Myth-Information Movies (We Need to Talk About Kevin)

[compared2what?]

American movies tell Americans that Americans naturally enjoy/feel profound feelings about/see the necessity of killing various non-Americans. I submit that many of those Americans are 'wrongly sterotyped' but that 'enough reinforcement of the stereotypes make them come true'.

If this thread had started with the idea that the media encourage (do not cause, but reinforce and inform) hateful views of certain "others," e.g. Muslims the world over as angry fanatics who luckily can be exterminated 200 at a time by Arnold Schwarzenegger... and that this likely contributed on a statistical scale to the frequency and intensity of many incidents like the massacre at Haditha or the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib... would it have been controversial here? We usually have no trouble agreeing that, e.g., hate speech exists and has some kind of impact on a mass scale.

We're talking at cross-purposes. And I'm bowing out, anyway.

I'd wish you wouldn't, and instead stop refuting simple causation (no need) and instead consider the idea of media depictions (news and entertainment) as factors within a complex field of causation that can provide lubrication/friction or reinforcement/discouragement for personal characteristics and behaviors in a way that won't usually be seen as direct causation in any one case but adds up in the statistics. (May even add up as a negative, in the case of violence, since an escalation of media violence has correlated with a fall in personal violence as measured in crime statistics.)

At the very least, media depictions can keep something in mind. Would you really dispute that people think about sex all the time, but they think about it even more and don't get a choice about the stimuli that they are exposed to when billboards in their towns constantly remind them of it? (On edit: What am I even saying? Are we going to argue, for example, about the influence of advertising? Advertisers see every quarter that when they invest a certain way in an effective campaign for a product, there is a move, sometimes small, sometimes large, in that product's sales and market share.)

At the second least, media depictions can and often do inform one's existing tendencies and thoughts about something and thus affect (not simply "cause") behavior, including, I would hypothesize: the action, weapon, costume and manifesto that the likes of a Cho chooses -- chooses freely, I believe, or otherwise while in a psychotic state; either of which means that the media is not primarily responsible. But a huge motivator for a Cho is surely the idea that if he sends his manifesto to a network, it ends up being broadcast, which he has seen in prior cases. So the network is wittingly participating in (not causing, not criminally responsible for, but participating and morally responsible for) a chain of steps that is likely to help produce (lubricate the way, give pointers to) the next Cho. Am I calling for censorship? Hell no! I'm observing what I see as a reality.

But fwiw, I agree that stereotypes come true with enough reinforcement, and also that US military training qualifies as a process that has more than enough reinforcement uniformly to produce behavior that then becomes stereotyped in the media. If you're suggesting that the media stereotypes cause the behavior, I don't agree. But that's fine. I respect your position and dissent from it.

Again, you shouldn't agree with any simple monocausal statement in that regard. Which I don't believe anyone here has made. Which is probably why kenoma flew off the handle, but shouldn't have. Let's all be friends.

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Thank you for your wise and understanding words. I agree with very nearly all of them, to the point that it might as well be "all without exception," since the few differences that there are could easily be resolved with a very minor adjustment of phrasing. For example, I'd say that the news media has a moral responsibility not to glorify, promote, or encourage acts of anger, hatred and violence, which most media outlets neither meet nor take very seriously, for which I curse and condemn them. I'd also say that overall, the coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting was prurient, sensationalistic, hypocritical and repellent, including the coverage of Cho's manifesto. But I wouldn't say that for the media to broadcast such a manifesto would always and necessarily be an abrogation of their moral responsibilities under all circumstances. But I doubt that you would either, even though effectively you did.

IOW: I agree. Expressing thoughts is hard!!!!!

Speaking of which: I think the reason that Kenoma flew off the handle (if he did) was that I completely misunderstood what he was saying twice. I don't know why. I mean, besides the early-stage CBDG.

But, fwiw:

Kenoma, please accept my apologies. I totally agree with you. Actually.

[compared2what?]

There are other arguments above that I'm not sure I can really respond to, because they seem to be predicated on the premise that we are all separate, discreet individuals who are largely responsible for our own decisions, or at least capable of making them and of knowing our reasons for doing so. This is somewhat different from how I perceive things, which is that, as individuals, our actions and decisions are almost entirely determined by unconscious factors, making our conscious 'reasons' merely after-the-fact rationalizations, meant to give ourselves the comfortable illusion of being in control of our actions and decisions.

I not only don't disagree with any of that, I take it for granted as a fact of life that's too pervasive and universal to need always to be an explicitly remarked upon stipulation when discussing human actions and motivations.

So if I'm the person whose arguments appeared to be predicated on a premise that denies or ignores such things, either you misunderstood me or I misspoke.

I'd also say that the "unconscious" that actually rules our lives is a collective unconscious, which means that we are as, or possibly more, likely to be acting out other people's unconscious drives as our own - there being finally no difference save to the conscious mind anyway.

^^But that's where you lose me. Just about everything by which a person defines his or her life -- identity, action, cognition, emotion, belief, desire, etcetera -- is profoundly informed and shaped by his or her unconscious at a fundamental level. So it would be fair, just and true to say that the unconscious defines our lives. And ordinarily, I wouldn't have any problem with seeing that colloquially expressed as "rules" rather than "defines."

But the way you're using that word imparts a connotation of "control by unknown forces" to the concept of "unconscious drives" that they don't have. You're more or less just saying that the unconscious "rules our lives" in order to give shape and heft to your hypothesis about an entirely different category and kind of external behavior-shaping forces -- such as movies and psy-ops -- that also sometimes operate on an unconscious level to define/rule our lives, but in ways that (on this board, at least) are suggestive of powers that are a lot more insidious and coercive (and monocausal) than the unconscious mind is.

