my brain wants very badly for the data to flow chronologically from left to right, rather than its current arrangement.
Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#12Wow, I got it totally wrong. When I read this in my RSS, I read "firms" instead of films and I was wondering what all these businesses were doing portraying killing. Then when I read the title correctly on HN, I remembered the graph going downward and thought it was weird that films were showing less killing. I clicked through and was surprised to see that the x-axis was descending chronological order. So now that I…
I was expecting the graph to descend chronologically myself. It seemed to me that every other movie that I remember from 80s and early 90s were slasher films (Krueger, 13th, Critters, Steven King movies). Now, its romantic comedies left and right.
... or maybe I just got married.
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#13It's a silly and misleading graph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code
Alternatively watch something like Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels (1930)
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#14Big budgets mean big ticket sales. They also mean action. Thus, killing.
Let's look at the top 10 (I will use US sales): Avatar (2009) - Yep, Titanic (1997)- Yep, The Dark Knight (2008) - Yep, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) - Yep, Shrek 2 (2004) - Nope, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Nope, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Yep, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Yep, Spider-Man (2002) - Yep, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) - Yep
So 9 for 10
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#15Wow, I got it totally wrong. When I read this in my RSS, I read "firms" instead of films and I was wondering what all these businesses were doing portraying killing. Then when I read the title correctly on HN, I remembered the graph going downward and thought it was weird that films were showing less killing. I clicked through and was surprised to see that the x-axis was descending chronological order. So now that I…
Certain parts of our society have been rushing headlong toward the ideal infantilization / dis-empowerment of the individual, toward utter dependency on the police and the state for protection from violence, poverty, etc. As a personal connection to self-reliance, self-defense, weapons, firearms, and indeed violence becomes increasingly taboo it also becomes increasingly potent (see also: the draw and power of sex in puritanical society), and thus that much greater of a draw for entertainment.
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#16If you enjoyed this blog post, you might enjoy my travel book for people interested in science and technology: The Geek Atlas
Is that a boilerplate footer for every blog post? Because I didn't really see the connection between gore in movies and the book :)
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#17The lesson taught in almost every movie is that your problems are only permanently solved by the death of your action antagonist. Even kids' movies have this lesson, e.g. A Bug's Life where the bad-guy grasshopper is eaten by a bird. There are few movies where the action antagonist does not die, and these invariably involve morally ambiguous lead characters (e.g. The Dark Knight).
It's shame that more conciliatory outcomes are not considered. And you wonder about youth violence, but if this is the message taught by every film what do you expect?
P.S. counter examples please!
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#18As martijn points out in the comments, no conclusions can be drawn without data about the pool of all movies. If it makes you feel better about the world, actual murders per capita is not significantly higher now than it was in the 1960's; I guess we've all figured out that life lessons don't come from blockbuster movies --- just fun explosions.
> actual murders per capita is not significantly higher now than it was in the 1960's
As of 2010, US murder rates are significantly higher than they were in 1960. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
Violent crime increased significantly in the 60s, 70s and 80s, peaking about 1990. Since then they've dropped somewhat, but we're still at somewhere around 1975 levels.
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#19As martijn points out in the comments, no conclusions can be drawn without data about the pool of all movies. If it makes you feel better about the world, actual murders per capita is not significantly higher now than it was in the 1960's; I guess we've all figured out that life lessons don't come from blockbuster movies --- just fun explosions.
> actual murders per capita is not significantly higher now than it was in the 1960's As of 2010, US murder rates are significantly higher than they were in 1960. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States Violent crime increased significantly in the 60s, 70s and 80s, peaking about 1990. Since then they've dropped somewhat, but we're still at somewhere around 1975 levels.
The actual article you linked to says, "Overall, the crime rate in the U.S. was the same in 2004 as in 1969, with the homicide rate being roughly the same as in 1966." As the subject is the homicide rate, that seems the most relevant datum.
Re: Percentage of top grossing US films by decade that depict killing
#20I think this gets at the distance between US culture, as it were, and the realities of violence. War is not the only source of violence. But it is a big one, which affects the entire culture pretty significantly.
So the 70s correspond to Vietnam. And the 40s correspond to WWII. Today, we also have wars. But we are somehow increasingly disconnected from the realities of what that means.
Anyway, it's a nice chart. But if you ever watch old movies right after WWII (in the 40s, early 50s), you can almost feel the trepidation around anything but those undervalued, safe moral environments. In some ways, it's a more mature audience / understanding -- it's more focused. But because a lot of the country has seen real horrors, it seems like now they crave some kind of careful normalcy (which doesn't have much violence). Perhaps the 70s also had that incentive. A lot of social change and some violence in the late 60s might've prompted it. Or, alternatively, people actually might've believed in non-violence for a while, and that might've stimulated other subjects.
I don't know. But obviously, according to the chart, it's a self-perpetuating phenomenon. So this can be explained by saying that US culture (perhaps increasingly in the form of high grossing films), left to its own status quo momentum, gradually disconnects us from the realities of violence.