to Columbine or the restaurant shooting in Texas in 1991? It happened (yes, while there were the dreaded “assault weapons” around ooohoooohoooh!), but it was an EXTREMELY rare event. I almost forgot a point, and I will include it in as a postscript. Medications are literally handed out to people, even for something as simple as “I had a bad day today”, or “I just broke up with my girlfriend or boyfriend”. Regardless of what the media tells you, medication for psychiatric disorders does not cure you, it numbs you so that you do not care as much about the effects of your illness. For those with violent tendencies, it often numbs their empathy.
The Indian cinema is among the worst in the world and yet you don’t hear about school shootings over there
You’re right. India is a peaceful place where there are no riots, or women being raped to death in buses. That stuff only happens in America. In fact I remember hearing about a coordinated attack in a major city back in 2008 that killed over 100 people. Not to mention a bus bombing in 2010, a group opening fire on a religous procession just last August, or a series of riots just last summer that killed numerous people. That was certainly not India, but obviously violence ridden America.
Vince, you’re way off the mark. Violence is a daily, if not hourly, event in India. You just don’t hear a lot about it because it’s happening in India.
Those foolish enough are the last 5 mass shooters!! Yes a normal person can separate the 2. And they also will not shoot up a grade school! So to say that hollywood has no influence would be the true foolish statement! The true blame lands on whom ever pulls the trigger. Not the gun because it has no soul or brain. Not hollywood because they glamorize he killing in movies. The point here is liberal zombies attack the one without a soul or brain while trying to defend the one thats rumored to have both!
The video is devastating and it’s brilliantly edited for maximum devastation. Every single celeb shown in the video firing a gun in a movie or on a TV show did so because it’s really fun to fire a gun it’s exciting but don’t you dare want to use a gun in real life to protect yourself. I want to see each celeb in this video donate at least $250,000 to victims of gun violence. They can all afford to give that much but they won’t. So instead they make a feel-good video never expecting a clever YouTube editor would expose their past gun violence. Hypocrisy thy name is Hollywood.
Except the guns these actors/actresses are firing are fake. The guns you are buying – and which are slaughtering 30,000 Americans every year – are real.
I’m sorry you can’t see the difference.
Everyone can see the difference g. the point is that these films desensitize the wrong people to violence with guns. The real test is can these celebrities make conscious decisions moving forward to avoid films with excessive violence? Hopefully they can – and the rest of us, if we strongly object to violence, we stop buying tickets to the ultra-violent films.
I would really love to see where you got the 30,000 figure from. Or are you just exagerating for “effect”. There are more people killed by cars than guns. People go after guns because it is easier to blame something than someone. That is the problem with society today, immediately point the finger at others.
Actually the weapons used in movies were at one time real, converted to fire blanks only now. At least in big budget movies they were.
The difference is that they’re taking money to go out and make movies where they’re glamorizing gun violence, and then they turn around and tell us we need to demand a change. It has nothing to do with “reality vs. fantasy,” but it has everything to do with “practice what you preach.” If they’re going to look down on society and tell them to demand a change, it’s nice to see someone demand that they take a look at the mirror.
I wonder how many of them demanded to their movie producer that they tone down the glamorization of gun violence in the films they were making, compared to the number of them who had their agent fight for a higher paycheck. Something tells me the later is more than the former.
Actually, several of the guns in this video are real. Conan O’Brian and Ellen DeGeneres are both operating fully functional firearms at outdoor ranges. But this is irrelevant.
8,583 people were victims of gun homicide in the United States last year. Only 323 of those were committed by rifles. And, no, they were not all AR type rifles. If you care to further examine the data on the FBI’s website, you will notice a steady decrease in the number of gun murders since the 1980′s.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
While you are there, you might also want to notice that the states with the most restrictive gun control laws also have the most gun homicides.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20
In fact, Chicago, the city with the most gun restrictive laws in the nation hit 500 murders last year.
In comparison, 33,808 were killed in automobile accidents in 2009, which is down sharply from the 43,510 in 2005.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf
So, now where do you suppose we should focus our legislative efforts?
g, your facts are wrong and you sound like an ass. Wish I haven’t wasted 1.6 seconds of my life reading your nonsense.