I understand that you're just trying to find the words to support the truth that you recognized in We Need To Talk About Kevin, and not intentionally to mislead. But I still say: Flag on play. That is not what the unconscious is, or what it does.
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Likewise, wrt the collective unconscious, you really can't have it both ways. If there's no distinction between the collective and the individual under that rubric (and broadly speaking, for our purposes, I think it's fair to say there isn't), then we do not act out "other people's" unconscious drives when we act from the collective unconscious. Res ipso etcetera.

And since the conscious mind only has about 1% of the information needed to judge any given situation, we are like kids trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when we only only have a dozen pieces, forcing them to fit and saying, "Look ma, it's a rabbit!"....

It ain't a rabbit, folks.

In some sense, it is if it's a rabbit, which it probably is, nine times out of ten.

We just don't know what a rabbit is. Or are, as the case may be, since we might actually be recognizing multiple phenomena/entities the parts of which that are manifest to us all happen to look like what we call a rabbit.

But, you know. Calling it/them that by general consensus does make it a rabbit, for practical purposes, no matter what it/they might or mightn't be on some plane that's beyond the ordinary scope of human perception. As a matter of fact, I don't really see how you can argue otherwise while also arguing that stereotypes create realities.

[compared2what?]

Social behaviors are learned, and they are learned, IMO, primarily by imitation - even if imitation entails doing what we are told or taught to do rather than what we observe others doing. (I'm not sure what the counter argument is to learning by imitation, unless it's argued that we have an innate and/or genetic sense of behaviors, both moral and practical. If so, a look at cases of feral children might be instructive.) Logically speaking, we don't need to learn how to feel rage, sorrow, or happiness - those feelings arise in us naturally as a response to our environment. What we do have to learn is the appropriate ways to express those emotions, as well as our desires, and so forth. We express through language, if we understand that language is far more than merely verbal; in fact, since verbal communication is the last thing to develop, we can assume that it is probably the least of it.

It might be kind of a technical point, but imitative learning and observational learning aren't the same thing. The former is a sub-class of the latter. If you're using them to mean something interchangeable, that might actually be where my misunderstanding originated.

Communication has perhaps less to do with what's being expressed than with what's being received: there are two sides to communication, not just one. So learning to communicate isn't just about finding the most "natural" forms of expression for ourselves, but also learning what's going to be understood by others so as to get the desired result from them. There are two drives behind communication: expressing the self, and impressing the other.

For a baby, expression of self and impressing the other are inseparable - it's one impulse, one instinct, and both are necessary to its survival. This single function gradually separates into two, opposing desires or "agendas," as the ego identity comes into form, which presumably happens when the infant's expressing of its needs fails to impress the other, again and again. Getting back to the topic at hand, in a (stereotypical) Jewish family (and at the risk of offending with the glibness of my example), emotions are expressed in a loud, exaggerated fashion, relative that is to a WASP-y environment, where more contained, restrained, and subdued emotional expressions are favored. Take a WASP baby out of its home and insert it into a Jewish family environment and it's going to have to learn more "histrionic" modes of expression simply in order to be heard (and vice versa, of course).

So when disenchanted, disenfranchised, and alienated youths grow up surrounded by images and stories of other disenchanted, disenfranchised, and alienated youths expressing their disenchantment by doing drugs, having sex at 13, performing satanic rituals, or shooting up their classmates - doesn't it seem likely they would "deduce" (though it wouldn't be a conscious process) that such expressions were an appropriate and necessary form of communication? Like the WASP baby in the Jewish household, their own "natural" forms of expression might begin to seem inadequate for communicating what they are actually feeling, because all the "noise" going on around them is going to drown out any kind of "softer" signal.

Behaviors communicate, and behaviors make up a kind of social language. That what I mean by saying that kids might act in ways that are "against their will." The desire to fit in is one of the most powerful social drives there is, and we all try desperately to find some niche that seems to match and convey our inner state - some way to express who we are in a way that will impress the other, i.e., communicate. If the only glove that fits is one of sociopathic schoolyard shooter, that might be the one we end up wearing rather than feeling totally alienated.

I'm over-simplifying, but you have to admit there's a persuasive irony to it: choosing the role of outcast is at least a role, and allows for some kind of relationship to "the tribe", even if it defines one in opposition to it. Maybe this is how and why killers become celebrity figures, and even cult heroes - an element which is usually included in the "Hollywood" narrative too (Kevin gives a little speech about it in the film) - because they strengthen the solidarity of the group by volunteering themselves as the sacrificial other, or scapegoat? Yet underneath that, they are acting out the deepest, most disowned (unsafe) desires of everyone, which is to reject the safety of the group and forego the need to belong so as to individuate from it, even if by violence.

Another way of putting this is that, since no one is talking to "Kevin" (the autist-outcast), since no one is even trying to learn his language, Kevin is going to talk to "us." To do so, he adopts "our" (society's) language, in the process magnifying and distorting it into a monstrous howl of incomprehension that, at the very least, makes an impression.

I'm not saying that movies cause this or that. I'm saying that society's refusal/inability to identify and understand its own monstrous/dis-eased nature, and to open up a real, honest dialogue with its sickly-monstrous children, is perpetuating both the incomprehension and the resulting violence, making it not only necessary but appropriate as a response - the only remaining way to create a dialogue between self and other.

^^That's beautiful, perceptive, sensitive and eloquent.

