i don't know what's with me

[piranha]

[there might be spoilers for "the dark knight" and "hot fuzz".)

i tried to relax tonight by watching a movie because i just couldn't concentrate on anything i have to do.

first was the dark knight. such a visual feast. but at some point i just could not stand the joker; it made me physically sick to watch him. undoubtedly that means the actor (so that was heath ledger, huh. damn shame.) gave an excellent performance -- but i turned the movie off.

ok, a comedy was probably a better idea. hot fuzz came highly recommended by the paramour. and it started out well; i do enjoy british humour. the first blast of gore was a bit of a surprise, but also seemed cartoonish. but as the movie goes on, more and more people die in particularly gory ways, and everybody makes fun of the earnest cop who doesn't think these are accidents -- and suddenly it wasn't funny to me anymore. and i turned it off as well.

i've never much been for blood and gore, but in cartoon contexts i can usually watch it without being affected. i'm not sure what it's getting to me so badly tonight

... *ponders* ...

you know, i don't think it was the gore. it was the callous cruelty in both cases. the joker is insane and derives pleasure from torturing his victims. and the people of standford village, at the point at which i turned it off, killed for the most banal reasons, which is probably also an indication of insanity. killing for pleasure. killing just because one can.

that's not relaxing. that's as bad as real life, where people in power make up no more believable reasons for why we have to wage wars. killing because they can.

i should maybe stick to anime. that's so unrealistic that there is no connection with what i see on the news.

Comments

[ceri]

It's definitely not just you. There are big swathes of stuff I can no longer watch or read with pleasure because they evoke the real horrors of late, and suggest to me how it is that art and craft numb us so that we're susceptible to moral corruption when it comes our way.

[serene]

I hated The Dark Knight. It wasn't noir or edgy to me -- it was *grim*.

(Didn't make it through Hot Fuzz; while I'm a Simon Pegg fan, it just wasn't funny to me at all.)

[matthewdaly]

You didn't miss anything at the end of TDK, especially if you weren't enjoying what Heath Ledger was doing. That whole theme that only morally depraved people have the drive to realize their dreams was, to use Serene's word, grim. So not why I want to watch a superhero movie, y'know? There was one brief moment of awesome towards the end, but the hack director was driven to telegraph it. All right, Morgan Freeman was awesome through the whole thing.

This is pretty much why I've given up on television. Horrid people being unnecessarily mean to each other, in both scripted and unscripted shows ... why do I want to soak my brain in that?