Culture Shock

The past week has been a rough one on the world. We were all just getting accustomed to bombs falling on Yugoslavia when two very troubled kids decided to take the lives of their schoolmates in Colorado.

Sadly, as is always the case in instances like this, the media has taken it upon themselves to dissect and decipher the riddles left behind by the killers. They talk about how they were members of a gang called the Trenchcoat Mafia, how they were obsessed with Hitler and the Third Reich, and how they watched violent movies, listened to violent music and played violent video games.

The sad truth is, that these kids had problems long before they ever sat in front of a television to watch The Basketball Diaries, and that Doom was no more real to them than it is to the rest of us. These kids were typical outcast teenagers. Spurned by their peers, they turned toward the small group of outcasts they could call friends. Rage and hate took over their thought processes, and they became obsessed with the one thing they knew could leave a mark. Violence.

Psychologists and so-called "experts" will go on for years about how a violent culture is what created these kids. A culture which doesn't care when its kids are exposed to violent images in their recreational activities. Everything from wrestling to Die Hard to Mortal Kombat will be blamed, and it will all be wrong.

Violence has always been around. The difference here is the shear magnitude of the violence. These kids came up with a plan, obtained weapons, built bombs, and went on a rampage. This is shocking to everybody. Of course it's shocking, after all, they're just kids.

But if violent images on television and in movies were really to blame, wouldn't the world be overrun with instances like this? Wouldn't this be the rule, rather than the exception?

Japanese culture is inundanted with violent images. Violent movies, television shows and video games are the norm there, yet violent crime is incredibly low, especially given the population and population density in the country.

Violent images in the media can trigger a violent response from a small percentage of people, but quite frankly there was something else wrong in the first place. It's a ridiculous ascertain to expect the 99.99% of the people who can separate reality from fantasy to avoid violent imagery because of the .01% of people who can't take it. It's like banning all alcohol because an alcoholic may obtain some, or banning automobiles because some people don't know how to drive. Yes, it would protect society, but at what cost to freedom? If a society doesn't have its freedoms, then what's left?

People have to stop looking for an easy solution and probe more deeply into the problem.

When I was in high school, I was one of the people who was spurned by his peers. I grew up in a small mining community filled with rednecks who didn't care one iota about other people's feelings. I was attacked, physically and emotionally, several times a day for five years (high school where I grew up encompassed grades 8-12), and the so-called authority figures in the school did nothing even though they knew this situation was happening. I suspect this situation is not so different from the one in Colorado.

My parents did not and do not understand what happened to me during those years. I suspect they never will. I've attempted to explain it to them, but to no avail. Quite frankly, they don't get it...or maybe they don't WANT to get it. Either way, the only thing I can say, is that they weren't any help. I suspect this also is not so different from the situation in Colorado.

When I was in a high school, I would definitely say I was "troubled". I was lucky enough to make it through it, because for me their was always a light at the end of the tunnel (I called it "graduation"). If there was no light, I honestly can't say what could have happened. People can only be pushed so far before they snap.

These kids were outcasts in a place they had to go to every day. Imagine, if you will, going to your job every day, and facing intense amounts of ridicule, being attacked, and being expected to just "deal with it". Try it for a few years, and see how it twists your view of society.

I see all these kids who are "victims" of the shooting talking on television about how nobody liked those guys because they were weird, and they weren't social at all. I even saw one of the "jocks" offer up a hypothesis that these kids were jealous because they didn't get as much attention as the football team. None of these kids get it. Don't get me wrong, the kids who were shot and tortured are definitely the victims here, but what nobody seems to be pointing out is that the shooters were definitely victims as well, and the true healing process cannot begin until this is realized. Until we have an education system which is less like a prison, where people are forced to go there and "do their time" every day, we can expect more outbreaks like this. We've all been teenagers, and everyone has felt like an outcast at one time or another. Combine the two, and we're just asking for trouble.

In an interesting bit of irony, these two kids were outcasts in life, and at the memorial service the other day, they became outcasts in death. Thirteen doves were released in Littleton during that memorial service, two short of the total number of deaths that day. For me, the two shooters are the saddest deaths of all, because had someone taken the time to talk to these kids even a few days before, this whole tragedy could've been avoided. The day after the shootings happened, one of their friends was on CNN talking about what it was like to be an outcast. Two other friends of theirs essentially begged for mercy at a memorial service. After everything that's happened, they all still feel like outcasts. I know it's not "politically correct" to side with these "evil" people, but how evil can people this young REALLY be? What are the real lessons to be learned here? And, the deadliest question of all, is anyone learning them?

