No Country for Old Men

[ninakat]

We watched it the same way, and for the same reason.

Glad to hear it, FourthBase. Cheers mate.

[orz]

I don't like what the extreme violence does to me though -- numbs me down.

If you feel that way fine but I totally don't agree with the concept of violence in movies "desensitising" people. When I was a kid I'd be horrified by even the idea of horror/violence on screen, (and usually what you'd imagine while averting your eyes is worse than the prosaic fake gore actually depicted!) but now I happily watch all sorts of horrible movies. I wouldn't call this being desensitised or numbed but rather growing up. No longer do I irrationally fear imaginary violence; rather I can enjoy it and tell the difference between it and the real thing. Also I know that for me personally, real life violence has not become in the slighest more acceptable or less horrifying.

[professorpan]

Ditto orz.

I have always enjoyed horror and violence in movies, provided they are crucial to the story, but I'm entirely nonviolent -- I'd say anti-violent -- in my real life. Some of my fiction is pretty nightmarish, but am I in any way advocating real-life horrific acts? Certainly not.

As orz pointed out, we shouldn't project our own reactions to video violence onto others, nor should we expect others to share our tastes in entertainment.

[FourthBase]

Ditto orz.

I have always enjoyed horror and violence in movies, provided they are crucial to the story, but I'm entirely nonviolent -- I'd say anti-violent -- in my real life. Some of my fiction is pretty nightmarish, but am I in any way advocating real-life horrific acts? Certainly not.

As orz pointed out, we shouldn't project our own reactions to video violence onto others, nor should we expect others to share our tastes in entertainment.

Eh.

You two are too confident in your subconscious's ability to completely differentiate.

[theeKultleeder]

You two are too confident in your subconscious's ability to completely differentiate.

So you are saying that they really have no moral control over what they think and feel about killing and violence? That movies have turned them into zombies, even if they say otherwise?

I would take their word about their subconsciousnesses over your judgement about their cognitive and moral skills...

[orz]

You two are too confident in your subconscious's ability to completely differentiate.

What's this supposed to mean? Maybe so philosophically speaking, but in practice it does a good enough job! I watch lots of horror movies but am yet to go on a murderous rampage so it's working out OK for me and my subconcious, and the same goes for most people in the world.

[professorpan]

You two are too confident in your subconscious's ability to completely differentiate.

That's awfully presumptuous.

I've watched horror movies since I was a kid, in spite of relatives warning my parents that I would be "warped." I have watched plenty of violent movies (and plenty of nonviolent ones), played violent first-person shooter games, and my own fiction is frequently quite dark and violent.

But if I have a single creed that defines how I live, it would be "practice nonviolence." I don't even eat animals (except fish). I have been an advocate against violence in any form for the majority of my adult life.

So please, no armchair psychoanalysis from afar.

[FourthBase]

You two are too confident in your subconscious's ability to completely differentiate.

So you are saying that they really have no moral control over what they think and feel about killing and violence? That movies have turned them into zombies, even if they say otherwise?

I would take their word about their subconsciousnesses over your judgement about their cognitive and moral skills...

You two are too confident in your subconscious's ability to completely differentiate.

What's this supposed to mean? Maybe so philosophically speaking, but in practice it does a good enough job! I watch lots of horror movies but am yet to go on a murderous rampage so it's working out OK for me and my subconcious, and the same goes for most people in the world.

You two are too confident in your subconscious's ability to completely differentiate.

That's awfully presumptuous.

I've watched horror movies since I was a kid, in spite of relatives warning my parents that I would be "warped." I have watched plenty of violent movies (and plenty of nonviolent ones), played violent first-person shooter games, and my own fiction is frequently quite dark and violent.

But if I have a single creed that defines how I live, it would be "practice nonviolence." I don't even eat animals (except fish). I have been an advocate against violence in any form for the majority of my adult life.

So please, no armchair psychoanalysis from afar.

Whoaaaaaa, horsey. I just meant that I bet there's some lingering negative impact on their psyches whether they realize or not, regardless of whether it has ever manifested itself or even ever has the potential to manifest itself. I'm not presuming anything about them personally, I'm talking about an effect that would occur in any and every human. Not even a substantial effect, maybe just a trace. I'm also not discounting the possibility that what they've seen has had simultaneous, more substantial effects like disposing their psyche against violence.

