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I found many movies (war, horror) unwatchable after having been in combat. People do die in some of the worst ways. Their last moments will make you shudder to

I found many movies (war, horror) unwatchable after having been in combat. People do die in some of the worst ways. Their last moments will make you shudder to think about. I don’t find pleasure in, and I look down upon those who enjoy, terrible death/torture scenes. Some scenes in games are too much for sure, but there are far more horror scenes that I think never should have been made and have no place as entertainment in civil society. I do not understand how people watch that stuff.

nugator 7y ago
I think those who enjoy that kind of scenes are very distanced to it (not making a connection to reality). I totally understand you since you've been in combat and relates entertainment violence to real violence. I've gotten changed after having kids. Watching kids suffer hurts my heart and seeing adults suffer can cause me to see them as someones grown up kids. There is (most often) a view you can have on violence that causes empathy.
malvosenior 7y ago
One point of view is that it's important for people who have not been in combat to see these things. It makes war less abstract and educates people on what the reality of combat is like.
- Insanity 7y ago
  A counter-argument is that it romanticizes / glorifies it. They don't get the reality because that's about impossible (or makes for a depressing movie).
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I think both are true. In a parallel comment, 'majos mentions Saving Private Ryan. Watching it as a kid, the Normandy landing scene shook me deeply, and it was the turning moment for me, when things I was learning in history classes at school suddenly stopped being abstract stories. Since then, I've seen countless on-screen deaths, many of them successfully pulling off romanticizing & glorification of killing. Both the "Private Ryan" scenes and the "romanticizing combat" scenes look superficially similar in terms of gore, but the context matters a lot. Upthread, 'stevenwoo mentions the "killing villagers" Warcraft 3 mission. I played that mission back in the days, and reading about it now reminded me of the feelings of disgust I had. The details of this mission cleanly communicated the killing as an immoral act - as opposed to the exact same animations being shown when you play the game against a computer or human player, outside campaign mode, and happen to attack your enemy's base (AFAIR those villagers in campaign used the same, or similar, model as Human Peon unit in the game). IMO it's clear that it's the context which frames acts of violence that can make them a lesson in empathy or a glorification of brutality. It's not about the violent acts themselves. (ETA: I also played the Modern Warfare's airport massacre mission. Didn't fire a single shot towards the civilians. Ended up being thoroughly shaken, disgusted, and wishing I didn't play it at all.)
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    Violent crime statistics are at historic lows. I don't think it's possible to attribute 100% of that to violent video games giving people a chance to vent, but I suspect it plays some role.
    - Insanity 7y ago
      Yeah not entirely sure how this relates to my comment, but I agree with you :)
- majos 7y ago
  I have heard this argument before. I think there are some works of art that do "make war real" -- Saving Private Ryan viscerally portrayed how chaotic and horrible fighting is, in a way that made any kind of heroism seem oddly small in comparison. But I think most violent art instead aims for that apparently very popular mixture of disgust and titillation. For example, there are various scenes (for which I've read descriptions, not watched) in Game of Thrones that make me seriously question the state of a culture where this is extremely popular entertainment. And I do not buy the idea that these scenes force people into sober contemplation of the way mortality yokes us all together. But I strongly dislike violence more realistic than, say, the Avengers, so I'm biased here.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    It can also be just mindless entertainment. Media is going to range the spectrum from quality to schlock. Meaningful to mindless. Not everything has to be appropriate or entertaining to all audiences. > For example, there are various scenes (for which I've read descriptions, not watched) in Game of Thrones that make me seriously question the state of a culture where this is extremely popular entertainment > But I strongly dislike violence more realistic than, say, the Avengers, so I'm biased here. Yes, I would say you have a much stronger than average aversion to violence, and that's ok! Just so long as you recognize that same freedom of choice in others.