Of course, I still haven't gotten to another real problem as well. Access to guns in the United States is ridiculously easy. Until there is some real gun control legislation, and something is really done to keep guns away from kids, expect more violence. No other developed country in the world has as much violent crime as the United States of America. No country has as many deaths from gunshot wounds as the United States of America. Quite frankly, the statistics don't lie. Canada has roughly 10% of the population of the United States. Canada has roughly 1% of the violent crime. I'm not saying Canada is perfect (far from it, 1% is still too much violent crime), but there are fewer murders in a year in Toronto than there are in a day in Washington, D.C. The NRA can claim that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" all they want. Quite frankly, the evidence shows that people kill people WITH GUNS. A gun is a remote control for someone else's life, and in this society of fast fix, easy out, channel surfing information overload, guns are a huge risk.

For those of you who are in high school (or younger, even), and are reading, take a step back, and think about how you've treated others in the past few years. Put yourself in their shoes, and if you don't like it, follow every good mother's advice..."do unto others as you would have done unto yourself". It's easy to blame violent media for violence in society, it's hard to look at ourselves and put the blame where it belongs.

OK...time to lighten up a bit.

Once again, nobody got last week's quote. I must be making them too hard. The quote was from Trainspotting, when Ewan MacGregor's character is just getting over a bad case of heroin-induced constipation. It's followed by one of the most imaginative scenes in film history, "the Worst Toilet in Scotland". If you haven't seen the film, rent it, it's unlike anything you've ever seen before. It dares to show why people take drugs in the first place...because it feels good...without skimping on the downsides as well.

This week, I'll make the quote a little easier...

Worker #1: "Oh no! I'm lost! Where's the line? What do I do?" Worker #2: "Help!" Worker #3 "We'll be stuck forever!"

I'll keep it even easier...the names of the actors in this case is irrelevant, all I want is the name of the movie. First one to email it to me at ken@dvdfuture.com gets his or her name in pixels next week.

On the subject of trailers, I received a few responses from readers. One from David Teasdale went something like so, "My HUGE complaint is when you rent a VHS video and there is a preview before the movie for the sound track that turns out to be the movie's trailer but with clips of the artist in the middle. It gives the movie away."

This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. Several times when I've rented tapes on VHS, they've had music videos, or previews or some kind of spoiler right before the movie. I remember my Independence Day widescreen VHS had a making-of feature right before the movie. It revealed several key plot points, and if I hadn't seen the movie already, would've completely spoiled the experience.

I also received some email from Jason Huff in regards to trailers. I disagreed with some of his viewpoints, but that's OK. In regard to the best trailer for the worst movie, he said, "THE FIFTH ELEMENT - This trailer had me rockin' and rollin' in what looked like a fantastic new world. It also contained no plot points and very few spoilers. Unfortunately, the movie was ruined by the obnoxious comedy (of which the trailer had only perhaps a glimpse) and the cheese inherent to the plot."

I absolutely loved The Fifth Element, and found it to be a great science fiction-comedy-action movie. A nice hybrid which clipped along at a great pace. The studio also did a great job with the video and audio transfer on the DVD. I would have to agree that the trailer was great, too. Of course, it's the movie which we disagree on.

When Jason talked about the worst movie trailers, one of the ones he picked was Home Fries. "This is a very entertaining, quirky black comedy of a film. People who went to see it because of the trailer were thrown for a loop, however. Using every last second of loveydovey in the film,. the trailer totally mismarkets the film as a sweet romantic comedy. It missed its target audience by a mile and made very little money as a result."

I would certainly agree that Home Fries missed its target audience by a mile, but the trailer was far from the only problem. See my review of the DVD to get the full picture, but quite frankly, not only did the marketing department not know what this film was, neither did the filmmakers. If really into black comedy, see The War of the Roses, Happiness or Very Bad Things. Now THAT's black comedy. No cream, no sugar.

My favorite comment of Jason's though, was the following: "WING COMMANDER - If you don't have the money to display on special effects, don't bring out the bad ones you do have for all the world to see. A more effective trailer for this movie would have been a single man standing there alone, yelling, 'Hey! Come see WING COMMANDER! You'll get to see the second PHANTOM MENACE trailer!' (Come to think of it, you could advertise a lot of movies like that.)"

This one cracked me up, because it's incredibly true. I'm a huge fan of the Wing Commander games (have been since a waaaaay back when Wing Commander I came out on floppy disk), but absolutely avoided this movie. I have no doubt I'll end up seeing it, probably when the DVD comes out, but I know right now that I'll be disappointed. I'm hoping at best for a movie which is so bad that it becomes a classic "B" movie (like Plan 9 From Outer Space).

I'm still looking for some more interesting trailer commentary, so send those views in! Also, don't forget the quote of the week...trust me, it's not that hard this week...

Until next time, escape into another world...catch a flick, read a book, whatever it takes for you to escape harsh reality. It's been a rough week for the world, time to take a little break.