Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Surpised By My Callousness
I was watching "The Departed" a couple weeks ago and the thought struck me: "Why am I not disgusted by this violence? When did I get so comfortable with seeing a dead body fall off a roof?" Wasn't Israel rebuked over and over again for their violent ways? It bothers me that violence is something to which my heart has been calloused. Jesus wept over Lazarus and was able to reverse the curse. I go to movies to see it. I remember in my media class (one of my favorites which is why I remember anything) how the prof. spoke of "glorified violence" in movies and TV shows. That is rather telling I think. We do glorify violence. I find myself euphemizing violence by calling it "action." I will walk out of a movie and complain that it did not have enough "action." What I really mean is that not enough people were lit up with bullets to satisfy me. I'll turn my head (if God is gracious) if there's a scantily clad woman but violence somehow has lost its effect on me. I guess I'm just way to comfortable with death. Jesus wasn't. It hit him hard. He felt the weight of the death that had ruined the world he had created. Right now I'm planning on seeing "Live Free or Die Hard" which inevitably will be chalked full of head shots and hand grenades and I'm thinking about how hypocritical I am for writing this. I need a changed heart and I guess that starts through prayer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Funny, I'm the opposite. Scantily clad women just don't have that much of an impact on me.
Seriously- that movie made me feel very perplexed as well because I came out of the theater saying, "good movie" but feeling a little like I needed to vomit or weep. I think with movies it just depends on how invested in the characters you can become. If you are firmly in reality and therefore realizing that those people are obviously still alive it's not that disturbing that they're dead. But if you enter into the story and realize that those characters can represent a real person I think what happens to them becomes a lot more upsetting. At least, that's how it works for me.
Post a Comment