Scenes that glamorise violence?

[Steve Crook]

You simply cannot argue that the corridor scene in which Hit Girl kills like 20 grown men with her two guns doesn't look awesome to the sound of Bad Girls by The Hit Girls.

I can argue against that
I wouldn't even call that scene particularly violent. It's just a live action comic strip and most people have long since disconnected between comic strips and real violence.

Like most American "comic strip" films or like martial arts films, the hero (or heroine) performs outlandish stunts which are physically impossible, breaking the laws of gravity & momentum, often in slow motion, and the baddies just line themselves up to be hit or shot one after the other.

As it's not at all based in the real universe but is total fantasy. I wouldn't call it awesome or even particularly impressive

Steve

[Steve Crook]

If there was ever an epitome of what you're looking for then the opening scenes of DOA have to be pretty damn close:

I like a lot of your other choices, but that one - big yawn. Predictable. Obvious. Does anyone over 16 go to see films like that?

I didn't even think that the music was particularly impressive or appropriate, even as disjointed music.

Steve

[ZogmoreTheAncient]

"Normalize" violence is really what one should look at, because that's true completely - I know hardly any "cool" "clued-up" londoners who are not blissfully unaware of the total obeisance to violence, might, darkness and basically anything morbid... from dexter to whatever drum and bass they're listening to, nothing for them is cool unless it is macho, violent, harmful... and to them the opposite of that can only be Michael Jackson, when in fact the latter's settlement with accusers of pedophilia indicate that he is pretty much the king of modern violence and what it stands for, it can be called the complete opposite of what it is, parade as that, and die having done nothing but abuse that which it continues after its death to claim it protects - ie kids.

Back to the original question, does anyone have any idea what the phrase "glamorise violence" actually means?
It's a tabloid type phrase that is used to express shock and disgust at many things. But does it actually mean anything?
I think that like most similar phrases, it's actually meaningless.

Steve

[ZogmoreTheAncient]

(btw gogglebox I put my link on the intro thread because for some reason I can't pm you at this time, plus I should have more balls really... there is also on the front page of my site a script for "mofoman" which explores james bond and violence and reality, which I mention just to keep this post tenuously related to the topic of the thread... mofoman is a LOT more of a proper attack on james bond than austin powers was - and in fact at one point an israeli agent mocks Mofoman (the spoof of bond) by referring to him as Austin Powers, implying that he is just a joke of a man)

Why I can sit here attacking Mike Myers without flinching is pretty simple, that and the simpsons and so much other stuff - taking south park or spitting image as a control model of real satire, which just brutally hammers to death the targets of its mockery, these other things are just weak and end up justifying the very thing they are attacking. There's this sort of paradox of people seeking approval by beeing seen to not seek approval - the paradox of people living in a pre-guided/judged way, in order to protect their 'freedom of choice'.

My tv channel will definitely seek to pay the blighter to provide enough footage to help some animators show an entire family of monkeys, with wings, bursting out of his anus, through his trouser seat and into the world. The idea of that image might be that the existence of the channel itself is as much of a turnup for the books as monkeys flying out of Mike Myers' behind. All of this goes some way toward helping explore what violence really is, in the media, does it not? Actual monkeys flying out of people's rear ends? I mean violence isn't just a bullet or some blood, you know.

[Wheelieman]

Many of the scenes in the uncut version of Death Wish. Similar to A Clockwork Orange in the exploitation of rape and gratuitous violence.

[Rowdon]

Then there's the whole beautiful-classical-music as ironic background for brutality - pretty much the only time we get to hear an operatic aria in films. Was this started by the A Clockwork Orange? I don't know, but the film is actually about what Josefine's trying to discuss, so it would be a good starting point...? Then the idea was used and used, becoming obvious and hackneyed ... as in Lecter's escape from the cell in Silence of the Lambs...

[ZogmoreTheAncient]

I was about to mention Hannibal Lecter myself. Whose murders, somewhat gruesome ones, are depicted as acts of intellectual revenge. A Clockwork Orange makes me feel very scared and disturbed any time I even think about it too much, so maybe it actually works - ie to show violence as what it is... the enemy of you and your loved ones.

[Moor Larkin]

Then there's the whole beautiful-classical-music as ironic background for brutality - pretty much the only time we get to hear an operatic aria in films. Was this started by the A Clockwork Orange? I don't know, but the film is actually about what Josefine's trying to discuss, so it would be a good starting point...? Then the idea was used and used, becoming obvious and hackneyed ... as in Lecter's escape from the cell in Silence of the Lambs...

An organ chimes in with seconds to go, but generally, the complete absence of music certainly gives this famous closing scene a totally different ambience to what might happen nowadays.

[Steve Crook]

An organ chimes in with seconds to go, but generally, the complete absence of music certainly gives this famous closing scene a totally different ambience to what might happen nowadays.

There wasn't any music, only "natural sounds" in much of the Omaha Beach scenes at the start of Saving Private Ryan

Steve