Care to point out which of his easily verifiable facts were wrong?
Go ahead, we’re waiting.
This commentary is spot-on. When someone on screen is shot and dies I don’t need to see someone’s guts and brains splattered all over the floor.
Movies are pure fantasy so there shouldn’t be a problem with guns and killing on the big screen because it’s all make-believe. Is it Hollywood’s fault that there are some nuts out there who cannot discern fantasy from reality? I grew up watching shoot’em up Westerns and movies like Dirty Harry and I haven’t shot anyone. Yet.
And I own a gun and haven’t shot anyone yet, so why should my name be published in the newspaper as a gun owner? Hypocrite heal thyself
This is ridiculous. Films don’t pull triggers. People do. The same films and TV shows are released in other countries, too, yet most of these brutal, tragic incidents happen in the US. Ask yourself why ?
Agreed. Nearly every country in the world has access to the same violent movies, TV shows and video games that America does, yet they don’t experience the same gun violence. Provocative. The “blame it on the media” argument is for those who can’t grasp reality.
A point few people seem to remember.
Are you FUCKING kidding me? The rest of the WORLD doesn’t experience the SAME amount of gun violence? There are shooting rampages across the globe, but just b/c it didn’t happen in English speaking countries, YOU don’t know about it. France, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, and Italy have all faced shooting massacre’s from insane people since 2000. I don’t have all night to go over the rest of the world and who experiences what, but if you think we’re the ONLY victims (I think you think we’re the culprits, but I digress); then you are sadly misguided, selfish, and uninformed as to what’s happening to the rest of the world. How’s that for reality?
Add Brazil and Mexico to the list.
To “phantom” and “guns guns guns”:
What about the Portland Mall Shooter? He dressed exactly like a character from the opening scene of Heat, with the tactical vest and hockey mask.
What about the Aurora, CO shooting? The shooter proclaimed to be the “Joker”, while looking more like the “Riddler”. He even went to a Batman movie.
What about the Columbine shooting? The shooters were influenced by the Matrix: Dark clothing, and carrying multiple weapons, hand in hand.
Those are just 3 examples.
Three AMERICAN examples. If anything, it only proves your government has to act quickly. The SAME films are released in other countries, the SAME kind of unstable/homicidal/mentally disturbed people can watch them there, too. The only difference ? They can’t get a gun THAT easily as they would in the US therefore their government basically protects them from themselves, not to mention their potential victims AND also gives these ill individuals a fighting chance to seek help on their own and get better BEFORE they commit something horrible and unforgivable.
P.S. The Aurora shooter was apparently pretending to be the Joker. Joker’s hair is green. He dyed his red. So he or anyone else might want to blame the movies, The Dark Knight in particular, but in reality he made THE most obvious mistake if his intention was to mimic the iconic fictional character, so you might want to ask yourself how much influence that film could have been if he couldn’t even get the basic Joker-look right.
“Films don’t pull triggers people do” Hmmmmmm….. Gun’s don’t pull the trigger people do.
But you need a gun in your hand first to do that, you can’t shoot someone with a movie ticket or a DVD.
Norway had 69 !!!!!!!!!children and adults killed in a little over 2 hours by a gunman in a country with the toughest gun laws in the WORLD—-idiot.
Which part of “MOST” didn’t you get ? And really, you bring up ONE viable foreign precedent from recent years and you think you made your point ? There were TWO high-profile tragedies in the US in the last 6 months alone…and you think bringing up ONE from Europe will suddenly diminish the fact that this is a MUCH bigger issue in the US than in MOST other countries in the world ?
Oh, and before you start calling names , you might want to start checking your facts first : in 2008 there were 12 000 (!) gun homicides in the US, 42 in Great Britain and 11 in Japan. All three have access to the very same films, TV shows and video games. Sure, the population is five times bigger in the US (300M+) than in Great Britain (60M+) and two and a half times bigger than in Japan (125M+), but even if you multiple those numbers it will be 210 (UK)/27 (Japan) vs. 12 000 (US). You should take a long, hard look at those numbers and ask yourself the ever so classic : WHY ?
If you still think it is as bad in other countries as it is in the US and you don’t need to change a thing, I’m done discussing this with you. We will be NEVER on the same page.
