I was inspired to discuss how violence is represented in today’s society by the film Elephant. An important message that Hey Nostradamus! and Elephant both give their audience is how mundane and almost natural violence has become in our society.
In Elephant, the shooters are filmed in a style much like a video game; while the shooter is on the hunt the player sees the back of his head, but while the shooter is about to commit an act of violence, the audience receives a view of the shooter’s face. I believe this is an assertion to how we casually accept much of today’s violence as being “a game.” The way the shooters were taking action was as if what they were doing didn’t really matter. In childhood we often learn that when you’re playing a game, your not “playing for keeps,” I think the shooters were acting in such a way. Rather than interpreting what level of maturity they showed, I think their attitudes about what they were doing reflected how violence in our society has become such a mundane action that we no longer give it the attention or perhaps the fear that it deserves.
The same concept of how natural violence has become in our society is present in Hey Nostradamus! However, Douglas Coupland chose to represent the casualness of violence by connecting it to food. Of all things in society food is one that is often discussed in a mundane manner. We connect food to positive things, and Coupland provides a waking prod when he connects violence in Hey Nostradamus! with food. Jason describes the cafeteria as having “bodies [lay] all around, like Halloween pumpkins smashed on the road on the morning of November first.” (57) Associating violent deaths with food shows how violence has become a commonplace affair in today’s society.
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2 comments:
I very much agree with your opinion. The way I see it, at a certain time in the past, maybe now seen as some sarcastic satire of old movies, images of death in cinema weren't as dramatic as they are now. It just seems like death and violence used to be taken more seriously and little of it was needed to instill fear and shock in people's minds. However we seen in more modern forms of cinema, violence is so commonly seen that not only is the audience somewhat numb to it, but also has certain expectations that come with it, kind of like when you see something so often you create a mental checklist of events that are suppose to occur during an act of violence.
I like how you related violence in today's society to a video game and I totally agree with this. Infact, I relate life as if people were wearing those virtual reality helmets just playing a game as they live their life. Of course, it does not necessarily need to be violent one like most popular video games, but people go through conflicts and have drama in their lives which they must experience. Video games do the same thing. They allow you to experience violent situations that could potentially be real.
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