Do you think that what might have happened is that the movie connected with you in some way that touched on your very finely attuned and precious gift for seeing, feeling and speaking with empathy, love and understanding from the perspective of the autist-outcast, thus leading you correctly to assign it a causal function but not quite the right causal function?

IOW, do you think that because you perceived Kevin as an autist-outcast and identified with/wanted to protect him, you also perceived the movie as a hostile force that could turn autist-outcasts into sociopathic killers?

I mean, maybe not. They're your thoughts and perceptions. But fwiw, if that's what happened, I actually think there's very interesting, original and important case to be made for that premise on those terms. It would be a very difficult essayistic accomplishment, and I sure couldn't do it myself. But I'd love to see someone give it a try who could.

________________

ON EDIT: I was raised in a Jewish family that would have made the WASP-ish repression in Ordinary People look histrionic by comparison. Because there are such, btw. Speaking of stereotypes.

[JackRiddler]

So if I'm the person whose arguments appeared to be predicated on a premise that denies or ignores such things, either you misunderstood me or I misspoke.

I don't know since it was g. talking but I'd bet not. My immediate association on reading that was barracuda.



Then:

I'd also say that the "unconscious" that actually rules our lives is a collective unconscious, which means that we are as, or possibly more, likely to be acting out other people's unconscious drives as our own - there being finally no difference save to the conscious mind anyway.

^^But that's where you lose me. Just about everything by which a person defines his or her life -- identity, action, cognition, emotion, belief, desire, etcetera -- is profoundly informed and shaped by his or her unconscious at a fundamental level. So it would be fair, just and true to say that the unconscious defines our lives. And ordinarily, I wouldn't have any problem with seeing that colloquially expressed as "rules" rather than "defines."

But the way you're using that word imparts a connotation of "control by unknown forces" to the concept of "unconscious drives" that they don't have.

You may be right in your subsequent interpretation of what was meant, and refutation thereof.

On reading g's comment, however, my association of "other people's unconscious" was literally, "that of other people" - i.e., other individuals. Because we're all so tied up in the others around us, and usually reacting to them on a moment-to-moment basis. All the more true where power imbalances and force are involved, or any of a thousand social insecurities or dependencies to another person may come into play. As in, e.g., children are as likely to be acting out the unconscious drives of their parents as their own. (Maybe not "as likely to be" but damned often.) Or, spouses are likely often acting out the unconscious drives of their spouses, rather than their own. Or, subordinates those of their superiors (given also that who is which can shift from time to time). Or, betas those of their alphas. Or, followers those of their leaders. Or, students those of their teachers; adherents those of their chosen philosopher or guru(illa?) ; hostages those of their captors. These are all also examples of "collective," more retail than the one you assumed.

But given these examples, and assuming you agree, then I think the door is also open to larger, more mass versions of "collective" applying here. For example, that a population acts out the codes of its society, which are largely not only unwritten but unconscious to most. That a whole country can be crazy as a country, and not know it (or only have this be seen by a few - not that they are then the elect and the rest are "sheeple," mind you, because anyone using that language probably isn't elect). That there may indeed be many factors programming us, or at least large numbers of us, of which we are unaware and that seem ridiculous to contemplate (like myths, which in the modern age are mainly transported through... movies).

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[guruilla]

I'm confused. I'm not sure what c2w's disagreeing with in what I wrote, unless it's simply a semantic matter. The idea of a collective unconscious or group mind presupposes that the idea of "other people" separate from ourselves is illusory, yes; but from the POV of the illusory ego identity, when identifying unconscious drives, it must still refer to its existing, illusory frame of reference, and so it might well be surprised to find that many, or even most, of those drives originate from (the illusion of) "other people."

The reason there is no rabbit is that a partial description can't ever represent the whole - if all you see is a gnarly shape "floating" on the surface of a swamp, you will get a rude surprise if you try to grab the "branch" and a crocodile bites your hand off. In such an case the image of a floating branch is 100% subjective, and has zero validity, once it has been tested experientially.

[compared2what?]

I'm confused. I'm not sure what c2w's disagreeing with in what I wrote, unless it's simply a semantic matter. The idea of a collective unconscious or group mind presupposes that the idea of "other people" separate from ourselves is illusory, yes; but from the POV of the illusory ego identity, when identifying unconscious drives, it must still refer to its existing, illusory frame of reference, and so it might well be surprised to find that many, or even most, of those drives originate from (the illusion of) "other people."

The reason there is no rabbit is that a partial description can't ever represent the whole - if all you see is a gnarly shape "floating" on the surface of a swamp, you will get a rude surprise if you try to grab the "branch" and a crocodile bites your hand off. In such an case the image of a floating branch is 100% subjective, and has zero validity, once it has been tested experientially.

You're right about the rabbit.

But now I'm confused about the collective unconscious.

As I understand it the term, "collective unconscious" refers to a collectively shared unconscious that's just there, both within and without all people collectively -- as opposed to "the sum total pooled unconsciouses of all people in the world individually" And therefore, any individual person who's moved by the collective unconscious is being moved by something that has an internal locus of origin, albeit one that's common to all individual people.

Is that wrong?

[guruilla]

IOW, do you think that because you perceived Kevin as an autist-outcast and identified with/wanted to protect him, you also perceived the movie as a hostile force that could turn autist-outcasts into sociopathic killers?