And it shocked the entire nation of Norway because it was such an anomaly. How many mass shootings did the USA have last year?
Breaking bones, of course, is SO much more moral than shooting.
When Hollywood gets some genuine ethics, then they can lecture us on ours.
The people in the film were doing their innocent best to respond to a tragedy. Branding them as hypocrites is easy enough. But the intent was pretty good. These people’s fame gives them a reach, and at least they tried to use it for something good. But as for us in Hollywood turning our backs on what makes movies fun and exciting, I say never. From the Great Train Robbery, through Little Ceaser, every movie John Wayne ever made, every war film, every sword and sandal pic, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Predator, The Terminator Franchise, anything with Martial Arts in it, the Cinema has been the theatre of the thrill. If you take that away, if you over sanitize that, then we’re a filmed stage play. For every Adam Lanza there’s a thousand soldiers, cops and firemen who joined up because they loved the idea of being like one of their movie idols – sure Hollywood makes some bad guys worse, but we make a lot of heroes in the process.
Oh but they are hypocrites in the first degree. They hide behind their well-armed and well-trained bodyguards expecting them to protect them from the crazies in the world yet lecture the rest of us about how we may and may not protect ourselves from the crazies out there.
“Guns for me but not for thee” is not going to cut it.
The best part of the video is when they confuse Max Greenfield for Zachary Quinto.
Lots of one percenters guarded by people with guns, and made wealthy by the glorification of guns and violence, don’t want anyone else to have the same protection. You want everyone to give up their guns? You first.
Yes – gun porn is out of control Django, Reacher, Killing Them…, goes on and on and on, sure Hollywood actors may not own guns, but they sure as hell like to whip them out in the movies the first chance they get
Beyonce is married to a man who made a fortune off of glorifying crime, gun violence, drug sales and use, and murder in his songs.
..and was a known gangster…..and he ROLLS with El Presidente!
Foxx and Alba are living in glass houses throwing far too many rocks. Maybe come out and say I won’t be doing this or that movie because its to violent. Once you do that, then get back to me on gun control.
they have ALL those movies in Canada, the UK, Japan… in fact the world over. movies aren’t the problem. it’s the guns and access to guns in the US. It is undeniable.
most of liberal Hollywood sounds EXACTLY like the NRA…just protecting their own bread and butter, and completely in denial.
Neither show a lick of common sense.
But hey, the money’s flowin’…
The best part of the video is Conan O’Brien saying enough then he’s seen blasting away with a machine gun that he got to enjoy on his talk show. He had fun doing that but now he wants to outlaw those weapons. Obviously none of the celebs realized how foolish they would look now.
As for Arnold’s Last Stand poster that will have to be changed before the movie opens we can’t show them blasting bad guys from the back of a school bus even though it’s in the movie as a big action scene.
At first glance I wanted to scream HYPOCRITES! But after reflection I could not. I’m a new father of a 7 month old angel. After Sandy instead of buying a gun I opted for reinforcing the locks on my house. I’ve loved violent films, written violent scripts, played violent vid games, and have gone on the requisite paintball bachelor party excursions that were exhilarating and disturbing in equal measure. That said, I don’t own or have ever considered owning a gun. That could change after recent events – votes not in yet. The point is, and I had to grapple with this after watching this vid, violence in film, tv, vid games – does that promote violence in society? I don’t know, maybe. It hasn’t compelled me or a gazillion others to go out on a gun-toting murderous rampage. Has it compelled others… a meek few who are mentally imbalanced and influenced by pop culture? Perhaps. So what do we do; take away the guns and censor the media? I’d like to know. There’s no easy answer to this complex question.
Please stop making movies your scapegoat. It’s so freakin’ lame.
The firearms used in movie productions are almost always actual firearms. They may be firing blanks, but they are real firearms. And millions- if not tens or hundreds of millions- of gun owners own weapons- including those scary but functionally half powered hunting rifles that look like machine guns and so earn the made up label “assault weapon”- without having the slightest inclination to commit a violent act, just as most folks can separate a movie from reality. The comparison is valid, however, because the mediums both suffer from the 1 in a million who cannot.
