I kind of assumed that things like 'Red Asphalt' were pretty standard in American schools, given the young age at which you can get a drivers licence. Certainly when I was in highschool in the 1980s in South Africa we were shown such American movies dating to the 60's or 70's perhaps. Or maybe that IS 'Red Asphalt' and its still in circulation?
I have to say that I too find images of dead bodies and so on rather distressing and don't like it one bit. But I strongly disaprove of the common media trope that violence is fun, and nobody really gets hurt. Xena and Hercules throw people around, knock them over, and they drag themselves off, beaten. Or Perry Mason finds a body with bullethole but no blood, no bowels loosened, no smell.
Movies of course are less culpable in this regard than TV. I do think there is a role for a direct discussion of violence and its consequences given thew prevalence of clean violence on TV. Most people who grow up in aboriginal societies were exposed directly to violence, bith against human and animals. This does not, of course, make them anything like pacifists - but I do think it lends a ceertain more practical approach to violence than the moralistic tone so often seen in the modern west.
All this said, the drivers education film I did see did not prevent my friends and I from driving drunk and being involved in a very nasty smash (no fatalities though, luckily enough). People, especially young adults, are still going to need space to make their own mistakes. But I still think that some form of this is necessary is a counterpoint to the sanitisation of violence in mainstream culture.
This message has been edited by contracycle, 02-23-2005 08:25 AM
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