Consequences

How many people ,characters, died in the movie, The Dark Knight?   How many people died in the Aurora movie theater in Colorado? I don’t even know, except that I think there just might be a connection between violence and violent movies. I gave up violent movies in 1969 (and I thank Sam Peckinpah for helping me to do so with the "Wild Bunch" - I think I got his point that there is no point to endlessly escalating the violence, and there is no reason to romanticize the old west and those violent times [gee, is anyone romanticizing these violent times?]).

Unfortunately, the irony of just pushing the "limits" of violence in movies was lost on the dead head movie makers (read: Let’$ make $ome Buck$ guy$!) and most certainly lost on the dead head VIEWERS of movies, some of whom will pay good (?) money for more and more gore (ain’t the free market grand?). There are no longer limits to anything.

There is no longer any peer pressure to consider taste or the consequences of one’s actions. This, my friends, is the real End of the World. Do I believe in censorship? No. But there must be a better way than we seem to be going now. It just might be that "free market" idea:   Let’s just not pay for those movies. You may disagree, but it doesn’t seem to have hurt me at all so far.  There are some images in my mind (some from books, and some from movies) that I would just as soon not have.  Self censorship, maybe, is the answer.  Closing you eyes at the right moment isn't enough.