What is your damage?
Hey all!
Having watched my brother slaughter his way through minor enemies in Castlevania, I decided to make today’s blog and vidjablowg about the disturbing presence of what is known as ‘collateral damage’ in our fictional media.
The extent to which was as an audience have become ‘okay’ with the “hero” having a license, nay even a right, to cause terrible acts of destruction is kind of at odds with our belief in their morality.
We have come to accept certain things as bloodless and therefore acceptable acts – the overturning of a lorry, the explosion of a building, crashing through shops and houses in a free running sequence. But in real life these events are far from bloodless, and even if by a miracle one of them was, you always end up with people’s propetry being trashed and their livelihoods ruined.
Two scenes come to mind from recent films, one I dislike and one I think is actually pretty good. First Transformers – the point at which I knew the film was morally reprehensible rather than just blundering, brain-crushingly bad (if you like that film I’m sorry, as yet medical science has no cure for Motor-Moron Disease) is in a sequence where Optimus Prime and Megatron are fighting. You get a glimpse of a tower block and, crucially, inside the tower block, of the office workers being buffeted around as a wayward blow from the fighting robo-titans knows the building in two. They scream and panic, unable to resist gravity as they slip to the side. Moments later, their cries of anguish still in our ears, the building topples and falls. We have witnessed those people die. To be honest, I am on the side of the military on this one (a very rare occurence): Autobots or Decepticons, get rid of the whole load of them, they are too damn dangerous.
Next is a scene from Iron Man 2. The titular steely superhero, pursued by baddies, races through a carpark and sets all the car alarms off with his intense speed. Moments later the baddies fly by, smashing every car window to pieces. At this point I remembered when, as a nipper, my parents would leave me in the car whilst they got out and paid the parking money. I would wait, frustrated but safe, until they got back. Iron Man flies above my head, I am deafened by noises…but that doesn’t cause a problem for long, because then baby me dies, razored to death by flying glass.
If any single car had someone in it, Iron Man’s choice of direction has pretty much killed them, and if they are all empty, congratulations!You just destroyed the cars people probably worked years to earn. Well done hero.
Now I know that I, being a film nerd, am wont to analyse this more than others. But the problem is, no one has even raised the issue in mainstream film yet. No one has brought it to people’s attention so they can make a decision for themselves. I’m not saying we have to get rid of the explosions and the gunfire, just be a little less witless about how we approach them, maybe add a little realism to it.
The best example I’ve ever seen is (no, not Austin Powers) in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Sam, the hero, is escaping in a truck. He pulls off some heroic (but highly inadvisable) driving, causing one of the pursuing vehicles to explode. He whoops in excited elation as they get away. Stopping to look back, he sees a person emerging from the vehicle, writhing and covered in flames. His face falls as he realises what he has done.
(Go to 3:30 if you can’t be bothered to wait)
And as Mr. Punch says, ‘that’s the way to do it’.
If my griping has depressed you, have some more humourous griping here!
Spekti’s Vidjablowg 8: Evil Collateral
(—–WATCH THIS SPACE—–)
Make way for film!
– Spekti Jim
SpektiJim 