Sex and Violence in Film

Sex and Violence in film.

FROM A LETTER ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE LA TIMES CALENDAR

No one in the industry has adequately responded to the charge that sex and violence in film and television is corrupting our civilization.

There are some who claim that violence is a dramatist's tool, that a dramatist needs screen violence in order to make a point and achieve a catharsis of the story. Others raise the freedom of speech issue, claiming that government should not be dictating or influencing what we see on our television screens.

But sex and violence have been the very shaping forces of the evolution of every species on earth. How can anyone conclude that such content is not suitable for drama?

The complexity of the human body and mind, or of any living organism, seems to many religious people to have been created by a very powerful entity-like INTELLIGENCE, because it is so complex, so well thought out.

What is overlooked by religious creationists — and I perceive not understood by the public at large — is the fact that complex organisms are the result of millions of years of life and death experiences, millions of years of daily living, raising children, rivalry, jealousy, betrayal, survival — behaviors that forged a powerful, timeless, genetic intelligence — characteristics which also happen to be the sum and substance of modern, cinematic melodrama.

Evolution-forged, genetic intelligence is a very different kind from the intelligence than you and I know. You can't see with any pinpoint accuracy where it came from, you can't talk to it, it is not God. But it is another very powerful layer of intelligence in our lives, not an intelligence of our minds but of our cells.

Sex and violence in a very long evolutionary timescale have produced a very high level of intelligence beyond human intelligence. Our bodies are ancient bio-machines which come to us right out of the deepest past, a past far beyond historical record. This "hardware" upon which we live is a legacy of that past, nourished by the present. I think it could rightly be claimed that our bodies and minds are where the deepest past meets the future.

So sex and violence represent life and death in their most extreme and immediately accessible forms. It is no wonder that the younger public, those especially on the cutting edge of life, should be captivated and fascinated by images of life and death, of course inseparable and in context with the intellect and moral dilemma of drama.

Any Wesley Snipes or Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarznegger romp seems as if it is trying to pack millions of violent years of evolution into 2 hours of mayhem. This is not a retreat into infantile, meaningless violence. It may be a means of seeking a connection to how we got here and where we are going, albeit on an emotional level that is not well-defended with words.

But the best cinema appeals to both the primitive and the intelligent parts of our minds at the same time — indeed, all parts of our consciousness and all the senses.

-John C. Graves