So I was watching some of the Emmy Awards earlier today and I was actually surprised at how much this show called Dexter was nominated for awards! Now they didn't get any, although director Steve Shill did win one for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, but I was still surprised at the amount of times the series kept popping up!
If you don't know what the series Dexter is about here is a quick breakdown.
Dexter is about a guy named Dexter Morgan who works for the Miami Police Department as a blood spatter expert for the Homicide unit. When serial killers come along he finds out who they are and then leads the Miami PD astray just long enough so that they cannot find the serial killer. Then Dexter goes after the Serial killer and kills them himself. Basically, Dexter is a serial killer of serial killers!
So I was wondering if we are just attached to watching shows that had to do with murdering people! What makes the killing of others so attractive?
I wanted to write about current movies that were in the theaters that had to do with killing people, but currently where I live there are only 2 movies out there.
The first one is Piranha. Not really a murder movie yet people get killed by psycho piranha's. I guess that some movies like this one that have lots of killings in them also get a lot of popularity. Just look at any of the Friday the 13th movies of any of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies! At least 10 people get murdered in those movies each and every time! Yet people seem to like watching people being murdered! That's why they keep making these movies!
The second movie out there is The Expendables. You want to talk about killing people then this is the movie to talk about! The Expendables has approximately 180 people getting killed in the movie, yet this movie has been the number one rated movie almost since it opened! This weekend was the first time it had dropped since being number one. This weekend it dropped to number three.
But lets look at the cast of The Expendables and see just how much each one of them has killed in their careers!
• Mickey Rourke – 28 Kills on screen in 61 Films – 0.45 kills
per film.
Most Kills:- 15 as Marv in Sin City
Kills in The Expendables: 0
• Jason Statham – 147 Kills on screen in 23 Films – 6.4 kills per film.
Most Kills:- 60 as ‘Farmer’ in ‘In the name of the King’
Approximate kills in The Expendables: 80
• Bruce Willis - 168 Kills on screen in 62 Films – 2.7 per film.
Most Kills – 26 as Korban Dallas in Fifth Element
Approximate kills in The Expendables: 0
• Jet Li – 327 Kills on screen – 39 Films – 8.3 per film.
Most Kills – 50 as Kit Li in High Risk
Approximate kills in The Expendables: 30
• Sylvester Stallone – 334 Kills on Screen – 50 Films – 6.7 per film.
Most Kills – 87 as John Rambo (2008)
Approximate kills in The Expendables: 60
• Arnold Schwarzenegger – 513 Kills on screen – 31 Films – 16.5 per film.
Most Kills – 102 as Matrix in Commando
Approximate kills in The Expendables: 0
• Dolph Lundgren – 632 Kills on screen – 36 Films – 17.5 per film.
Most Kills – 60 as Frank in the Punisher
Approximate kills in The Expendables: 10
THE BLOODY FACTS:
TOTALS: 2149 Combined Kills in 302 Films.
1. HOW HIGH – If you laid all the bodies these guys have racked up in their movies and stack em up like a single tower morbid game of Jenga it would be the height of 2149 feet, 655 metres or 0.4 of a mile which is roughly the same size as five London Eye big wheels, Two Eiffel Towers or as tall as 13 Godzilla’s (Japanese 1954 original version).
2. HOW FAR- Alternatively if you don’t fancy stacking you could lay each body-bag head to toe (presuming each guy exterminated was 6 foot tall, which is about right height for your average villain) it will total up to about 12,894 feet, 2.5 Miles or 3,930 metres in Length. That’s 9.8 times around an Olympic track that would take Usain Bolt about six minutes to reach the end of running at full pelt.
3. BLOODBATH! – If the average human body contains 5.6 litres of blood and presuming after each life our action stars takes the bodies loses around half that, then there would be enough blood to fill 10,588 pints of beer, 22.3 baths of water and is three times the amount of blood used to blast out of the bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street!
Yes all of this is so interesting! And yes I did copy all of those last statistics about The Expendables from a site called "heyuguys". Did you really think that I had all that time to all this type of research? Heck no!
My whole point is why are we so obsessed with people getting killed and why do we flock to see these type of movies?
I wonder if we have created this type of society on our own. I mean, what if we are the ones who watched these type of things as we were children and then wanted to expand our imagination and make something that was already violent, even more violent. So I decided to do some digging and here's what I found from the Parents Television Council.
Over the years, there have been literally hundreds of studies examining the connection between media violence and violence in real-life. In 1952, the United States House of Representatives was holding hearings to explore the impact of television violence and concluded that the "television broadcast industry was a perpetrator and a deliverer of violence." Then in 1972, the Surgeon General's office conducted an overview of existing studies on television violence and concluded that it was "a contributing factor to increases in violent crime and antisocial behavior." In his testimony to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld said, ""It is clear to me that the causal relationship between televised violence and antisocial behavior is sufficient to warrant appropriate and immediate remedial action… There comes a time when the data are sufficient to justify action. That time has come."
Remember that these studies were done way back when! I really wonder what they would say now! But I'm talking about murder, not just violence! It is estimated that by the time an average child leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence. By the time that child is 18 years-of-age; he or she will witness 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders.
So my question is when did all of this become ok? When did we as a society make it ok to make violent movies? Make movies that we kill people? Are we promoting murder? Is that why murder is on the rise in America? We allow music to be produced that talks about murdering people. We allow video games to be put out there that puts you in the roll of a murderer!
Wether you know it or not, you can stop it. But how! It's really easy. Don't buy it! In America we produce what sells. If violent movies are selling, that's just what Hollywood is going to produce! If violent video games are a hot selling item, then your going to see more and more violent video games popping up. I guess that's why I like Nintendo so much! They hardly have any violent video games on their system!
If you don't think that you have the power to change things things buy not buying them, think about this. You go to the movies. You have just bought your ticket to see the movie The Expendables. Just kidding! You've got your tickets to go see Toy Story 3. Your seeing this movie with someone close to you. You get a large popcorn to share and the both of you get a medium drink. Now, how much did that just cost you? I'd be willing to be that you just spent around $28 dollars just on the tickets a popcorn and two drinks! Does that not sound like you have just been ripped off? When Toy Story 3 comes out on DVD, you are going to be able to buy the DVD, an 18 pack of microwave popcorn, and two 3 liter cokes for less than $28!
So why do we pay for things like popcorn and cokes at a movie theater, knowing that we are getting ripped off? If we were in a grocery store we would complain to the manager that their prices were horrible and if they didn't change them we would never shop there again? Since we allow ourselves to get ripped off in a movie theater, they continue to charge those prices. The longer you pay for those items at a very high price the longer they are going to stay high priced. However, if you refused to buy their product then prices would plummet!
That was kind of off the subject but the point was that as long as people continue to buy into violent movies and such, violence is what is going to be produced! It's just like when people say, "Sex sells". It has a truth to it because you see half naked girls on beer commercials, magazines, in nascar, and in all other types of things. Sex sells, and so does violence! Especially murder!
