I know this won't be popular, but; it is the MENTAL ILLNESS.

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61. my point is that you're wrong about the level of violent fantasy.

i think violent fantasy being such a prevalent part of our entertainment (and violent reality being such a prevalent part of our news) is part of what leads to a higher level of violent expression, mass killings in particular.

if we could somehow lower the level of violent fantasy, i think we would lower the level of violent expression.

i'm not saying i have the answer (far from it) and i'm certainly not in general eager to have the government regulate speech.

but hollywood has gotten completely ridiculous just in terms of bullet counts in movies. it's amazing to go back to an older movie such as butch cassidy and the subdance kid and compare it to, say, terminator or total recall. the body count / bullet count just became nutso at some point.

it has become a crutch for creating thinking in hollywood. earlier movies had comparatively minimal violence end yet were quite entertaining. moreover, the violence wasn't always the glory moment -- perhaps even more important.

consider charles bronson shooting the bad guy at the end of "ten to midnight" or "dirty harry" and his "well do ya? punk?" shooting.
glorious, victorious, justified, dramatic shooting in revenge and justice for the crimes commited by the guy at the wrong end of the gun.

compare this to "the sting", where redford and newman get revenge against a killer not by shooting him but by conning him out of a ton of money. there's violence in the movie (luther gets shot and killed at the beginning) but that's not the glory moment. instead, it's a tragedy that must be avenged.

the different treatment of violence i think has a big impact on how people process and think about violence. a movie like the sting would not be expected to be the cause of violence (cons, sure; but violence, not so much). at least, certainly not to the extent of some of ahhnold's movies.

i certainly think it's quite possible to be thoroughly entertained without violence, or with minimal violence, or with violence that's not glorified. many murder mysteries don't even show the killing; they're all about the hunt and arrest of the killer.