Nude youth gangs

[Gary Naturist]

I would like to see some competent body address the topic of protecting children from harm, both physical and psychological.

The first question should be: What is harmful to kids? Sexual exploitation of kids would be at the top of the list. Violent behavior towards kids would be at the top as well.

Consider two other topics:

I suggest that exposure to the non-sexual nudity of others should not be on the list

Consider two other items:

1. Viewing the non-sexual nudity of others.
2. Viewing the violent behavior of others.

By viewing, I mean both real life and depictions -- e.g. TV, video games, etc.

Currently, things seem to be reversed: lots of protection against viewing nude people, and very little protection against viewing violence.

If we reversed the attention, maybe we would have gangs of nude youths rather than gangs of violent youths.

Gary

[Gary Naturist]

I would like to see some competent body address the topic of protecting children from harm, both physical and psychological.

The first question should be: What is harmful to kids? Sexual exploitation of kids would be at the top of the list. Violent behavior towards kids would be at the top as well.

Consider two other topics:

I suggest that exposure to the non-sexual nudity of others should not be on the list

Consider two other items:

1. Viewing the non-sexual nudity of others.
2. Viewing the violent behavior of others.

By viewing, I mean both real life and depictions -- e.g. TV, video games, etc.

Currently, things seem to be reversed: lots of protection against viewing nude people, and very little protection against viewing violence.

If we reversed the attention, maybe we would have gangs of nude youths rather than gangs of violent youths.

Gary

[Snoboy]

I would think keeping Michael Jackson away from children would be a great start. I have no clue if any of the charges are valid, but he certainly should learn to steer clear of young boys, if he wants to avoid the allegations of child abuse. /infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc., I would highly suspect its a duck. /infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif

[florida-david]

thank you for bringing up a very important topic - the viewing of violence. american culture seems obsessed with it to the point that viewing violent acts in video games, tv, videos, etc. becomes normal even for young kids. this is far more damaging than nudity. seeing non-sexual nudity does absolutely no harm (well, except to stu apparently) but violence is clearly wrong. it is very difficult to shield my children from violence when it is so openly accepted in the american culture....

[David77]

I most heartily agree with Gary Naturist and florida-david regarding the viewing of violence that is so prevelent, for "entertainment". It's "sick" and caters to the worst side of people.

[Ren]

It's kind of like what the mother in the great "South Park" movie's message: "remember what the MPAA says: 'Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words.'" The entertainment "protects" us from the wrong things, but don't think it is necessarily of its own volition. Consider that the Hayes Code was meant to cut off anything deemed offensive in the 50s. It is more the politicians cowing to one group or another that causes this to happen.

One thing young impressionable children should not view is violence on TV and in videos. When the Power Rangers were first created, young boys were imitating them by going around and kicking one another. This was causing injuries. Young children don't know the difference between real and make-believe. They see someone get shot and killed in one show and see them very much alive in another and get the idea that guns are toys and don't hurt anyone. Brother finds daddy's handgun and shoots and kills his little sister, brother or a friend.

Children should not view violence until they're old enough to understand that while what they see on TV isn't real, real violence can hurt or kill. Too often the TV is a babysitter, and the parents have no idea what the children are watching and don't care as long as they're not in the parents' hair.

[Rik]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Snoboy:
I would think keeping Michael Jackson away from children would be a great start. I have no clue if any of the charges are valid, but he certainly should learn to steer clear of young boys, if he wants to avoid the allegations of child abuse. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Given that you admit that you "have no clue if any of the charges are valid" on what basis does "keeping Michael Jackson away from children" protect children from harm, both physical and psychological (the subject of this topic)?

/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif Rik

[Nude in the North]

Wouldn't it be great if we could replace all the violence and sex on tv with simple WHOLESOME nudity.

It's ridiculousto think we are "protecting" children by overdubbing swearwords or blurring body parts on tv, while showing someone being murdered or raped.

Steve

[NudeAl]

I agree about the violence in the media bit. We here in America are systematicly becoming desensitized to it. This is one of the reasons for the increasing amount of violence perpetrated by our youngsters, but we must also realize that there are those among us who are geneticaly predisposed to using violence.

