Saturday, January 17, 2004

Bonecrker #17 - Movies Desensitize Social Problems

.Movies try to manipulate the public by selectively showing the people and their lives. The idea here is to desensitize people, a little at a time. What they never show is the truth. The issues these movies attempt to minimalize all have one thing in common; they strip away the humanity of the people stupid enough to get involved in those situations. They no longer think like you and me. Nothing is off limits to them and they regularly engage in extremely evil behavior. The best way I can describe the way they view the world is as a big fish eating a smaller fish, which is eating an even smaller fish. Their whole way of looking at the world is looking for possible victims while constantly trying to get away from people trying to victimize them. Do not under any circumstances ever turn your back on someone like this. They can and will put a knife in your back.

A real life example: I once worked inpatient with some kid that got picked up for crack cocaine use, truancy and was given a separate diagnosis of depression. He was forced to be clean while in the program and he seemed like a nice, relatively normal kid... doing all the right things to get his life back on track. Four days after being released from his court ordered rehab, this fucker threw his mother through a plate glass window, killing her, because she wouldn't let him take money from her purse to buy more crack. This is the truth of drug use that you never see in movies. The only one I ever saw that was even close was Menace to Society, and that movie was trying to glorify that behavior. And it worked to. I'll never forget going to see that movie in a black neighbourhood. There was a scene where the protagonist murders a Korean store owner. It was both horrible and accurately showed how the average criminal sets up his victim. The entire theatre minus one, burst into laughter during that scene. Several people had little kids with them. I don't live there anymore.
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Further Reading:

Bonecrcker #142 – Buffy & Xena

Bonecrcker #164 – The Media Is Being Used Against Us
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The Fine Art of TV Repair