I didn't identify with Kevin in the movie or want to protect him. I responded to him as the filmmakers (presumably) intended me to: with distaste, and sometimes with loathing. That's my fundamental criticism of the movie, combined with the fact that he has superficial similarities to an autistic-outcast type, a type I do identify with and which I do wish to protect, to some degree and in an impersonal sense, from society's hostility. (Though not from "hostile movies"!) And once again, my point is less about movies turning these types into killers but only reinforcing the belief that they might turn into killers. It's that belief which may, to some degree at least, be self-fulfilling because of arguments outlined above. So there are two separate ideas which are nonetheless connected. The one you're asking about is the first, that the movie depicts the sociopath as a certain type, a type which I think is inaccurate.

The movie Alpha Dog, based on a true story (Jesse James Hollywood, though I can't vouch for how closely the film stuck to the true facts), comes much closer, IMO, to accurately depicting the teenage sociopath type, and (as the title suggests) the kids in the film were anything but outcasts. The film's critical reception was unenthusiastic, but I found it utterly devastating when first I saw it.

I was raised in a Jewish family that would have made the WASP-ish repression in Ordinary People look histrionic by comparison. Because there are such, btw. Speaking of stereotypes.

Noted. I knew I'd get busted for that one. ; )

As in, e.g., children are as likely to be acting out the unconscious drives of their parents as their own. (Maybe not "as likely to be" but damned often.)

As an interesting side note, I'd say they are actually more likely to be acting out their parents' unconscious drives than their own. The younger a person is, the less unconscious material they have driving them. Presumably babies don't "have" an unconscious, any more than animals do, because they don't have a constructed identity to filter out unwanted elements from awareness, thereby creating a pool for all that suppressed, disowned, or simply irrelevant psychic matter. Parents, on the other hand, have spent years disowning and suppressing that stuff, and their children become natural - fated - receptacles for it. This is a huge subject, obviously, so I'll leave it at that for now, even though it's probably central to the main topic (and maybe just about any other one).

As I understand it the term, "collective unconscious" refers to a collectively shared unconscious that's just there, both within and without all people collectively -- as opposed to "the sum total pooled unconsciouses of all people in the world individually" And therefore, any individual person who's moved by the collective unconscious is being moved by something that has an internal locus of origin, albeit one that's common to all individual people.

I'm afraid I don't understand what "an internal locus of origin" is, and I don't actually see any difference between the two versions of the CU that you are juxtaposing. It's a "pool" that is continuously being added to, every moment and each time any of us chooses to suppress, ignore, deny, or disown any aspect of our experience. I think I use terms more "loosely" than some people here do, sometimes to a fault, because I work more from an intuitive place than an intellectual one. For me, collective unconscious is synonymous with id, gene pool, racial memory, past lives, higher/deeper selves, group mind, Gaia consciousness, and so on. Like, it just means whatever we are unconscious of, both as individuals and collectively.

One point: to the Unconscious itself, whether collective or individual, there is no unconscious. The unconscious, id, etc, is one with the superconscious or "god mind," just seen from a different perspective: that of the ego self, which is the only thing in all of creation that actually IS "unconscious." How's that for irony?

[JackRiddler]

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The difference suggested by "internal locus of control" would for me mean that between

"drives that come from within me that I may or may not really understand, but tend to act upon" (classic definition of unconscious)

"influences from without me that I don't see or understand" (such as from the collective unconscious, or the unconscious of others impacting upon my own feelings, or for that matter conscious manipulation by others that I don't know, with the possibility as you suggest that there is no within me/without me)

and "all things I don't know in the universe, period" (which is kind of what you seemed to say at the end there with "whatever we are unconscious of," and would be much bigger than all individual and/or collective unconsciousnesses ever)

[Laodicean]

Bully from 2001, based on the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent.

[guruilla]

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The difference suggested by "internal locus of control" would for me mean that between

"drives that come from within me that I may or may not really understand, but tend to act upon" (classic definition of unconscious)

"influences from without me that I don't see or understand" (such as from the collective unconscious, or the unconscious of others impacting upon my own feelings, or for that matter conscious manipulation by others that I don't know, with the possibility as you suggest that there is no within me/without me)

and "all things I don't know in the universe, period" (which is kind of what you seemed to say at the end there with "whatever we are unconscious of," and would be much bigger than all individual and/or collective unconsciousnesses ever)

I was thinking about this last night. The common use of the word "unconscious" has to do with things that we have experienced and then shoved into a storehouse beneath the surface of our everyday consciousness. In simple terms, it's whatever we have forgotten, even if willfully or under duress, through trauma, dissociation, denial, etc. I would guess that this is just the level that's closest to the surface (consciousness) - including things that flit in and out of awareness throughout our lives. (A dream can be partially remembered, which makes it a sort of ambassador between the conscious and unconscious realms.)

Beneath that layer of the unconscious would be things that didn't happen directly to us, and therefore that haven't been suppressed or forgotten because they never entered into conscious awareness to begin with. Stuff that we have picked up, bodily or empathically, energetically, or whatever, while in the presence of others. The bulk of this unconscious material would come from parents and siblings, and those close family relatives - and anyone else - who profoundly impacted us in childhood. So for example we might have an unconscious fear of madness if one of our parents had a brush with insanity, even if we were never directly exposed to it. The line between "inherited" (genetic) traits and ones that have been imprinted by ordinary exposure is a blurry one, especially since children are so open, "psychically," and may pick things which aren't being openly (or consciously) communicated.

The next layer of the unconscious would be ancestral experience, passed on through DNA but which may, in some as yet unmapped process, be accessible by the conscious mind. It may also exist in the body at a less microscopic level, just as genetic features do - in physical habits, body posture, ticks, addictions (alcoholism being a genetic tendency, for example, which can perhaps skip a generation).