Some interesting studies have been done concerning soldiers on the battle field. The ones faced with the ultimate decision wether or not to take another human life. In WWII roughly 30% of the soldiers faced with this problem admitted to attempting to kill the enemy. In Vietnam that percentage went up to over 90%. We're talking about the ones who were in a fire fight, being shot at and had to shoot back. It was mostly due to conditioning or training but guess what? Some of the same techniques the military uses to condition soldiers can be found in the things that kids enjoy doing for fun these days.

Another interesting thought, one of the veterans interveiwed summed this up by comparing it to a bunch of virgins discussing sex after looking at porn. In other words, yes they could grasp the mechanics but they really had no idea about the human emotional reaction to the event.

[Bob S.]

It all has to do with the extreme protection from children even seeing some kind of sexual act, even in the movies or television. I recall during the 90s, then Surgeon General (of the US) Jocelyn Elders was severly criticized for suggesting teaching children that masturbation was fine. Of course, she was also suggesting starting in early elementary school.

The biggest video games this year have been violent games. In particular, "Grand Auto Theft" where you go around stealing cars and shooting innocent bystandards. In the US, the mafia has had kind of been romanticized in movies. Movie violence is fine so long as no blood is spilled. You can watch such shows as "NYPD Blue" "Law and Order" and other semi-violent shows in the afternoon on cable (FX).

Nudity, though has been taboo. You can't show naked bodies on television and if in the movies, only if you give the movie an R rating.

I would like to see a pooll done by parents and moviegoers about which they would rather their children (let's say under 10 and 10 and above) see; violent scenes or nudity. I would sure hope that they would choose nudity.

Bob S.

[Ren]

The problem isn't violence or sex in the media. The problem is the parents. When in doubt, look at how active the parents are in talking to their kids about the concepts of right and wrong. And about how well they lead with example.

My parents didn't hit. I was spanked once in my life and I learned my lesson. If a child is spanked every time he does something wrong, he will be conditioned to think that hitting is a direct response to curtail a problem. That begets future violence. When my brother and I would have a fight, we would know there was something truly wrong with what we were doing, as evidenced that in spite of our aggressive emotional states, we would make sure not to hit the face or below the belt and it would enact essentially a wrestling match. That conscientiuosness came from our parents not using violence to solve a problem.

As for sex, how many parents discuss sex with their kids? And how many leave it up to the schools or friends to do it for them? And how many don't discuss it because they honestly think abstinence will happen magically and so they need not discuss it? Eliminating sex and violence from the media would eliminate true life from the media, and there are plenty of meaningful films that involve violence and sex.

The real problem with this generation is the advent of "reality" tv, which really isn't real. The shows "Rich Girls" or "Joe Millionaire" or "Newlyweds" display a distorted conception of real life and just emulate greed and stupidity. A shallow society is then created.

Our society is especially shallow, mostly because our society is a wealthy one. And our society, because it is a wealthy one never sees repercussions. You want to blame violence on influencing our kids, blame the real-life violence of a President who likes to invade countries to suit his vendettas. Blame a media that loves to rail against videogames, but thrills in showing pictures of the dead Hussein brothers on the cover of newspapers. Because of the triumphant tones in the papers, kids will view that violence as being okay. Shoot-em-up games have been around for a long time, and unless you are without a conscience or a parent to directly influence you, you should be all right. It's things like Fox News and their bombings-to-classical-music montages that make very real (not make-believe and cartoon) violence seem a-okay to society.

But the scapegoat has to be entertainment, right? The blame should be on the US's glorification of real violence. As they say in news, if it bleeds it leads.

[florida-david]

ren - most of the problem is the parents. if all parents agreed that nudity was less of a problem than violence, than we would not have so much violence on tv, movies, videos, and computer games and more non-sexual nudity. but since we live in the real world with a society the way it is, i was saying it is increasingly difficult for parents to keep their kids away from the violence in society. for instance, my kids have limited access to tv, computers, and the internet, but when they sleep over at a friend's house, my son gets electronic overload. actually, he gets bored while the other kids are still at all the electronics. eventually, he will probably hang out with friends who are used to violent video games and will be influenced by those kids. so, no matter how hard we try to protect our kids from violence (and electronics), eventually the child will be on their own in a world full of violence. let's hope i raised them right!!!

