Gore: What is It Good For?

And no, I don’t mean Al Gore. See, last night I saw Full Metal Jacket for the first time. Only a few days before that, I watched Apocalypse Now (the unbearably lengthened Redux version, unfortunately). This little adventure into the genre of war film had me thinking: why exactly do we make movies about war and about violent things in general? Clearly the two films I’ve mentioned act as testaments to the hellishness of war, especially with regard to the War in Vietnam.

But that isn’t the case with all violent films. Violence is considered largely pervasive of American cinematic culture. The Europeans do more sex and we do more stabbing, or so the old trope goes. I can’t say whether that’s true, but we clearly do glorify violence. Action movies are a popular genre with multiple very successful franchises. Well, why all the violence? Part of it might be the stereotype that the American people are warlike and generally enjoy a little violence (especially considering our hawk-like track record over the last century), but I think there is more to it than that. There are Ron Paul loving action fans who preach against intervention in Syria and for the 700^th Die Hard movie in the same breath. It seems to me that such a willingness to support pretend violence at the expense of real violence might just be rooted in a type of escapism, but it can also be more. It can also be an affirmation of a certain machismo in an age where that trait seems threatened. We want to preserve that James Dean-like image through a sexualization of the ultra-masculine (oh the irony!).

Clearly that doesn’t necessarily explain why we make lengthy expositions of anti-war sentiment with film. But I think it underlies (or becomes the critical target of) virtually every action or war film out there. Does that make us bad people? Not in the slightest. But I’m wondering if it isn’t a sign of the times that we find a comforting masculinity in what amounts to the impossible. Is there another way or are we to find our primary justification for testosterone on the silver screen? Well, I’m not a fan of action movies anyway, which probably makes me effeminate by the standards of my own review, but I hope the answer is no.