Old or new, still has an effect

I have been taking a look at the way the media can effect a person's behaviour, and when I was watching an older movie the other day, I realized that no matter how old the movie is, there are still scenes that can affect you. Really, in the end, it has to do with the content of the scene, rather than the graphic nature of it. For example, in the movie Charade, which was made in 1936, there are no scenes of violence, by today's standards, but the dead bodies still have a disturbing effect. Most memorably, the two that have to deal with the types of death that scare me most - suffocation and drowning. There is not very much outright violence, but instead, the absence of violence itself is disturbing. When you see violence in a movie anymore, you assume that someone is about to die. When there is no violence, but suddenly a dead body appears in the next room, I find it even more disturbing. In that way, I feel like the older movies did it right - the absence of extreme real violence makes it harder to become desensitized to the violent images portrayed by our society.

I think this is interesting, because in the same vein, when I watch a movie like Casino Royale or Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the violence is more realistic, but for some reason less effective. In Casino Royale,the only two sections that especially bother me involves the torture scene, and the drowning scene at the end, in spite of the fact that there are multiple scenes that are more graphic than that. Shootings take place, things blow up, and the opening credits include Bond completing his first mission - to kill someone connected with the main plot. The whole point of Casino Royale is to kill people for information, to get ahead, to find out things for the "good" of the government or the people.

In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the violence is realistic, but the situation is much less so. Spousal abuse seldom ends in a marriage working out. When Mr. and Mrs. Smith show violence towards each other, you'd think that the show of spousal violance would turn you off to the movie altogether, but oddly it somehow has the completely different effect. It glorifies violence and sex, and puts them together in a way that makes it attractive, and does not appear at all wrong. They portray violence in an attractive manner, which is similar to Casino Royale - everyone wants to be Bond, or a secret agent, but no one thinks of the consequences or the things that you would actually have to do in order to have that profession.

In conclusion, I think the public overall is being desensitized to violence in general, but there are still some images which will bother people all the time. I always am bothered by the scenes I mentioned, and will continue to be no matter how many times I watch the movies, because I am bothered by the topics portrayed by them.