20th entry – an extra one

On our last skills development seminar we were given an article about the German government considering outlawing paintball after a school mass murder. It wasn’t the first time, as I recall, when German politicians were acting very funny; it’s about obvious that they just don’t care what they are going to ban to reassure the public after such an incident and before the elections. But then, we were asked what could be done about those mass murders performed by students, and I guess there are some things definitely to be banned, thinking about prevention.

I’ve found two major problems regarding violence in entertainment, but I’m not sure which one is the more dangerous. The older one is the issue of popular action movies. In order to sell them year after year, you have to make the action more violent, the gory scenes more authentic, and the murders crueller. The same level of violence just won’t work for too long. What won’t change is the fact that the audience still aren’t allowed to try what they’ve seen, however cool did it seem. It generates aggression for sure, and after a certain level, some kids will be more or less unable to control it.

The other problem is the astonishing illiteracy about firearms, nourished by popular movies and video games. In a typical one of the latter, in half an hour of game play you get shot, let’s say, two hundred times. It would take about three to ten bullets to get yourself killed, but you can replenish health by using med kits, so you may get shot unlimited times without dying; which is truly ridiculous in a graphically realistic environment. No wonder if kids think that with a sub-machine gun in your hands you get invincible.

On the contrary, playing paintball, the very-very first thing you are going to learn is that you will be shot and you will be incapacitated, however smart and agile you are. Paintball could be an ideal of shooting in entertainment: it concentrates on discipline, punishes aggressive behaviour (nowadays there are usually no fully automatic paintball markers either), and generally enforces sportsmanship.

 

19th entry for 30th April

I read 'The Ten Thousand' by Michael Curtis Ford last week. Despite its several hundred pages, it didn't take more than a few days to read, since it wasn't a masterpiece of fiction; however, as a fairly authentic historical novel, it satisfied my brief interest in Greece of the 4^th century B.C. and its means of warfare.

The ancient world hitherto – probably due to its paganish image – was somewhat repulsive for me, but sooner or later you find something interesting in most of the cultures you find. Since as a teenager, I was quite interested in warfare, I find this interest gently renewed every now and then. This time it was the hoplite phalanx that took my attention, along with the routine and discipline it had needed in order to work perfectly; as well as its extreme efficiency when well deployed against non-phalanx armies.

Of course, this leads to the battle of Thermopylae and the Spartans, or rather, I’d better admit that the whole thing came up after watching the movie ‘300’, since in the latter years, I’m paying attention to popular culture – it is quite dangerous not paying attention to the world, isn’t it? Interpreting the movie itself is not an easy task; as an action movie, it’s evidently about making money and pleasing people with the spectacles, first of all. However, some critic implied that despite its semi-historical fantasy comics style, it could be considered realistic if it was meant to screen the Spartans’ impression about the battle. Make an authentic movie about it, and 21^st century people will experience something totally different than the Spartans did at the time. For example, all the things the Persians deployed are nothing new even for an illiterate audience. That is why all the fantasy, all the visual exaggerations of Spartan strength, and the understatement of other Greek hoplites (not even depicted as hoplites) could be authentic from the Spartan point of view; even if the Spartans themselves are altered a bit to obtain the audience's sympathy.