You’ll have to forgive the click-bait title, but this is a topic that I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while. It came to me before the film Joker was released last October. All the previews and marketing of the film were about a broken man living in a broken society who would end up becoming one of the most notorious comic book villains of all time: The Joker. Because the film wasn’t your typical comic book film and was rated R, some people became concerned that a film that centered around a mass-murdering psychopath would have a negative impact on society and specifically those who were “deemed to be vulnerable to certain ideas.” Without actually seeing the film and understanding the context of Joker, people automatically assumed that it was a film that glorified violence and anarchy, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The film was about a mentally ill man who was abused and neglected not just by his own mother but by a broken system and a broken society. He was failed by a system that was supposed to help people like him. The film was about compassion, or rather the lack thereof and what it can do to a person. There was another film that was supposed to be released last year, The Hunt, but was shelved because of a certain number of mass shootings that happened near the film’s original release date.
The film is about a group of conservative people who were kidnapped by “liberal elites” to be hunted for sport. Because of the mass shootings, the film was delayed. People had complained about the level of violence in the film. People up to and including the president condemned the film for its violence without actually ever seeing it. From what I understand about the film and the latest trailer that was released, it is a violent movie, but it is also a biting satire against both conservatives AND liberals. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing it. It’s going to be released on March 13 of this year, which is a Friday. It looks funny and exciting. People have been blaming movies, video games, and music for the ills of society for decades, and there isn’t a shred of proof that any of this has a direct correlation to the violence that’s being committed today. That’s not to say that films don’t have power. They most certainly do. They have the power to inspire, to educate, and to entertain. But I’m not seeing anything from the two films that I just mentioned that could be considered dangerous, at least not to people of sound mind, which I hope most of us are. If you want films that could be considered dangerous, you need to go all the way back to 1915 with the release of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The film was based on a book written by a notorious member of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. When the film came out, it was quickly snatched up by the KKK as propaganda to recruit new members, which it did. THAT was a dangerous film, because it inspired acts of violence and hate by the KKK. I doubt that was Griffith’s intent, but that’s what happened.
Let’s move forward a few decades to 1960. This was the year that Alfred Hitchcock released his most notorious thriller, Psycho. There was a lot of controversy surrounding this film. The infamous shower scene in which Janet Leigh’s character was killed sent shock-waves through the entire industry. Nobody had ever seen anything like that before, yet, nothing was actually shown. You didn’t see the knife penetrate the skin, all you saw was a knife going up and down and blood going into a drain. The film had also featured Leigh’s character in a bra with another man. Again, it wasn’t something that had been seen or done before in cinema. All the controversy in the world actually ended up working in the film’s favor because people were lining up in droves to see it. Are you seeing what I’m getting at here? When you accuse a film of being dangerous or controversial, all you are doing is drawing more attention to it. People, being the curious creatures that we are, are drawn to controversy like moths to a flame. If you yell fire loud enough and long enough, somebody’s going to come see what the fuss is. That’s just how we are as a species. But to assume that a film is dangerous because it may contain extreme levels of violence is incredibly short-sighted. If you actually watch Joker, there isn’t a whole lot of physical violence. It’s all emotional and psychological. Avengers: Endgame had a hell of a lot more violence than Joker, but you don’t hear people complaining about that.
But that goes back to my original question: Can movies be dangerous? For the average adult? No. For children? Possibly. I mean, you don’t really want to show a 6 year old a film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or I Spit on Your Grave. It’s hard to say if there would be lasting psychological issues for the child if they saw those films, but I’m not an expert. There are some children’s films that have some pretty dark imagery, though. Take an animated film like The Black Cauldron, and that could give kids nightmares. I’m an 80s/90s kid, so I grew up with some pretty dark animated movies. Here’s what I’m thinking: I’m actually far less concerned about films being dangerous than the audience. I’ve seen a lot of death threats issued against directors, writers, and actors because some people didn’t like the way a film was supposed to be made. Guess what? If you don’t like the direction a film is taking or what the film-makers are doing with it, you don’t have to see it. If you feel that the film’s content is too extreme or controversial for you, you can skip it and move on to something else. People who accuse films of being racist, controversial, extreme, or dangerous are not understanding the intent of the film-makers. In fact, they are refusing to understand. They’re just trying to cause a commotion where there doesn’t need to be. If the film’s intent is to sow chaos, disorder and to incite violence, then yeah, that could be dangerous with the wrong group of people, but I would argue that 97 percent of movies that are out there today don’t do that. That’s what I’m seeing. Can movies be dangerous? Not by themselves, no.