[NudeAl]

Of course it is the duty of the parents to set their own controls regarding their childrens exposure to violence and other negative things. I think however our societies acceptance of displaying violence, either real or as entertainment, is causing many of us to veiw violent behavior in a more a acceptable light. As in a common behavior that is just a natural reaction. It is correct to say that the real world violence is more forceful. Traditionally murder rates go up after a war. This is partly caused by rationalizing that if it is okay for the government to commit a violent act like war then this individule act of violence, murder, can be rationalized as well.

I'm just saying that our value system is all upside down when we accept or even glorify acts of violence holding them up as an example to our young and at the same time deplore simple nudity as an obscene behavior. I know this is not limited to the US. Many parts of the world are far more violent, the middle east comes to mind. I think that where nudity is seen as normal, in other words there is no extremely negative reaction to it, there is a lower acceptance of violence. I'm thinking of europe here. This may have much more to do with other social values and other factors but it may be worth looking into.

Could an acceptance of nudity lead to a less tolerant veiw toward violence? Interesting thought isn't it?

[Jochanaan]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ren:
...It's things like Fox News and their bombings-to-classical-music montages that make very real (not make-believe and cartoon) violence seem a-okay to society. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Wasn't that tried, in A Clockwork Orange ? /infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif

This brings up an interesting comparison. In the opera Rigoletto, by Giuseppe Verdi, the heroine is stabbed in the last act. The orchestral accompaniment is among the most powerful and tragic in all music; watching and listening, you know how terrible this violence is. Also in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, the final scene is of an entire order of nuns being led to the guillotine, and again the music makes you feel in no uncertain terms just how tragic this is. My sister, an opera fanatic, has said that the first time she saw that opera she sobbed openly during that last scene.

Contrast this to the casual, "regrettable" violence in so many movies today.

Antiwar movies have been made about war, showing much violence but soundly condemning it. But these are the "critically acclaimed" movies that, because they demand thought and empathy, don't do good box office.

So you see what those of us who love nudity and the arts, and hate violence, are up against, besides the wall. /infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

[Jochanaan]

Postscript to my previous note: Opera fans worldwide have been seeing some onstage nudity in such opera as Tristan und Isolde and especially Salome. German and Austrian audiences have taken it in stride, but Americans and Australians have protested. While this is primarily nudity associated with sex, I think it's a healthy development. After all, the sex has always been present in those operas.

[Ren]

florida-david-- I was really taking exception to Jon-Marc and Nude in the North's overly simplistic views of the whole violence/nudity situation. I wanted to emphasize that violence really becomes acceptable if it is accepted in the home.

Cases in point, take my grandparents' situations. My grandfather who fought in WWII would tell us some horror stories growing up and vowed that were there a draft, he'd take us to Canada himself. My grandparents who were at serving age between the two World Wars forced the choice of military or work (no college) on their kids. So, my Dad went into the Coast Guard to avoid Vietnam. His mother would foist army men on us and wanted us to play with toy guns. My parents didn't want us having toy guns and when I did see a gun, my grandfather on mom's side would show us his hunting rifles and teach us about safety. Needless to say I didn't touch a loaded gun and understood what a loaded gun could do from a very young age. When one sees violence, one might be more apt to want to prevent others from glorifying it as my mom's dad does. When violence is off in the distance, one might encourage the semblances of violence in life, seeing it as harmless fun. Now is it just me, or is this a distinctly American viewpoint?

I had it from both sides, but mine was also a very conscientious youth. I think a kid needs to be predisposed not to scoff at everything either, or the lessons from home would never be learned at any rate.

I think that as long as the effort is there, something will seep into a kid. Oftentimes, though, there is little effort.

[aunaturelone]

Anyone who thinks there was some kind of golden age of nonviolence in the past is deluding themselves. It was only in the last 200 years we decided that it was inapproriate for young children to fight and die in war or work as virtual slaves in industrial sweat shops.

A glance at homicide rates over the last century tells us that periods of poverty and economic stress generate a higher homicide rate. A look at where homicide takes place tells us that they are highest in areas of high poverty.

