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The 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 ou…
I 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…
Big 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) - Ye…
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) - YepThere, I drew my own conclusion. Provided the data is true.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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) - Ye…
I count 8: 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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Edit: The year 2005 was overall the safest year in the past thirty years.
PS: You can get an idea based on the % of serial rapist victims that report at a later date, but that's extremely unreliable.
The 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 ou…
The facts don't bear this out, despite how often it's repeated. Real world violence is not proportional to violence in movies (or video games for that matter).
Wow, 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…
So seeing that in reverse I was like "Well because we have more family and less Rated R movies nowadays that are blockbusters". Even rated R movies are not the same as the top grossing one is 'Passion of the Christ'.
Not sure what is worse graphs with time in the wrong direction or that more family movies are being made now with killing in them.
It'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)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Face_(film)
Sex and violence are not some kind of radical new idea. The shape of the OP's graph is almost certainly caused by the censors of the mid-20th century.