Beneath that would be the memory of the species. And so on.

This has nothing to do with the OP, but I just wanted to get it clear in my own head at least! It's probably relevant to something going on somewhere.

[guruilla]

If possible I’d like to keep this thread going, since bouncing ideas off intelligent people who don’t necessarily agree with me is always useful. At the start of the thread, there was some tension between c2w and Hugh that was apparently “sensitive” enough to get Jeff’s attention; partly as a result of that I didn’t get too involved in that particular disagreement. So I’d like to go back to that first of all, and then address any other questions which I left unanswered.

That first, as-yet unresolved point seems to be around the idea of imitation as a primary means of learning, and the subsequent role of movies and other mass media in influencing behavior and development. I’ll just add here that I've been a movie-lover since I can remember and that my most formative years (12-18) were characterized by an immersion in and near-obsession with movies (which eventually led to writing several books about them). So if it ever seems like I am “down” on them, chalk it up to a love-hate-relationship: movies are like women for me, I can’t quite live with or without them.

In any event. There's no law of imitative human behavior that says the amount of socially licensed space available for occupation by male teen sociopathic killers will automatically expand in direct proportion to the number of movies that depict male teen sociopaths killing people, in any simple sense. At least as I understand it, they'd have to be depicted as acting with social license for that to be a reasonable possibility, let alone a likely outcome. And even then, my guess is that they'd have to be depicted as pretty damned socially licensed in an awful lot of movies before cold-blooded shooting sprees got much traction with the kids as a real-life pastime.

I mean, most (maybe all) people are born with a very strong natural instinct to refrain from sociopathically murdering others. After all. That's just an evolutionarily favorable trait in a social animal, by and large.

There’s several points here I'd like to question. First off, I’m not sure about a "natural instinct" to refrain from murder, since there is no such thing as ‘murder’ in the natural world, only killing - and killing, for a predatory species, is as natural as fucking. Socialization entails suppressing the primal drives, both of sex and violence, which of course are interconnected. So it could be argued that a sociopath or social predator is closer to expressing his or her “natural instinct” than more "civilized" folk. It could also be argued that the appeal of violent movies relates to how suppressed natural instincts seek some sort of outlet or catharsis through “harmless” fantasy. (Spectator sport being another obvious outlet.)

The first point c2w makes sounds reasonable enough, but that may even be the problem with it. We are not rational animals (there’s no such thing), and insofar as we imitate behaviors we are exposed to (especially at an early age), there’s nothing that says we also need to know that such behaviors will be rewarded. Monkey see, monkey do, whether or not monkey get a banana at the end of it. Learning through conditioning (reward and punishment) is a different form of learning, and might even be a socialized attempt to counteract our more innate capacity for imitative development. Hence: “Do what I say, not what I do” becomes the bottom line of all authority. But children tend to turn out like their parents are, not like their parents tell them to be. Being raised by alcoholics tends to lead to alcoholism, regardless of how unpleasant the reality (how un-rewarded) witnessed may be.

Well. Okay. How is that any different than saying that movies that depict spree-killing teens in themselves create socially licensed space in the real world for teen spree-killers because humans are imitative animals? I mean, obviously what a character in a movie does is (in some sense) acceptable to the character. But, you know. Movies routinely depict evil characters doing violent things, and movie-goers routinely perceive their actions to be wrong, extreme and frightening rather than appropriate modes of self-expression.

Again, this is appealing to reason but not to instinct or emotion. The part of the brain that is triggered by images of violence is a different part than the part that can reasonably assess the wrongness of violence. There may be a healthy dialogue between the two parts, but generally I think that's not the case. Movies can sensitize us to violence, but they can also desensitize, and the latter seems to be a much more typical result than the former. For one thing, most movies do not put us in the role of the victim, since that would be far too uncomfortable an experience for most moviegoers. At the same time, they don’t usually allow empathy for the victimizer/villain either. (A memorable exception to both these unwritten rules would be Blue Velvet.) That basically leaves putting us in the role of the predator (and as has often been commented on, the camera is a kind of predatory eye in itself: the objectifying gaze.)

It may be worth bringing up mirror neurons at this point, which relate to the way in which the brain responds to witnessed behavior empathically, as if it were experiencing it directly. So when a monkey sees another monkey eating a banana, the mirror neurons activate and at some deep level it is simulating the experience of itself eating the banana — and its body begins to respond as if it were. The brain doesn’t know the difference, you might say, between an actual experience and a witnessed, or perhaps even a simulated, one. Tests have supposedly shown that even watching exercises videos improves fitness, because the brain is sending signals to the body to release chemicals and so on, and so muscle tone improves. Watching a murder or rape then might be akin to actually committing these acts, at a primal level of experience (in the reptilian brain and nervous system). Our rational minds can tell us, “It’s only a movie,” so we can dismiss the experience. But it is still going into the body.

As I say, this is neither good not bad, because it can go either way. Used properly, these simulated experiences can increase our awareness, sensitivity, and empathy. But "properly" entails consciously, and since movies are primarily for entertainment and distraction—for getting out of ourselves and our bodies—then, in most cases, my impression at least is that they are having the opposite effect, closing down empathic centers via sensory overload. The kick of movies and violent video games etc. may be inseparable from how they activate that reptilian brain and give us that “primal” experience of being a predatory awareness (and best of all, an untouchable one).

At the very least, media depictions can keep something in mind. Would you really dispute that people think about sex all the time, but they think about it even more and don't get a choice about the stimuli that they are exposed to when billboards in their towns constantly remind them of it? (On edit: What am I even saying? Are we going to argue, for example, about the influence of advertising? Advertisers see every quarter that when they invest a certain way in an effective campaign for a product, there is a move, sometimes small, sometimes large, in that product's sales and market share.)

