Abrahams cussing

[Mike B.]

Violence in movies is old, it just can be more realistically made now.

I recall watching the Bogart movie, "Key Largo" made in 1948 recently. Bogie shoots five gangsters on a boat at the end of the film, but the special effects of the day made it much less graphic than today.

Violence can be both gratitious or is can be deeply moving to make a larger point.

Shakespeare's plays are very violent.
In "King Lear," Glouchester's eyes are even pulled out on stage.
(Despite recent events Elizabethian England had a much higher level of violence than today's America.)

Yet "King Lear" is deeply moving and the violence in much of Shakespeare is done with pathos.

The cartoonish type violence is different. I don't think the violence in "Glory" or "Lincoln" fits the cartoonish version or is gratitious.

A movie like "Saving Private Ryan" about D-Day made almost 20 years ago is of course very violent and has a lot of foul language. Would removing that made it a better movie? I doubt it. Again the violence made the point about the sacrifices the troops had made.

I don't know that violence in movies is going up vs. ten, twenty, or thirty years or so years ago. I recall "gore" and "slasher" films were popular when I was a kid. But I don't know how to quantify this. There are certain directors who specialize in violent pics like Tarantino.