Pornography

Nothing works like an attention grabbing title, hey? Sorry, but this is not about the commonly understood definition of the term. My latest gig in the work force is at a video rental store and it has amused and disturbed me how much people are willing to take in images that would disgust them in real life. The public's idea of entertainment is quite often like pornography in another form. This is the ability to sit wide-eyed and admiring in front of pure, unadulterated garbage for about two hours (not to mention that we actually pay for the privilege).
Mr. Webster, your friend and mine, defines pornography as "writings, photographs, movies, etc. intended to arouse sexual excitement, especially such materials considered as having little or no artistic merit." For a moment, let's drop the word "sexual" from the definition. Yes, I know that good students of the English language are not supposed to monkey with definitions but -my blog. With the sexual connotation aside, this definition is an accurate depiction of the sort of movies people go home happy with every night. These baser preferences of the American consumer provide me with a paycheck so criticizing their habits makes me a hypocrite, but once again-my blog.
People like to watch a lot of violence, action, and dumb comedy with very little story line and nothing of any merit. As long as characters die bloody deaths while sleeping with various partners, it is a "good" movie. One of the more recent films that customers have clamored for is a gem titled The Hills Have Eyes, Part II. The plot of this film follows the adventures of a tribe of people who have been mutated by atomic tests in the Southwestern desert. They live in caves and cannibalize stranded travelers. The resounding question here is: Why? Why would some one make one film on this subject, that long a Part II? Why does the public need two installments of bloodthirsty, evil cannibals in the desert? I have thought of several witty responses to the request: "Hey, you got any of The Hills Have Eyes, Part II in?" No, but I hear that the hills have spontaneously sprouted ears and nose this week. Not the most intelligent comeback but let's see you do better after fielding this request 25 times in a single shift.
These little nuances of my job have also caused me to stop and consider how much of this sort of stuff I take in. How much gruesome violence, explicit sex, and poor taste humor have I sit through in my adult life? What effect has this had on my attitudes towards these type of events in real life? Am I becoming desensitized to images and ideas that I would normally find offensive? Does any one else notice that the sort of things we find the most entertaining in movies would horrify us in real life? I am also a little nervous that my entertainment choices may be reflective of a shorter attention span. Occasionally the human brain needs to be entertained without having to exert itself but how much of this is a series of action sequences without a plausible story line? How many action movies are the equivalent of pornography in the exploitation of violent images? We don't like watching coverage about people being shot or dying in military activities on the news or reading about it in the newspaper but we rent movies like Shooter and the Bourne Identity. War casualities make us sad and discouraged but films like 300 are exciting. Take the reality factor away and it becomes entertainment. Very strange.