[IanEye]

i am a product of my generation i guess in that i like the "righteous" violence of 70s archetypes like "Billy Jack" and "Kung Fu", the TV series. Both Billy and Cane would take all kinds of shit from real douchebags and assholes all day and then finally one of these jerks would insult one of Billy or Cane's friends and it would be all over, lots of beat up fascist shitbags in serious pain.

to some degree this was true of the "walking tall" movie (the first one, not the sequels) as well.

as an adult i can look back at these images on my screen and see how over the top and ridiculous they are, but as a kid, if there was trouble at recess, i wanted to land in the midst of it like evel knievel and punch someone in the stomach. after getting punched myself a few times i realized this type of behavior was stupid and now i refrain from violence, but the movies are still fun, sorry.

the same goes for america's funniest home videos when someone wipes out on their moped into a pinata or a bride's heavily hairsprayed hair catches fire as they lean in to cut the cake. it's funny to me.

here is a story i am sure most at ri will find intriguing:

one time in college i was making my way from my dorm room to class and i was wearing my walkman, listening to a favorite mixtape. as i was approaching the street i saw a group of people talking at the edge of the road. one of them was saying his goodbyes to the others and stepping into the road not looking at the oncoming traffic, he never saw the bus hit him.

the bus threw him about 10 yards, he landed on the sidewalk, narrowly missing a fire hydrant.

i saw the whole thing and never said a word, just kept on walking, it fit into what i was listening to on the walkman perfectly and was as "real" as any other brain movie i had been feeding myself with the tape player.

in my defense, some of the people he was saying goodbye to must have clearly seen the bus as well and they made no move to stop him either.

maybe he was a jerk?

Marge rues her decision to put Homer on the judging committee.

Marge: I knew this would happen. I put you on the jury and you vote
for the stupidest film.
Homer: I have every right to be on that jury, even though I got there
because I'm sleeping with the head of the festival.
Jay: How many times have I heard Rex Reed say _that_?
Homer: Oh, great, now _you're_ going to make fun of me!
Jay: No, Homer, I won't make fun of you. But I will suggest there
may be better things in life than seeing a man get hit in the
groin with a football.
[a football hits Jay in the groin]
Nelson: [off-camera] Ha ha!
Marge: Well, Homer?
Homer: Marge, I've got some serious thinking to do.
[inside his head, two monkeys do calculus on a blackboard]

Homer watches Barney's movie again to make his final decision.

Homer: [thinking] Hmm...Barney's movie had heart, but "Football in the
Groin" had a football in the groin.
Barney: [on the screen] Don't cry for me, I'm already dead.
Homer: Wow. I'll never drink another beer.
Man: Beer here!
Homer: I'll take ten.

[Skunkboy]

I've read the book but haven't seen the movie. I think sunny has it right. Cormac McCarthy doesn't do happy. He is talking about the corsening and dummying down of our society since the pirates have taken over. Old men of my fathers and grandfathers generation whose sense of honor and decency are slowing dissappearing and in their place are people who wouldn't think twice about shooting you with a cattle gun. If anyones read McCarthy's next book, "The Road", you get an even grimer vision of where our society may be heading. Cannibalism as an extension of fascism.
As for the Coen brothers, I know theres another thread about them being CIA, but if you watch "The Big Lewboski" you might come away with a different opinion. To paraphrase John Goodmans character, "They're worse than Nazi's! They're Nihilists!"

Skunkboy

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Gee, I wonder what movies this past year's school/mall slaughtering shooters watched?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/movies/awardsseason/25osca.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

‘No Country for Old Men’ Wins Oscar Tug of War

Published: February 25, 2008

HOLLYWOOD — “No Country for Old Men,” Joel and Ethan Coen’s chilling confrontation of a desperate man with a relentless killer, won the Academy Award for best picture on Sunday night, providing a more-than-satisfying ending for the makers of a film that many believed lacked one.
.....
Javier Bardem won the fourth Oscar for “No Country,” capturing the best supporting actor for his role as the cattlegun-wielding, pageboy-wearing serial killer.
.....
“No Country” was denied in several technical categories, as well as in cinematography: Robert Elswit won that Oscar for “There Will Be Blood,” whose extended tracking shots in harsh open spaces and dimly lighted images of claustrophobic spots made for stunning scenes despite long stretches with little dialog.

