We make movies and read books about this kind of thing, imitation was bound to happen.
I'm kind of an older guy and don't always relate well to the video generation. I wonder sometimes if the lines between real and simulation get lost on some people. Can a person get that deep into a fantasy world they can't tell the difference? Did he think she would "respawn" or whatever they do? Is it another case of the so called "affluenza", was he too well off to even consider there would be consequences?
It just baffles me I guess. And maybe deep down I worry about writting down some things that might occur in my darker moments. It might make a good story, but...
I mean, there were these generations that had no clue about anything and had skewed reality so much, they started attributing everything to invisible people.
They too got so deep into the fantasy world they couldn't tell the difference and started butchering each other because of these invisible people. And they absolutely think they respawn, but on a different level.
I don't think they worried about the consequences either.
It's weird.
Do keep in mind that even more horrific things happened before video games, TV, graphic novels, even books as we know them...
Yeah, we've been doing horrendous things to each other since well before the advent of cinema. We used to celebrate it. This is more an issue of mental health and a vapid materialist culture that objectifies and commodifies human beings (especially women) than it is to do with violent media. A person who cannot separate fiction from fantasy is clinically psychotic, not suffering some sort of generational malaise.
On 1 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned "to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris", where he was to be "taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds"; then, "in the said cart, to the Place de Grève, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and claves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds" (Pièces originales..., 372-4).
"Finally, he was quartered," recounts the Gazette d'Amsterdam of 1 April 1757. "This last operation was very long, because the horses used were not accustomed to drawing; consequently, instead of four, six were needed; and when that did not suffice, they were forced, in order to cut off the wretch's thighs, to sever the sinews and hack at the joints ... "The sulphur was lit, but the flame was so poor that only the top skin of the hand was burnt, and that only slightly. Then the executioner, his sleeves rolled up, took the steel pincers, which had been especially made for the occasion, and which were about a foot and a half long, and pulled first at the calf of the right leg, then at the thigh, and from there at the two fleshy parts of the right arm; then at the breasts. Though a strong, sturdy fellow, this executioner found it so difficult to tear away the pieces of flesh that he set about the same spot two or three times, twisting the pincers as he did so, and what he took away formed at each part a wound about the size of a six-pound crown piece.
— Foucault
Besides a fetishistic desire for disseminating the human body in the name of justice, I'm not sure how Foucault's beginning to Discipline and Punish has to do with blurring the lines between fiction and reality. Was the killer in the story psychotic? Sure, but so is anyone who takes a life based on an idea. Is there misogynistic tendencies at play? I am positive there is, especially in re-enacting the sacrificial lamb scenario of the sacred feminine as we've seen in the classic horror movies.
Let's not forget that Poe is purported to have murdered someone, too (check out the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death).
I don't remember Poe murdering anyone in being mentioned in any documentaries.O_o So unless there was a deliberate lie on the documentary end.
Note the above paragraphs were before the French Revolution. The guillotine had its own problems including: the blade getting caught between the posts, the neck having to be struck twice, and sometimes the head can stay alive for up to about two minutes.
Now the article, that's some weird shit.
