I just came back from seeing Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, a classy movie with a strong cast, made by a good writer/director. It should have been a good experience, or at least an interesting one. I should have come out of there with a lot of thoughts in my head regarding the many issues that were raised. I should have come out of there with a smile on my face because of the masterful display of using the film medium. Because it was indeed masterful.

But when I came out I was sick to my stomach. I felt sad and disturbed in a way that I'm sure goes beyond what the filmmaker intended me to feel. And before I go any further, know this; I've seen a lot of sick and violent movies in my days. I've seen people get killed in ways so brutal that you wonder how anyone could come up with ideas like that. I've been able to handle it. And I've always been a strong critic against censorship. It is no business of the state's to mess with an artist's vision or to dictate to its citizens what is good for them. I still believe that, and yet sometimes I get very, very worried.

I'm not going to go into greater detail of this particular movie's violence than to say that it involved children getting killed in a very cold-blooded way. This really isn't about just one movie. It's about many, many movies. And other art forms too for that matter. It really has gone too far. Not only is it just the movies that sicken me, it's their audiences as well. People laugh when someone is shot in the head, or has a limb cut off, or is brutally beaten. They are so desensitized that these things are now not only devoid of negative meaning, but have been so integrated into the public consciousness and accepted that they've become entertaining.

I feel like a jew at a nazi meeting when I sit there in the theatre. I see people's smiles and I hear their laughs and I know what has caused them. I feel so incredibly alienated that I wonder if it's me or them that is insane. It's a cold feeling, a nauseating feeling. I feel like I want to run away, but there is nowhere to run.

And I know that if I talk about it, I'm probably just going to come across as an overly conservative moral guardian. Which is probably what will happen now.

Either way, I can't take these things anymore.

You don't have to.
You're not the insane one

it means you're human. but does it mean you are more human? more evolved or less evolved?