  - teh_infallible 7y ago
    I think the phrase you’re looking for is “violence porn”
- watwut 7y ago
  Yeah, but that would require different filmaking. War and horror movies made for entertainment pretend to criticize violence, but mostly glorify war presence and makes you wanna be soldier or hero. It is possible to make war movie that feels bad, but generally they tend to be obscure (as you wont watch it for fun).
- int_19h 7y ago
  FWIW, today, if you want to see what real modern combat is actually like, just go to YouTube and type "combat helmet cam". It's nothing like any movie.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Its mostly people who have self-worth problems, and as in combat the ultimate wager is ones own life, they love to see a situation where everything is crystall-clear for once- where there actions have meaning and the outcome is a purposefull life, even when it ends. Of course this is naive- and deep down they know. So they strife to replicate "realism" like moths longing for the real fire to fly towards. Oh, meaningless new world, which holds such braves.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Completely agree. As an EMT I've seen some grisly stuff IRL. In the moment it doesn't bother me -- probably because I'm there to try to fix the problem rather than to inflict it. But I have absolutely no interest in violent video games and cannot fathom why they're popular.
wutbrodo 7y ago
I've never been in combat and have had very little exposure to physical violence, but I stopped being able to watch war movies and even many action moves without feeling terrible at some point in college[1]. Most violent war/action movies and shows do their best to dehumanize the anonymous men that the "good guys" slaughter, but for whatever reason it stopped working on me, and I can't/don't want to turn back on the part of me that, when I was younger, was so casually capable of such dehumanization. (I'm aware that the characters are often fictional, but unless you think you'd be a fan of watching someone depict a torture or rape, it doesn't much affect the logic I'm using). (There are also plenty of exceptions, where the violence isn't trivialized and the horror is central to the point; Watching a movie like _The Act of Killing_ is far from escapism) > I do not understand how people watch that stuff. Frankly, most people have a grossly stunted sense of empathy, with exceptions only for those things that they have firsthand life experience with. An instructive contrast is media depictions of sexual violence against women: for a couple of decades, there has been a concerted effort to decry media depictions of violence against women (sexual or otherwise) that are perceived as unnecessary or trivializing. The success of these campaigns is to be lauded, but what they reveal about how empathy-bankrupt monsters most people are is sort of chilling: people en masse can be taught to play-act empathy by rote if it's drilled into their head that a particular case is no longer socially acceptable, but they don't seem to be capable (en masse) of practicing the skill of empathy itself. For anyone who watches Game of Thrones: Compare the huge outcry against the depiction of Sansa's marital rape to _an entire season_ of infinitely more gruesome torture porn by the same perpetrator against a male victim, which included genital mutilation. Despite being a far more egregious and lengthy display of gratuitous and stomach-turning violence, the latter caused no backlash whatsoever, and is in fact still fodder for jokes about Game of Thrones-themed foods ("Theon's Flayed Sausage"), including from publications like Huffington Post which were some of the loudest complainants about how unforgivable the former scene was. TL;DR: It's not a particularly popular opinion, but most people are far more depraved and far less capable of basic human empathy than even their own ostensible moral standards would imply. Like you, I can't _relate_ to how people watch that stuff, but I can definitely _understand_ it.
dorkwood 7y ago
I’ve gone through a similar transformation just by getting older, I think. As a kid I’d play violent video games and my mother would get upset, claiming that I was becoming desensitized to violence. But I think it might actually be the other way around: kids lack sensitivity to begin with because they don’t have any context for the violence they’re enacting. As you get older and death starts to feel more real, the idea of a WW2 combat simulator, for example, begins to feel a bit tasteless.

