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"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep" |
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12/08/02 Utter and Overhyped B.S. To compare the decision to kill another human being with the decision to change your shoes or to recite a catch phrase is absolutely absurd. I think it's relatively safe to say that the decision to kill someone would weigh on the average person's mind a bit more than choosing between plaids and stripes. (I'm not being overly optimistic here, am I?) For those of you who don't sit around reading literary theory on Saturday nights (ahem), there is a device first formulated by a Russian dude named Shklovsky around 1916, called defamiliarization. Which is, essentially a technique of making the familiar unfamiliar. Shklovsky argued that we cannot continually experience objects or events in the same way we did the first time. Example: We all know that people get robbed, raped, and murdered in places like East St. Louis and Cabrini Greens. So how does an author, script writer, director, etc. present these situations so that the audience feels the impact? How does s/he keep them from yawning, "Yeah, so?"? S/he keeps the audience's attention by breaking the event down, and taking the audience through it detail by minute detail. In essence then, the artist is re-sensitizing the audience to the gruesome realities of these acts. If you still believe that the script writer or director of The Matrix, or Reservoir Dogs, or whatever should be held responsible when somebody twists off and starts offing people, then what about the Bible? What about the Koran (Qur'an)? What about all the Sacred Texts that various individuals have cited to justify their violent actions? Can we really blame these texts? Obviously there are differences between the majority of those who follow the Qur'an or the Bible, and the fundamentalist, cowardly asshole terrorists. Why? Because of interpretation. Something people have been studying (hermeneutics) since the origin of the sacred texts. So, if we do not blame the Qur'an for 9/11 how can we possibly blame Stephen King's Rage or Apt Pupil for events like Columbine?
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