Stop the Violins

This is inexcusably late, but let me second Ross Douthat's recommendation that everyone read Rod Dreher’s missive on his years as a film critic for the New York Post. It’s titled, rather succinctly, “Film critics are not like other people.” Indeed. As Ross says, his most interesting point is about the evolution of his reactions to filmic violence:

In major markets, critics will see between five and 10 films a week... [This] leads to critics placing far too much value on novelty. I'll never forget how staggered I was to watch an audience filled with most of the major film critics in North America giving a film festival standing ovation to that sicko Todd Solondz' film "Happiness," which, among other things, featured a grown man's attempt to drug and anally rape a child played for comedy. (I seem to recall that some reviews later appreciatively noted the skill with which the director manipulated the viewer into rooting for the rapist to succeed.) Were these critics perverse? Maybe. But I think that reaction can be explained mostly by the fact that the director showed them something they hadn't seen before, and did so cleverly. Another example: I noticed that when I quit regular reviewing, which happened around the time I had my first kid, I became a lot more aware of the degree of sex and violence in many mainstream movies. I professed shock to my wife, who told me that she thought I had simply grown numb to it because of constant exposure, and was now like a heavy smoker who had quit, and was shocked to discover once again that things had tastes.

Now, I watch a fair number of movies, many of which might be described as somewhat explicit, depending on one’s sensibility. In addition to being more or less a free-speech absolutist, in the way that we libertarians so often are, I’ve never been much of a moralist when it comes to violent or sexual imagery (though tone and suggested meaning are another story). As a teenager, I rebelled pretty strongly against my fairly conservative family and community’s condemnation of onscreen sex and violence, so much so that, like many a geek gorehound, I actively sought out and praised the stuff, if only for its audacity. So it’s not really a stretch to say that watching such stuff never really bothered me.

Or at least for a while. As I started watching movies not just more often, but more intently, and subsequently began writing about them regularly for college classes and as the critic for my school paper, something unexpected happened. Instead of becoming desensitized, I became, oddly enough, resensitized. I became more aware of the fact that, when I saw someone get blown away on screen, I might be seeing something pretty cool—but I was also witnessing a murder, even if only a fictional one. Individual acts of violence have become more shocking, more revolting; I find myself cringing and turning from the screen on a regular basis. I still have a higher tolerance for such images than many of my more sensitive (read: female) friends, but over the past few years it has become more uncomfortable and less breathlessly exciting to watch such stuff.

Now, this isn’t to say that I’ve come to regard onscreen violence as some sort of grave evil or that I’ve shied from my free speech fanaticism. On the contrary, I still very much believe in one’s absolute right to free expression, no matter how distasteful I find it, and I also still maintain that art is better judged by its creativity, complexity, and creation of meaning than by content without context. But what’s happened, I think, is that in being forced, in my capacity as a film student and then critic, to thoroughly detail my reactions to what I’m seeing in a film, I’ve become more aware of how death-charged so much modern filmmaking is. That doesn’t mean it can’t be exciting, even cool, at times—but it does suggest a lingering societal obsession with shallow, violent thrills as well as with praising those who make taking life look so appealing.