I'm probably going to get flamed over this but I think violence is an inevitable part of large scale human interaction. As such, children need to learn about violence and how to make judgements as to when violence is necessary and when it isn't. A parent's job then is not to prevent their child from seeing violence in movies or games but deciding on which violence they are willing to allow their children to see.

I do avoid letting my younger child see movies with high levels of blood and gore, but that's my decision and nobody else's. I went with my 15 yo daughter to see "Blackhawk Down" but I wouldn't take my 10 yo son. Same thing is true of "We Were Soldiers Once". OTOH we all went to see "Master and Commander" and talked about it afterwards. (If you go to see it or plan to, make a note of how young the youngest sailors are. Childhood as we think of it didn't even exist until the Victorian era.)

We don't do slasher movies. Movies where the sight of gore and mayhem is the only selling point are too boring.

The Hayes code was not a good thing. (What replaced it, the MPAA ratings system, is little better.) It was an unofficial form of censorship insituted in the 30s, mainly in reaction to onscreen nudity. (Check out the famouse nude swimming scene they snipped out of "Tarzan and His Mate".) No rating system is as good as reading the reviews or relying on word of mouth.

I will say that I find the standards for violence in the code produced decades of films I would let my kids see without question. I grew up with gangster movies and horse operas and WWII epics and even some fairly good science fiction. It did not make me a violent person.

OTOH it did not make me a pacifist. If you want entertainment to produce future pacifists that's social engineering. It is no different than wanting enterainment to produce future Democrats or Republicans or Communists or Nazis.

Healthy children learn very quickly the difference between the imaginary violence of movies, games and cartoons and the real things. Some people are predisposed to violent behavior while most are not. Perhaps an obsesson with ultraviolent entertainment serves as a useful "red flag" in pointing out those children who may be disturbed and need counseling. Certainly real violence in the home (not the occaisional slap on the wrist or mild spanking) is another, much brighter, "red flag".

I did read in several diffrent places that cruelty to animals is a very good indicator of future violent behavior. (We're not talking hunting, we're talking intentional torture of helpless animals.)

Age appropriateness is everything, as is the context in which the violence plays out. For example Shakespear's plays are often drenched in blood, yet I would not prevent my children from watching Hamlet. The violence of the evil man can be portrayed to reinforce the repugnancy of evil. The horrors of war can only be communicated cinematically through cinematic horror. And sometimes the violence of the hero is the only thing that stands between us and the abyss. It is important that we know this else we become slaves to whomever is willing to use violence to have their way.

[aunaturelone]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> Brother finds daddy's handgun and shoots and kills his little sister, brother or a friend. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>And that is the Daddy's fault for not keeping it unloaded, not locking the thing up and not teaching the child to be safe around guns. Gotta do all three if you want to be a good parent and own firearms. Can't blame that on the media. A child who had no idea of what a gun did and had never seen it on the tele would still be in just as great a danger if he found one loaded lying about.

In fact one should teach children to be safe around guns even if you don't own one and hate them. You do not know what may be found lying in some neighbor's attic. Hell, your neighbor may not even know what's in his attic. Stop. Don't touch it. Leave the area immediately. Notify a responsible adult ASAP.

As an aside, the incidence of accidental firearms deaths of children is at an all time low despite the number of privately owned firearms being at an all time high. (In comparison, more children drown in buckets.) Education works.

[missouriboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aunaturelone:
A look at where homicide takes place tells us that they are highest in areas of high poverty. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Interesting. I have occasionally thought maybe the population density of an area might be a cause of stress that leads to such violence. A "get out of my space" reaction, if you will.

Does this idea hold any water in those statistics you mention? I haven't seen them, so I'm just guessing. Part of my thinking is this: if everyone in a ghetto were roughly equal economically, would the poverty be a bigger detriment to peaceful interaction, or would the overcrowding?

[Ren]

Did you notice that the concern about violence (and nudity for that matter) has advanced since the advent of photography and moing pictures? I think the two go hand-in-hand. It isn't necessarily the violence (or the nudity) that has bothered people, it is the exposure to it.

Many who fought in WWII that I've heard, referred to themselves as "dumb kids" who didn't think they would ever die. That is where the innocence has ended. We're much more aware of our mortality now than we used to be, because the media takes us inside what really happens. A kid who sees war coverage now will not glorify war as much because he can see the end result. It's the correlative cognition that didn't exist in the past. There's a difference between seeing death and seeing the word "death," and that is a tremendous influence.

