cybercat wrote:

>
> Like everyone does not know that war entails bullets slamming into
> human meat? What kind of idiot needs several minutes of nothing but
> the sight and sound of that?

I don't think that it hurts to make it appear more realistic. I was raised
on a diet of westerns and combat movies where those who were shot got up
and fell over, often over the side of a hill or a fort. It was all too
clean. Violence is messy and I think we do a disservice to the victims and
to ourselves if we try to delude ourselves into thinking that killing is
not a dirty, grisly business. Maybe a touch of reality is what people need
to understand what is really involved.


Our entertainment technology has improved a lot. We have better make-up,
better special effects and better sound systems. Just think what it would
be like if we had Smellovision. How different it would be in Saving Private
Ryan if you could not only hear the explosions and see limbs blown off, but
if you could smell the burning flesh of the guys who got incinerating in
those gun emplacements. WW I flics like All Quiet on the Western Front
could incorporate the reek of the rotting corpses the barbed wire a few
yards away. But I guess the theatre staff would have to mop up all the
puke.

We do no one any favours by making the maiming and killing of humans look
glamorous.