This is an important point I think, in that Jack links up sexual imagery with advertising. A “thesis” I wrote back in 1998 was that what incites people to violence isn’t simply violent imagery but a combination of sexual stimulation, advertising, and violent imagery. In other words, the commercials on TV insult the viewer’s intelligence with their crass appeal to his (focusing on male) basest instincts (status, vanity, etc) and trigger a deep-seated lack of self-esteem, while simultaneously arousing his sexual desire without providing any sort of release for it (look but don’t touch). Finally, a bombardment of violent imagery provides "inspiration" - a way to both release and act out the anger, disgust, and sexual frustration.

So behavior modification through movies and TV shows is probably far more complex than simply glorifying or condoning violence and expecting people to imitate it.

I don't disagree, though the process through which mere temptation or the desirous fantasy of a thought experiment is lured into the reality of action can be highly convoluted. Most people have a variety of safeguards in place to help them detour such impulses into relatively harmless outlets for frustration in that regard, whether that be channelling towards emotional states shy of action, or other actions which displace the temptation, or god forbid, a resort to personal morality. "Everyone thinks I'm guilty so I might as well really be guilty" strikes me as a rather unsophisticated and petulant route to take given all the choices.

Again this only seems like a rational process when viewed at the most superficial level, and the example (about stealing) I gave was just that: superficial. But since we only see what goes on at the surface level, any examples we cite are going to be superficial. They may clue us as to what’s really going on beneath the surface, however. One mistake we make, I think, is to limit violence to merely physical acts. Another is to separate the question of violence from that of sex and sexuality. Self-preservation and procreation are two instincts, but they both come from the same life force, which is one single drive or energy, with two modes of expression. So then, even if people, as barracuda says, have ways to detour violent impulses into “relatively harmless outlets for frustration,” how harmless is it really, if that triggered violence and rage is being detoured into sex?

It may even be worse—since sex potentially creates “monsters”!

While I agree that "mental illness" is essentially nondescriptive as a motivational unit, in our society it's sort of understood that spree killers and school shooters are either insane by virtue of their actions, or they snapped, i.e. experienced a psychotic break.

In our society? Which is soo qualified to define what's sane and insane behavior,right? That sort of definition of insanity is a bit like saying some cats are black so anything that is black must be a cat. It’s an explanation that explains nothing: they did it because they were crazy. Oh, OK. That was easy, now let's move on. But the question remains unanswered: what made them crazy? It’s really a moral judgment disguised as "scientific opinion."

Would you be able to identify a film or a character-type that created a dreamspace which opened the door for your misbefitting behaviors? Myself, while I consciously emulated the dress and poses of, say, James Dean, I'm not sure I can say that the stereoype of the artist is what lead me to a life of crime. I think I just enjoyed the company of transgressors because that's where the paradigm might be fractured into something more beautiful, more in tune with my idea of what made art, art. And it was downhilll from there. But then, by the time my childhood rolled around, "weirdos" had already been coopted, refined, molded and bastardised too completely for me to successfully solopsize the concept into a picture of myself.

I had two role models growing up: Clint Eastwood and David Byrne. Superficially I emulated the first, but I never did make myself into a super-laconic tough guy, since that was clearly beyond the scope of reality. At a deeper level, I accepted I’d always be a super-brainy, ET Aspergerian, socially awkward skinny guy slightly out of whack with “ordinary” reality.

[FourthBase]

If possible I’d like to keep this thread going, since bouncing ideas off intelligent people who don’t necessarily agree with me is always useful. At the start of the thread, there was some tension between c2w and Hugh that was apparently “sensitive” enough to get Jeff’s attention; partly as a result of that I didn’t get too involved in that particular disagreement. So I’d like to go back to that first of all, and then address any other questions which I left unanswered.

That first, as-yet unresolved point seems to be around the idea of imitation as a primary means of learning, and the subsequent role of movies and other mass media in influencing behavior and development. I’ll just add here that I've been a movie-lover since I can remember and that my most formative years (12-18) were characterized by an immersion in and near-obsession with movies (which eventually led to writing several books about them). So if it ever seems like I am “down” on them, chalk it up to a love-hate-relationship: movies are like women for me, I can’t quite live with or without them.

In any event. There's no law of imitative human behavior that says the amount of socially licensed space available for occupation by male teen sociopathic killers will automatically expand in direct proportion to the number of movies that depict male teen sociopaths killing people, in any simple sense. At least as I understand it, they'd have to be depicted as acting with social license for that to be a reasonable possibility, let alone a likely outcome. And even then, my guess is that they'd have to be depicted as pretty damned socially licensed in an awful lot of movies before cold-blooded shooting sprees got much traction with the kids as a real-life pastime.

I mean, most (maybe all) people are born with a very strong natural instinct to refrain from sociopathically murdering others. After all. That's just an evolutionarily favorable trait in a social animal, by and large.

There’s several points here I'd like to question. First off, I’m not sure about a "natural instinct" to refrain from murder, since there is no such thing as ‘murder’ in the natural world, only killing - and killing, for a predatory species, is as natural as fucking. Socialization entails suppressing the primal drives, both of sex and violence, which of course are interconnected. So it could be argued that a sociopath or social predator is closer to expressing his or her “natural instinct” than more "civilized" folk. It could also be argued that the appeal of violent movies relates to how suppressed natural instincts seek some sort of outlet or catharsis through “harmless” fantasy. (Spectator sport being another obvious outlet.)