[orz]

As for the Coen brothers, I know theres another thread about them being CIA, but if you watch "The Big Lewboski" you might come away with a different opinion.

If you watch any of their movies and are sane then you're pretty much guaranteed to.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

As for the Coen brothers, I know theres another thread about them being CIA, but if you watch "The Big Lewboski" you might come away with a different opinion.

If you watch any of their movies and are sane then you're pretty much guaranteed to.

Deconstructing the Coen brothers movies is rich, like doing it to Disney or Spielberg.

The Coen brothers have heavy political subtexts in their movies, including cover-ups of USG -CIA dirt, just like Spielberg, that are easily missed due to their highly stylized presentation.

'Barton Fink, ' for instance, is loaded with the history of Hollywood becoming a US government psy-ops factory during WWII when the Office of War Information moved in to censor and rewrite scripts and then the fascist purges of the left during the Cold War leaving an industry doing CIA-State Department psy-ops, as it is today.
And as the Coen brothers are doing, too.

Not coincidently, there were a few books just out about this OWI-Hollywood history when the Coen brothers made 'Barton Fink.'

Writers like Bertolt Brecht went to Hollywood to make war propaganda.
Barton Fink is assigned to make a 'fight picture.' As in wrestling. Cute.

Eventually he wakes up horrified to find a dead body and a pool of blood, the inevitable results of war propaganda.

Fink's left with a dead person's head in a package to carry around, the curse of his complicity with the war machine.

Keywords in 'Barton Fink' even refer to legislation in the Senate at the time, the Smith-Mundt Act. "Mad Man Mundt?" "I have to put cotton in my ears to keep the puss from coming out"

Heh. That's part of the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act making it illegal for the USG to propagandize the American people. Which is done covertly anyway.

But the final scene on the beach is my favorite because it represents how
the creation of psy-ops culture led to...life imitating art instead of art imitating life.

And that's what is horrifying about 'No Country for Old Men' and all the other shoot-em-up violent movies. People do imitate them (studies have proven this for decades) and the violence spills over into domestic violence and military recruiting.

People do get ideas and attitudes from movies. And the USG knows this and greases the rails for people who make a 'good' flick for the masses. GOOD FOR WHAT?

And movie makers watch their bank accounts grow so they don't have to look in that package with their victim's head in it. Our head.

[orz]

The logic by which you reached these specific conclusions is flawed.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

This thread is much more fun than the film.

I got sent a link to this Canadian marketting "game" for the film. It encourages you to upload a facial picture of yourself, then toss a virtual coin - "Call it, Friend-o" - after which you are presented with a menacing Anton Chigur pointing his cattle-gun at you, and then a picture of yourself dead with a blotch of blood on your forehead. It then asks you to enter the name of a friend, so they can enjoy a virtual death at the hands of a fictional psychopath too. Makes me think Hugh's got a point. I don't want to give this website hits (and I don't necessarily blame the Coen's for the perpetual lack of imagination and serial missing-of-the-point typical of film marketting men) but here's the link anyway in case I'm disbelieved.

http://nocountrymovie.com/game.php

It made me think of something. There is always a concentration on the possible consequences of people viewing or acting out virtual violence in films/videogames - but what about all these virtual deaths we keep dying?
I've probably died, often bloodily, more times in videogames than I have watched deaths on TV. Kids these days (hehehe - it's no country for old men, boy) aren't just killing people all the time on their computers and in the cinema - half the time they're dying too. What effect does that have, if any?

What if the point of such psy-ops (assuming it IS psy-ops) was not to encourage violence in the veiwer, but to instill a fear of any action at all? There is no escaping the wrath of an Anton Chigur. Even a guy as resourceful as Lelewellyn Moss had precisely zero chance of coming out on top from the start, and the Sherriff's response of resigned defeatism comes across as the most rational in the film. NO ONE can stand up to a force like that - and Chigur is by no means "a zombie" or a "hollow man." Woody Harrelson's character even describes him, almost admiringly, as having "principles." Maybe he means the principles of the time - he's the new breed.

But who do you usually identify with during scenes of extreme violence in films? The aggressor? If so, you scare me. I think most people feel more kinship with the victim, except in revenge movies, where the victims are first shown to be "evil" so their deaths can later be cheered.

I think I'm losing the point I was trying to make - simply that, in films and games these days, we are all getting shot and killed more often than we're shooting and killing.