Salon.com: The successful launch of “Westworld,” a series set in a Wild-West resort populated by robots, has revived a decades-old argument about onscreen violence. The premise of the series, which is based on a 1973 movie written and directed by Michael Crichton, involves people coming to a park to have their way — in any way they want — with its robot “hosts.”
“Westworld” could become HBO’s biggest new show since the launch of “Game of Thrones,” the blockbuster fantasy series that has also drawn criticism for graphic violence, much of it directed against women.
3 comments:
Here we go again, “think of the children”, for fucks sake. Of all the depictions of violence in our culture Game of Thrones and Westworld are almost certainly the worst depictions to pick on. Game of thrones has been one of the more violent TV shows in a while. It also is thematically, like Westworld, about how violence negatively affects our lives. Like that is literally the entire point of making these shows is that they tell a story that reflects how the nasty parts of human nature inhibit and hurt us. I for one think it is incredibly immature as a country that we should pretend these issues aren’t important, or that they aren’t as real as these TV shows depict. The affects violence has in these shows is utterly devastating. It’s not like they proclaim that violence is the answer to all our questions. They show the cost of war and speak to our natural ability to dehumanize others and how that weakens us individually and as a culture.
I think that like John said, Westworld and Game of Thrones are terrible examples of "mindless violence" on television. Both shows are written to exemplify how violence can ruin the world around us. George R.R. Martin is heavily anti-war, and uses excess violence to show how a society can destroy itself, with almost every warrior or heinously violent character having already died. And Westworld is a criticism on society's indulgence in violent media to feel alive. Game of Thrones is much more violent than other shows on television and Westworld, but I doubt that if Game of Thrones simply had senseless violence and lacked the complex story it has, it wouldn't have been a hit. The violence is not the point in either, but a theme and a criticism.
And seriously, I doubt that violence increases when people watch people on television shoot robots. Remember when we used to watch criminals get publicly hanged and we put our dead in the streets? I feel like fake movie violence committed to fantasy creatures and robots isn't as bad as that. So let's all cool it. Do I think sometimes HBO overindulges on its sex and violence when it doesn't need it? Yes, but I don't think it's harming anything.
This article encompasses the age old struggle of does violence on screen cause violence in real life. Some people argue that if people see violence on screens, TV, movies, or vied games, they are more likely to commit violent acts in real life. This article brought up a good point, that this argument is typically a generational thing. The older generation wasn’t accustomed to seeing violence in media and they experienced the increase of violence in our pop culture in real time. They seem to be more opposed to this increase of violence because they knew a time where the violence on screen wasn’t there and I think it is just the argument that they don’t like the change to our culture landscape. Like the article stated, there is no scientific proof that says that watching violence on screens in different forms lead to an in increase violence in the views life. Therefor, the claim that some people hold about violence is incorrect as of now because there is no prof that there is a correlation between these things.
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