So, since no one wants to really fight and since mostly the fighting isn't as hand-to-hand, so to speak, there is a desire for bloody entertainment. And, hey, some of it can be fun and some of it can teach a lesson. The good actioners, at the very least, will have a conscience attached to the violence: see "Face/Off" -- stylized but with some heft beneath the violence.

Society, however, accepts violence more readily than it does nudity. And that's a conundrum I can't quite figure, but I'll try.

Violence is an accepted response in our society to danger, and it always has been. The country was built on "necessary" violence, the country was held together by "necessary" violence, and the country saved the Western world with "necessary" violence. For 180 years, the US's violence was figured to be of a noble nature. So violence doesn't equate to badness. Then came Vietnam and the violence wasn't so good; a peace movement set in, and violence has been seen as good only if in the cartoonish variety. No war, it seems, will ever again be seen as "necessary" violence.

Then there's the naked body - and there is an ugly cursory history here. You know who probably was naked or in states of undress? Witches! And witches weren't liked in the colonial times --- they were burned at the stake. Nudity was bad. I can't figure much documentation outside of presumption, but given the stuffy morality of the Puritans and Pilgrims, I can't find a time when the patriarchs of society deemed nudity a good, mainstream thing. After all, the Natives were naked, or mostly were, and they were shipped out or killed as well. Moving along, slaves came and were humiliated in a meat-market naked, while the plantation owners, dressed to the nines, examined their bodies as though they weren't human. You have sex while naked, so it can't be good. You can swim without clothes, so they'll cover you to the extreme.

Essentially, whether through ugly acts of oppression or less extreme social oppressiveness, the naked body has been a dangerous enemy to the societal guard.

Thus, whereas violence was seen as necessary and not so bad; everything evil was seen as emanating from the nude body.

When someone wants to change the status quo in nudity, he is trying to change a cultural and societal history dating to the origins of the US settlement. When someone wants to change the status quo in violence, the same mountain needs climbing.

Maybe this is why the peace movement and nudity have gone together the past 40 years.

[SargentIV]

Well, I can't give any particular statistic that you are looking for; however, I do remember in AP Biology class last year out teacher saying that when animals are put together in large numbers hormones are released which affects the moods of the individuals. So that would explain why people complain that people in the big cities are so rude. Note- this is just a generalization. As for whether or not the extra stress causes people to commit suicide I will leave that answer to another person.


<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by missouriboy:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aunaturelone:
A look at where homicide takes place tells us that they are highest in areas of high poverty. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Interesting. I have occasionally thought maybe the population density of an area might be a cause of stress that leads to such violence. A "get out of my space" reaction, if you will.

Does this idea hold any water in those statistics you mention? I haven't seen them, so I'm just guessing. Part of my thinking is this: if everyone in a ghetto were roughly equal economically, would the poverty be a bigger detriment to peaceful interaction, or would the overcrowding? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[florida-david]

aunaturalone - does our society really need to see slow motion, action shots of people being mutilated, shot, tortured, cut-up, etc. on movies for any age individual, even an adult? are these the type of 'age appropriate' movies that should be made? why is it that society needs to see rapes and bodies being blown to bits in graphic detail? the modern movie is WAY different than shakespeare - those plays were not so graphic and obvious. i think the comparison is way off. in my opinion, there is absolutely NO purpose for such graphic acts in movies. you must admit, that the first time you saw such nastiness, you were shocked, the second time less shocked, and the third time you were looking forward to it. maybe we are all so developed, civilized people that it should not affect us, but maybe we are such developed, civilized people that it SHOULD affect us and we should not be watching such crap.

[aunaturelone]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Does this idea hold any water in those statistics you mention? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Rural areas certainly tend to have lower level of violence than urban areas. (Affluent rural areas like Vermont have almost no violence at all in comparison.) I haven't seen really detailed breakdowns of statistics in terms of crowding v. violence but IIRC poor rural areas have higher levels of violence than not-so-poor rural areas. Part of the problem is an ambiguous definition of "poor". A level of income that is sufficient for rural life in Alabama would be desprately poor in LA. Another is an ambiguous definition of "rural".