The first point c2w makes sounds reasonable enough, but that may even be the problem with it. We are not rational animals (there’s no such thing), and insofar as we imitate behaviors we are exposed to (especially at an early age), there’s nothing that says we also need to know that such behaviors will be rewarded. Monkey see, monkey do, whether or not monkey get a banana at the end of it. Learning through conditioning (reward and punishment) is a different form of learning, and might even be a socialized attempt to counteract our more innate capacity for imitative development. Hence: “Do what I say, not what I do” becomes the bottom line of all authority. But children tend to turn out like their parents are, not like their parents tell them to be. Being raised by alcoholics tends to lead to alcoholism, regardless of how unpleasant the reality (how un-rewarded) witnessed may be.

Well. Okay. How is that any different than saying that movies that depict spree-killing teens in themselves create socially licensed space in the real world for teen spree-killers because humans are imitative animals? I mean, obviously what a character in a movie does is (in some sense) acceptable to the character. But, you know. Movies routinely depict evil characters doing violent things, and movie-goers routinely perceive their actions to be wrong, extreme and frightening rather than appropriate modes of self-expression.

Again, this is appealing to reason but not to instinct or emotion. The part of the brain that is triggered by images of violence is a different part than the part that can reasonably assess the wrongness of violence. There may be a healthy dialogue between the two parts, but generally I think that's not the case. Movies can sensitize us to violence, but they can also desensitize, and the latter seems to be a much more typical result than the former. For one thing, most movies do not put us in the role of the victim, since that would be far too uncomfortable an experience for most moviegoers. At the same time, they don’t usually allow empathy for the victimizer/villain either. (A memorable exception to both these unwritten rules would be Blue Velvet.) That basically leaves putting us in the role of the predator (and as has often been commented on, the camera is a kind of predatory eye in itself: the objectifying gaze.)

It may be worth bringing up mirror neurons at this point, which relate to the way in which the brain responds to witnessed behavior empathically, as if it were experiencing it directly. So when a monkey sees another monkey eating a banana, the mirror neurons activate and at some deep level it is simulating the experience of itself eating the banana — and its body begins to respond as if it were. The brain doesn’t know the difference, you might say, between an actual experience and a witnessed, or perhaps even a simulated, one. Tests have supposedly shown that even watching exercises videos improves fitness, because the brain is sending signals to the body to release chemicals and so on, and so muscle tone improves. Watching a murder or rape then might be akin to actually committing these acts, at a primal level of experience (in the reptilian brain and nervous system). Our rational minds can tell us, “It’s only a movie,” so we can dismiss the experience. But it is still going into the body.

As I say, this is neither good not bad, because it can go either way. Used properly, these simulated experiences can increase our awareness, sensitivity, and empathy. But "properly" entails consciously, and since movies are primarily for entertainment and distraction—for getting out of ourselves and our bodies—then, in most cases, my impression at least is that they are having the opposite effect, closing down empathic centers via sensory overload. The kick of movies and violent video games etc. may be inseparable from how they activate that reptilian brain and give us that “primal” experience of being a predatory awareness (and best of all, an untouchable one).

At the very least, media depictions can keep something in mind. Would you really dispute that people think about sex all the time, but they think about it even more and don't get a choice about the stimuli that they are exposed to when billboards in their towns constantly remind them of it? (On edit: What am I even saying? Are we going to argue, for example, about the influence of advertising? Advertisers see every quarter that when they invest a certain way in an effective campaign for a product, there is a move, sometimes small, sometimes large, in that product's sales and market share.)

This is an important point I think, in that Jack links up sexual imagery with advertising. A “thesis” I wrote back in 1998 was that what incites people to violence isn’t simply violent imagery but a combination of sexual stimulation, advertising, and violent imagery. In other words, the commercials on TV insult the viewer’s intelligence with their crass appeal to his (focusing on male) basest instincts (status, vanity, etc) and trigger a deep-seated lack of self-esteem, while simultaneously arousing his sexual desire without providing any sort of release for it (look but don’t touch). Finally, a bombardment of violent imagery provides "inspiration" - a way to both release and act out the anger, disgust, and sexual frustration.

So behavior modification through movies and TV shows is probably far more complex than simply glorifying or condoning violence and expecting people to imitate it.

I don't disagree, though the process through which mere temptation or the desirous fantasy of a thought experiment is lured into the reality of action can be highly convoluted. Most people have a variety of safeguards in place to help them detour such impulses into relatively harmless outlets for frustration in that regard, whether that be channelling towards emotional states shy of action, or other actions which displace the temptation, or god forbid, a resort to personal morality. "Everyone thinks I'm guilty so I might as well really be guilty" strikes me as a rather unsophisticated and petulant route to take given all the choices.

Again this only seems like a rational process when viewed at the most superficial level, and the example (about stealing) I gave was just that: superficial. But since we only see what goes on at the surface level, any examples we cite are going to be superficial. They may clue us as to what’s really going on beneath the surface, however. One mistake we make, I think, is to limit violence to merely physical acts. Another is to separate the question of violence from that of sex and sexuality. Self-preservation and procreation are two instincts, but they both come from the same life force, which is one single drive or energy, with two modes of expression. So then, even if people, as barracuda says, have ways to detour violent impulses into “relatively harmless outlets for frustration,” how harmless is it really, if that triggered violence and rage is being detoured into sex?

It may even be worse—since sex potentially creates “monsters”!

