Today's Topics:
I'll suuuuuuueeeeeeee.........
Romanticizing violence
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Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 12:33:56 -0400
From: Eric Haines <erich@eye.com>
Message-Id: <9307131633.AA05706@hemlock>
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: I'll suuuuuuueeeeeeee.........
Newsgroups: clari.news.trouble,clari.news.canada
Subject: Lawyer testing high-rise window plunges to death
TORONTO (UPI) -- Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety
of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with
his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death.
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Message-Id: <9307131650.AA11276@jekyll.ccv>
To: subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Romanticizing violence
In-Reply-To: <9307131153.AA00512@spam.prl.dec.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 17:50:32 +0100
From: Jean-Alain Le Borgne <jalb@ccv.fr>
> > I have read that the years 1940-45 were particularly
> > violent. So the experiment involves taking those
> > years, as one block of time, and the years 1935-40,
> > and 1945-50 as two other blocks of time.
> >
> > Then what we need to do is look at each year within
> > those three blocks and compare each years tv programs
> > with the amount of violence during those times.
>
> Notwithstanding the joke about ancient tv practices, I'd like to make a more
> serious observation.
>
> In fact, during the war -- in the interests of "public morale" (i.e. keeping
> people lined up behind the effort) -- there was very strict censorship about
> what was shown in newsreels back home. With no dead (at least American)
> bodies, no outright blood and gore, etc. what people saw was indeed a very
> sanitized version of what was actually happening on the battlefield.
>
> This comes from Paul Fussel's articles (which appeared in the New Republic)
> about the distance between his experiences as a soldier in the Pacific and
> the public perception of combat. He was making the point that people's
> notions about war -- in particular World War II as "the good war" --
> are far too romantic because of this censorship.
>
> One way of illustrating this point was his revelation that (one of?) the
> leading causes of injury amongst American soldiers was flying body
> parts from
> exploding colleagues...
>
> [Another good reason to keep your poodle out of the micro-wave.]
>
> -Chris
Right. Romanticizing violence is no way to show war to people. They
thinks it's all smooth and easy, and it's not. It's hard and ugly,
but they may find out that it's worth it... Instead, they should
advertise the good soldier's life, late 20th century style, when the
war is long enough, when money and everything lacks, when people enter
the "everyday survival" mode: follow an intensive program and gain
skills in killing, raping, torturing, robbing, smuggling, while
avoiding being killed, raped, tortured, robbed, or ripped off. You
also get a top-level practical training in hard drugs, power abuse and
corruption.
That looks like an excellent school for the kind of business needed in
the coming depression, not to mention the growing ghetto market, and
the always available import-export activity with the third world. If
there's not enough local manpower, we'll have to hire Russian
gangsters as advisors: there'll be plenty of them.
[jalb]
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End of Subgenius Digest
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