posted: May 9, 2003
It is a little thing, but it bugs me that books and films have such lousy depictions of violence and firearms. I know that films are about entertainment and one of the rules of screenplay is "if it's not necessary, don't put it in," but don't you think people ought to reload once in a while? Most of the time, you only see this real-life activity in films when the good guy needs a pause to say something smart-alecky or the script requires the villain to get the drop on him.
And books have their own little problems. While some writers go overboard with the ballistic descriptions to the point of pornography (not that I mind a bit of gun-porn once in a while--I read Stephen Hunter, after all), others chose to wave magic wands and occasionally end up saying things about guns--generally or specifically--which are complete bullshit. This is usually caused by a lack of research.
Some people really don't like guns. That's all right, but if you are going to write about something which actually exists, a little research is a good and important thing and not all that hard to do. This is not outerspace, here. I'm not talking about interstellar travel and mutant space viruses which destroy entire civilizations or super-intelligent machines which farm humans for energy (Hah! Talk about inefficient!). This ain't Sci-Fi, this is reality. Guns actually exist and you can learn about them. If you are going to write about them, or depict them in films, TV and games, you should go and handle some, even if you find them repulsive and scary.
Book-learning is not enough. That leads to another category of annoyance: the by-the-catalog writer. You know these guys: they don't really know that much about a subject, but they can quote you the brand, model and stats for anything, be it a firearm or auto parts. It's this sort of thing which caused James Bond to be carrying a small automatic in a holster designed for a revolver, until an armorer sent Fleming a letter about it.
And it's the same lack of thought or experience which leads to unrealistic depictions of violence. No, you don't have to go out and get into a knock-down-drag-out, but some degree of thought, at least, would help. Don't these people ever go to urban emergency wards? Smash their fingers with hammers? Cut themselves? All it takes is a little thought and a little research, even if you've never been hurt, to know that fictional violence is not as grotesque as the real thing.
If you've never been badly injured, you don't know how much it hurts or how long it takes to start feeling decent again. Books and films are full of characters who get the shit kicked out of them and then walk off perfectly all right, except for a mussing of the hair and a slight limp. Trust me; if you've just been beaten, you hurt. A lot. For days. Your head hurts, your eyes don't focus, you feel nauseated, your ears ring and you look like crap. Imagine how much it hurt the last time you overdid it at the gym, or helping a friend move. Now, imagine that ache lasting all week and you'll be getting closer.
Even a single good punch, or a mild broken nose can hurt like Hell and leave you with a discolored face for a week. A nice slab of cracked ribs will leave you gasping and wincing for a good, long while and almost everything bleeds a lot more than most people realize. Imagine that shaving nick you got the other day at three inches long and twice as deep. Nasty, yes? Breaking your leg makes you feel sick as well as sore and a badly sprained joint is harder and slower to heal than an outright break.
Lots of people cry out about the widespread depiction of violence and the glorification of firearms in our society and how damaging it might be. Opponents of violence in entertainment swear to the sky that depictions of violence lead to violence. That's bullshit, but what is true is that romanticizing violence, showing it as less-horrible than it really is, allows people who are distanced from actual violence to believe that reality is not as dreadful as the facts.
Because of unrealistic depictions, many people believe that you can outrun the blast-front of an explosion. They think that being hit with a two-by-four knocks you silly and leaves a bruise. They believe that an unschooled amateur can pick up a handgun and fire a perfect hundred-yard shot if they are just calm about it. They believe that guns have no recoil, unless it's funny, and that a bullet through the shoulder is a "flesh wound". None of these things is true.
Now, I don't think that we need to wallow in the violence and splatter, but we should have a healthy respect for it. A character who takes a beating and shrugs it off is not as human, decent and admirable as one who drags his poor, sorry ass through his job, even though everything hurts. An author or screenwriter who actually knows what a gun is capable of and describes it correctly will get more of my respect when a character picks one up and uses it, because they will use it realistically, blast, mess, recoil and all. I can more easily admire a character who knows how difficult that hundred-yard shot is than one who makes them as a matter of course without thought by character or author.
Let me admire and identify with characters, because they struggle and bleed, like I do. Let me be sickened by the horrible reality of violence. Just a bit of verisimilitude is all I ask. It's not so hard. In fact, it's just outside....
posted: May 18, 2003
Yesterday my dinner set off the theft alarm at the grocery store. No one cared or came to see what it was that I might be carrying away. I didn't really bother to look, much, myself, since I knew it had to be a mistake. All I'd bought was produce, meat, fake eggs and a cat dish. Nothing exciting or controversial. And as apples haven't yet started being bred to grow their own UPC codes, I figured they hadn't been fitted with beeper-strips, either.
When I got home and was preparing dinner, though, I found a small, red, inventory-control sticker on my steak. Well, not on the steak, but on the bottom of the package. And it was a special type, too, designed for refrigeration (cold sometimes deactivates normal strips) and camouflaged so it would look like a bit of beef clinging to the wrapping, I guess.
What is the world coming to when stores have to anti-theft slabs of dead cow? What do they think goes on with the stolen sustenance? Are people taking it for themselves, a piece at a time, or is there a more sinister end for purloined sirloin? Is there a secret conspiracy of steak-smuggling? A black market of beef? It sure puts a new spin on "meat packing"... several, in fact.
I envision shady characters in long, black trenchcoats and shades, sauntering insouciantly out of the meat department with suggestive bulges under their outerwear. From the grocery, they proceed to the "red" market--after all, the goods won't be black until after they hit the grill--and unload their ill-gotten booty de boeuf (not to mention the rump roast) which is passed on through a network of "carne-connections" and "dinner dealers" to people whose food stamps have run out. Possibly operating under the name "Robin Hood Restaurant Supply: robbing the protien-rich to give to the meat-poor."
In a world ruled by vegans (or PETA), I suppose a covert carnivore would be a terrorist threat. "Watch it, boys, he's packin' meat!" Cornered and desperate, the suspect whips out a slab of butchered bovine and yells "Don't fuck with me, man! I've got a T-bone, here and I'm not afraid to use it!" They do look so much like guns, after all, those funky bones in the middle (or like small hammers, Maxwell Edison...). The closet carnivores and meat-atarians would have to slip into modern-day speakeasies (chew-easies?) and chow down on badly-butchered slabs of meat called beef, but which most likely were whinnying at the racetrack a few weeks earlier or running free in alleys. There would be a resurgence of trichynosis which would lead to untold numbers dead because the victims were too scared of being arrested for meat-murder to go to the doctor and people's cats would go missing in record numbers. Strips of bacon and Li'l Smokies™ quickly become the preferred prison exchange medium.
You see where those inventory-control things get you: Universal Meatless Friday, seven days a week. I suppose that meat is very expensive, from some points of view (though some of it is cheaper than decent vegetables, up here). Or maybe there really is a conspiracy....
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