While I agree that "mental illness" is essentially nondescriptive as a motivational unit, in our society it's sort of understood that spree killers and school shooters are either insane by virtue of their actions, or they snapped, i.e. experienced a psychotic break.

In our society? Which is soo qualified to define what's sane and insane behavior,right? That sort of definition of insanity is a bit like saying some cats are black so anything that is black must be a cat. It’s an explanation that explains nothing: they did it because they were crazy. Oh, OK. That was easy, now let's move on. But the question remains unanswered: what made them crazy? It’s really a moral judgment disguised as "scientific opinion."

Would you be able to identify a film or a character-type that created a dreamspace which opened the door for your misbefitting behaviors? Myself, while I consciously emulated the dress and poses of, say, James Dean, I'm not sure I can say that the stereoype of the artist is what lead me to a life of crime. I think I just enjoyed the company of transgressors because that's where the paradigm might be fractured into something more beautiful, more in tune with my idea of what made art, art. And it was downhilll from there. But then, by the time my childhood rolled around, "weirdos" had already been coopted, refined, molded and bastardised too completely for me to successfully solopsize the concept into a picture of myself.

I had two role models growing up: Clint Eastwood and David Byrne. Superficially I emulated the first, but I never did make myself into a super-laconic tough guy, since that was clearly beyond the scope of reality. At a deeper level, I accepted I’d always be a super-brainy, ET Aspergerian, socially awkward skinny guy slightly out of whack with “ordinary” reality.

One more bumpy-nudgy for the day.

The quoted is one of the finest posts ever submitted to this board. Ever. By anyone. And yes, I'm probably biased in the sense that it aligns (far more articulately and informatively than I) with a thesis about the potential psychological effects of mass media pop culture that I've shared before, to much disagreement among some film buffs and media-professionals here. But, it is still an indisputably great post, in my opinion, even if one personally finds in it much to dispute. Which, however, considering the resultant /endthread-ness, it does not appear to be -- all that disputable, that is.

[Crow]

My shrink also works with adolescent inpatients, and he told me that their methods for self-harm continually evolve because they get ideas from one another. Like one will get the idea of picking staples out of magazines and cutting with those, so then all the staples have to be taken out of the magazines, and so on.

I don't think teenage spree killing is much different, in the sense that it's an attempt to find a language and an audience for otherwise inexpressible and socially indigestible suffering. Spree killing has become a means of self-expression, one that guarantees curiosity about your motives and inner life, as well as plenty of attention that can't be gotten any other way.

Sure, it's taboo to actually go on a killing spree, but it's OUR taboo. Our culture, our language. Society has created, nourished, and reinforced spree killing as a sort of emotional panic button. I know people feel protective of their hobbies, but things like the fetishization of guns and the widespread rehearsal of mass killings in video games coexist with this phenomenon and are interrelated with it.

I think the meaning of Tilda Swinton's role in the movie goes as unexamined, culturally, as Kevin's. Here is a woman who does not take easily to the demands of mothering, a woman who wants to travel and have a career. Her emotional and physical androgyny is an unspoken part of the story. Kevin's "monstrousness," his "otherness," is only a dark reflection of her "terrible difference."I mean, there's a reason they didnt cast Sandra Bullock in this role.

[guruilla]

The quoted is one of the finest posts ever submitted to this board. Ever. By anyone. And yes, I'm probably biased in the sense that it aligns (far more articulately and informatively than I) with a thesis about the potential psychological effects of mass media pop culture that I've shared before, to much disagreement among some film buffs and media-professionals here.

Thanks FB. I remember being quite put out when it was greeted with thundering silence "across the board." Better late than never.

If possible I’d like to keep this thread going, since bouncing ideas off intelligent people who don’t necessarily agree with me is always useful

considering the resultant /endthread-ness, it does not appear to be -- all that disputable, that is.

Silence seems like an odd way to acknowledge the indisputability of someone's argument. It's more like walking out of the room.

As some of you may have noticed, I don't post very often at RI and when I have in the past it often entailed a flurry of discussion followed by that thundering silence. On the other hand, the last occasions, this thread and "the other Whitley thread" (here) have pulled stuff out of me that I later worked into longer pieces. So my experience at RI is frustrating and fruitful in equal measures. I'm always surprised to get unequivocally positive feedback.

Sure, it's taboo to actually go on a killing spree, but it's OUR taboo.

.
The piece I'm writing now has to do with this, in response to a forthcoming article by Jeffrey J. Kripal about French philosopher George Bataille that also discusses Strieber. One thing it looks at is the relationship between the sacred and taboo, and violence as a way to bridge the gap between the two.

Quote from Kripal's article:

“Bataille observes that human beings generally hedge their bets when it comes to their desire for the continuity of being: they certainly desire some contact with the sacred order of continuity, ecstasy, and mystical experience, but they also want to survive and exist as discontinuous beings outside that order. Basically, they want it both ways, and ritual violence allows them to do this. . . Bataille intuits a deep linkage or coordination between sacrifice and mystical experience, as both attempt to reveal the sacred realm of the continuity of being: ‘Although clearly distinct from it, mystical experience seems to me to stem from the universal experience of religious sacrifice.’ It should be observed that, in this model, ‘divine continuity is linked with the transgression of the law on which the order of discontinuous beings is built,’ hence the sacred is accessed ritually and mystically primarily through the violation of taboo, otherwise known as ‘sin’ in Christian theology. Little wonder, then, that in Christianity the sacred is so ‘readily associated with Evil.’” [Emphasis added]

[JackRiddler]

Thanks Crow, good comment! And 4B for the revival. I'd forgot.

Would love to see guruilla back, and c2w? more often!