nugator 7y ago

I think those who enjoy that kind of scenes are very distanced to it (not making a connection to reality). I totally understand you since you've been in combat and relates entertainment violence to real violence. I've gotten changed after having kids. Watching kids suffer hurts my heart and seeing adults suffer can cause me to see them as someones grown up kids. There is (most often) a view you can have on violence that causes empathy.

malvosenior 7y ago

One point of view is that it's important for people who have not been in combat to see these things. It makes war less abstract and educates people on what the reality of combat is like.

Insanity 7y ago
A counter-argument is that it romanticizes / glorifies it. They don't get the reality because that's about impossible (or makes for a depressing movie).
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I think both are true. In a parallel comment, 'majos mentions Saving Private Ryan. Watching it as a kid, the Normandy landing scene shook me deeply, and it was the turning moment for me, when things I was learning in history classes at school suddenly stopped being abstract stories. Since then, I've seen countless on-screen deaths, many of them successfully pulling off romanticizing & glorification of killing. Both the "Private Ryan" scenes and the "romanticizing combat" scenes look superficially similar in terms of gore, but the context matters a lot. Upthread, 'stevenwoo mentions the "killing villagers" Warcraft 3 mission. I played that mission back in the days, and reading about it now reminded me of the feelings of disgust I had. The details of this mission cleanly communicated the killing as an immoral act - as opposed to the exact same animations being shown when you play the game against a computer or human player, outside campaign mode, and happen to attack your enemy's base (AFAIR those villagers in campaign used the same, or similar, model as Human Peon unit in the game). IMO it's clear that it's the context which frames acts of violence that can make them a lesson in empathy or a glorification of brutality. It's not about the violent acts themselves. (ETA: I also played the Modern Warfare's airport massacre mission. Didn't fire a single shot towards the civilians. Ended up being thoroughly shaken, disgusted, and wishing I didn't play it at all.)
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Violent crime statistics are at historic lows. I don't think it's possible to attribute 100% of that to violent video games giving people a chance to vent, but I suspect it plays some role.
  - Insanity 7y ago
    Yeah not entirely sure how this relates to my comment, but I agree with you :)
majos 7y ago
I have heard this argument before. I think there are some works of art that do "make war real" -- Saving Private Ryan viscerally portrayed how chaotic and horrible fighting is, in a way that made any kind of heroism seem oddly small in comparison. But I think most violent art instead aims for that apparently very popular mixture of disgust and titillation. For example, there are various scenes (for which I've read descriptions, not watched) in Game of Thrones that make me seriously question the state of a culture where this is extremely popular entertainment. And I do not buy the idea that these scenes force people into sober contemplation of the way mortality yokes us all together. But I strongly dislike violence more realistic than, say, the Avengers, so I'm biased here.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  It can also be just mindless entertainment. Media is going to range the spectrum from quality to schlock. Meaningful to mindless. Not everything has to be appropriate or entertaining to all audiences. > For example, there are various scenes (for which I've read descriptions, not watched) in Game of Thrones that make me seriously question the state of a culture where this is extremely popular entertainment > But I strongly dislike violence more realistic than, say, the Avengers, so I'm biased here. Yes, I would say you have a much stronger than average aversion to violence, and that's ok! Just so long as you recognize that same freedom of choice in others.
- teh_infallible 7y ago
  I think the phrase you’re looking for is “violence porn”
watwut 7y ago
Yeah, but that would require different filmaking. War and horror movies made for entertainment pretend to criticize violence, but mostly glorify war presence and makes you wanna be soldier or hero. It is possible to make war movie that feels bad, but generally they tend to be obscure (as you wont watch it for fun).
int_19h 7y ago
FWIW, today, if you want to see what real modern combat is actually like, just go to YouTube and type "combat helmet cam". It's nothing like any movie.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

Its mostly people who have self-worth problems, and as in combat the ultimate wager is ones own life, they love to see a situation where everything is crystall-clear for once- where there actions have meaning and the outcome is a purposefull life, even when it ends. Of course this is naive- and deep down they know. So they strife to replicate "realism" like moths longing for the real fire to fly towards. Oh, meaningless new world, which holds such braves.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Completely agree. As an EMT I've seen some grisly stuff IRL. In the moment it doesn't bother me -- probably because I'm there to try to fix the problem rather than to inflict it. But I have absolutely no interest in violent video games and cannot fathom why they're popular.

wutbrodo 7y ago

I've never been in combat and have had very little exposure to physical violence, but I stopped being able to watch war movies and even many action moves without feeling terrible at some point in college[1]. Most violent war/action movies and shows do their best to dehumanize the anonymous men that the "good guys" slaughter, but for whatever reason it stopped working on me, and I can't/don't want to turn back on the part of me that, when I was younger, was so casually capable of such dehumanization. (I'm aware that the characters are often fictional, but unless you think you'd be a fan of watching someone depict a torture or rape, it doesn't much affect the logic I'm using). (There are also plenty of exceptions, where the violence isn't trivialized and the horror is central to the point; Watching a movie like _The Act of Killing_ is far from escapism) > I do not understand how people watch that stuff. Frankly, most people have a grossly stunted sense of empathy, with exceptions only for those things that they have firsthand life experience with. An instructive contrast is media depictions of sexual violence against women: for a couple of decades, there has been a concerted effort to decry media depictions of violence against women (sexual or otherwise) that are perceived as unnecessary or trivializing. The success of these campaigns is to be lauded, but what they reveal about how empathy-bankrupt monsters most people are is sort of chilling: people en masse can be taught to play-act empathy by rote if it's drilled into their head that a particular case is no longer socially acceptable, but they don't seem to be capable (en masse) of practicing the skill of empathy itself. For anyone who watches Game of Thrones: Compare the huge outcry against the depiction of Sansa's marital rape to _an entire season_ of infinitely more gruesome torture porn by the same perpetrator against a male victim, which included genital mutilation. Despite being a far more egregious and lengthy display of gratuitous and stomach-turning violence, the latter caused no backlash whatsoever, and is in fact still fodder for jokes about Game of Thrones-themed foods ("Theon's Flayed Sausage"), including from publications like Huffington Post which were some of the loudest complainants about how unforgivable the former scene was. TL;DR: It's not a particularly popular opinion, but most people are far more depraved and far less capable of basic human empathy than even their own ostensible moral standards would imply. Like you, I can't _relate_ to how people watch that stuff, but I can definitely _understand_ it.

dorkwood 7y ago

I’ve gone through a similar transformation just by getting older, I think. As a kid I’d play violent video games and my mother would get upset, claiming that I was becoming desensitized to violence. But I think it might actually be the other way around: kids lack sensitivity to begin with because they don’t have any context for the violence they’re enacting. As you get older and death starts to feel more real, the idea of a WW2 combat simulator, for example, begins to feel a bit tasteless.