I essentially agree with Mr. Fleming. There are qualified ways – and I wish he had stressed this angle a bit more – that Hollywood might reconsider its relationship with violent images. But it’s silly to deflect from gun debates by blaming movies. It’s even dumber when gun lovers parade this video out like it’s some sort of smack down to the left.
A lot of the attacks on the original video feel like intuitive reasoning, with nothing empirical behind them. It’s like people just have a sense that violence in the media must perpetuate violence in real life, a priori. Like it’s just so obvious. No reason to discuss.
The fact is, research shows that particularly young children (e.g. under 4 in many studies, under 10 in almost all) can be influenced by violent media content. There is, however, no firm evidence to strongly link consumption of violent media content in adulthood to violent crime. Some correlations could be drawn, sure, but there’s no accepted causal link, particularly given the fact that violent offenders are statistically negligible relative to the population of people who watch violent movies. As one of the above posters expressed– lots of us watch violent stuff but few of us feel compelled to replicate the acts.
Indeed, I’d be more worried about the distancing effects of the Internet than the desensitizing effects of violent films. I’m not a fan of regulating the Internet anymore than I am regulating artistic expression, but it’s odd that many of the die-hard gun proponents are the same conservatives who said “just kids being kids” when Mitt Romney’s bullying story came up. Cyber-bullying is far more enabled by the Internet’s apparatus than gunfire is by the cinema’s, so it’s weird that the far right goes after Hollywood so ardently. I wonder if it’s more about attacking the liberal media (which tech companies, despite many leftward tendencies, generally avoid) than it is trying to make sense.
In any case, I think it’s reasonable to question the prevalence of violent content in advertising, as it’s tough to stop kids from seeing things as ubiquitous as commercials, magazine covers, and billboards. But for these movie stars to be such deplorable hypocrites, their movies would have to demonstrably produce real world violence. And there’s no conclusive evidence that this is the case. It’s like reading tea leaves. Are there correlations between people who watch carnage and people who commit carnage? Of course. But we can’t reliably conclude whether watching provokes action or whether a desire to act inspires one to watch. Plus, if we were to consider all variables surrounding atrocities (rather than resorting to emotionally attractive ones, such as movies), we’d see many other equally strong correlations pop up– such as childhood bullying, histories of mental disease, etc.
To be fair, there’s the case that Hollywood stars are hypocrites because their movies glorify guns–but people who glorify guns in real life seem to be more motivated by outside forces (e.g. gang neighborhoods; NRA-style enthusiasm for gun culture) than by movies, making gun proponents’ claims that Hollywood is the problem misdirected. It’s another case of people thinking guns are badass when wielded by John McClane but wanting nothing to do with them outside a theater.
There’s also the ratings system to consider. We could discuss whether it makes sense for a movie obviously marketed toward children, complete with loads of toy tie-ins, should be so violent. Transformers might be an example (though I doubt many angry children have been inspired to use Decepticon-style viciousness on their classmates). But still, the ratings system (to say nothing of a million reviews available on the Internet) allow parents to differentiate what is appropriate for children from what is not. It’s probably better to ask people to exercise judgment so we can enjoy a diversity of films than to begin blaming and restricting content.
A movie can be violent for many valid reasons. Such films might not be your particular taste, but a lot of satiric, political, and philosophical expressions are enhanced by the use of graphic imagery. Could a violent movie be equally “good” if it used a different method. Sure– but it would be different. It would say different things, engender different associations, posit different ideas, etc. In a way, if one wants to deny that guns have any culpability in tragedies and that movies are an evil influence, that person is essentially championing the Second Amendment over the First Amendment. I can agree that certain boundaries (e.g. advertising, the PG-13 rating applied to movies aimed at 8-year-olds) might need to be reconsidered. But the gun crowd’s extreme wings like to act like movies are some corrupting force. At the same time, they like to resist even the most reasonable of gun restrictions–like whether we should be a little more cautious in handing out military-grade weaponry. It makes no sense.
There are many issues here to resolve. Hollywood glorifies violence in almost every film made whether with gun violence or rape or physical violence. People pay to watch it. It plants seeds in their minds if they are mentally unstable. Personal responsibility is also a factor too. Until people band together and make a commitment to do whatever it takes to stop violence it will continue. Whether its changes in Hollywood films or hospitalizing family members who need help.