It's Pretty Damn Cool

Several nights ago, I happily enjoyed the simple pleasures of playing GoldenEye in the stacks of Carpenter library, grinning that I had somehow fortuitously stumbled upon a class that had assigned, of all things for homework, one of the canonical first person shooter video games. Excited to experience a rite of passage that I had been deprived of during childhood (I didn't own an N64 and thus didn't play GoldenEye), I came to realize a common thread between the shooters of yesterday and today's latest and greatest. Working as the chief agent of violence, I couldn't help but feel that the aestheticization of violence detached my sense of morality from the importance that society grants to the preservation of life. Modern media has this uncanny ability to devalue the preciousness of life. Even the aestheticization of violence in German Expressionism is at least somewhat off putting...it's grotesque. In contrast, GoldenEye has this almost cinematic quality where the player is so busy enjoying the scenery: the novelty of killing the bad guys in exotic locales with no repercussion that he perhaps slowly losing his humanity.

Aside from the Kill Bill films, Equilibrium stands out as one of the films that stylizes violence so much that it seemingly suggests that violence isn't just a possible means of achieving an end (i.e. the destruction of an oppressive government) but is in fact an end in its very own right. Starring Christian Bale, and set in a dystopia amalgamated from bits and pieces of Huxley's and Orwell's dystopias, Equilibrium explores the possibility of a society governed by unyielding rationality and devoid of emotion. Bale plays a police-like character in this film, one who is responsible for catching those who commit "sense crimes." As part of his training, he is well-versed in the "Gun Katas" a combination of martial arts and trigger fingers.

As seen above, the elegance of the body in motion and the precision of the movements, elevate even something so destructive into a type of kinetic poetry or a ballet of...death. Watching these movements, I'm so desensitized that I care very little about the guards and soldiers, even if they presumably have lives just as precious as my own and families just as lovely. However, there's something about beautiful violence that trumps all. There is only violence, and all else is disregarded. Life becomes cheap and anonymous; Death becomes inconsequential. With our ability to connect bloodshed with art and elevate it to something worthy of admiration, what then can be expected in the future?