Obviously there are factors to make urban life more violent. Crowding creates its own stress. So does frustration. Excessive heat and smog also seem to be a factor. (Combine them and you've got LA's rush hour.) Higher density causes more social interactions while at the same time annonymity allows you to get away with a lot more rudeness. Obviously pheremone effects and intrusions on personal space will be amplified in densely packed areas.

OTOH I expect that there are extremely few places where people are packed as tightly as the rats in those experiments. Maybe if you put 50 poeple in a three bedroom apartment and didn't allow them to leave.

One maladapted person can ruin a whole lot of days. I've found myself slipping into some very dark thoughts when the person next to me has the bass turned up on their stereo so loud I can see my windshield vibrate and I can feel it in my chest. Passive aggressive behavior is quite common in cities and is a kind of in-your-face assertion that they, not you, are in control. People with lots of personal space may not need that as much.

What militates against overcrowding as being the prime culprit is the fluctuation of violence with time. Density doesn't fluctaute so quickly. While the overall desnity of the country has increased over time, the localized residential density of the central urban areas have actualy decreased. Some are virtually abandoned.

For example, it didn't suddenly increase when prohibition was passed, yet violence increased quite dramatically. Here is another serious contributor to crime, unrelated to either poverty or crowding: bad public policy.

Neighborhoods in Watts, Compton and other very violent areas of LA are no less crowded than the middle class area I live in now. They were once middle class or even affluent suburban neighborhoods with single family dwelling on lots. The housing is now extremely run down and the people are very poor.

[aunaturelone]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>you must admit, that the first time you saw such nastiness, you were shocked, the second time less shocked, and the third time you were looking forward to it. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>No, I don't have to admit this at all, else I'd be watching a slasher movie right now.

Though a diabetic may poke themselves with a needle very many times - and eventually get used to it - they will never enjoy it. People generally only go back for seconds on something they enjoyed the first time around.

I don't know about what society "needs" to see. Society only exists in the abstract and doesn't "see" anything. Individuals decide what they want to see. There is a crowd that enjoys slasher type movies (mostly teenaged and young adult males) and choose to spend their money that way. So be it. Except for a few like Jason and Freddie (who have become paradies of the very genre they created) slasher movies usually don't make it big.

A certain amount of blood and mayhem has a place on the screen. It isn't the amount of the violence, it is the context that I use to decide if it is movie I want to see. I realize other people may not share my notion of what the approriate context is. While I wouldn't go see "Kill Bill" on a bet, I wouldn't tell someone else they couldn't or shouldn't.

OTOH, "BlackHawk Down" a fine movie about a horrible event, would be a useless and dishonest movie without the explicit violence. It brings to home exactly how terrible war really is.

My advice to everyone is to ignore the ratings system and go entirely by reviews and word of mouth recomendation.

[drewbe]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aunaturelone:
[QUOTE]OTOH, "BlackHawk Down" a fine movie about a horrible event, would be a useless and dishonest movie without the explicit violence. It brings to home exactly how terrible war really is. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>How much of movies like Blackhawk down are true to the event without Hollywood changing it to increase box office takings....?

Yours Naturally,

Drew

[aunaturelone]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>How much of movies like Blackhawk down are true... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Not having been there, I don't know. People who were there and survived have indicated it was accurate. The book, "Black Hawk Down" on which the movie was based was reportedly extremely accurate.

OTOH I have seen war movies where everything was nice and neat and sterile and almost bloodless. People who were shot either died instantly or had a carefully scripted death scene. A bullet wound was a little colored dot. All "good guy" deaths were heroic and full of meaning. This kind of war is much more palatable than the real thing.

Nobody had a limb shot off in these movies or had half their skull blown away or were napalmed and lived on in screaming agnony. Old men, women and children were absent from the enemy combatants and there were no innocent civilian casualties. The "good guys" were uniformly righteous and without moral flaw and the bad guys were uniformly evil beyond redemption.

While these movies may be entertaining and "safe" for young children, they don't convey what war is really like. This romanticised and sanitized version of war makes people more willing to engage in it, not less. Adults are in need of more of a reality check than a diet of John Wayne can offer.