The Title of the Blog - part 4

Four weeks in and the Brad Pitt-Morgan Freeman-Kevin Spacey film Seven had just come out. Went to see the film with a couple of frat bros, and I wanted to walk out of the theater. I was totally icked out.

Pride. Wrath. Lust. Envy. Glutton. Greed. Sloth. The seven deadly sins. Today, for each one of these some script writer is reaping a million dollars simply because he could incorporate them all into a movie that a few thousand people will see. He fully has that right, as do the people who directed, produced, and starred in that same film. These people are some of the finest in the world at their craft, and they should be rewarded in that they can convince us to come see their movie. I was convinced last week, and I spent a dollar an hour to be horrified and repulsed.

In no other fully-fictitious movie have I ever seen so violent, so torturous, so repulsive a series of murders as those in this movie. During the file I thought more than once of leaving the theater and had I not driven my fraternity brothers there, I probably would have. Instead, I sat through seven murders and a week of brown rain and surrendered my money to do it.

Since then I’ve spent a few more hours asking myself why I did that. A few years ago I paid for two people to see LA Story, a romantic comedy. Before that, for me to watch Hoosiers, a triumph for the little men of the world. And I’ve seen The Muppet Movie a dozen times. These I understand, because each of them gave me a time to escape from the real world in which I am forced to reside for my other hours. Seven I still don’t understand. In it I got a bit of boiled-down, concentrated evil, something that would disturb me far more than it entertained me.

Every morning I sit down to the Indianapolis Star and work my way through the comics and the sports page. Both of these give me a bit of joy, a few minutes of fun. I usually avoid the front page except to skim the headlines. Day in and day out I find stores of murder and robbery, of rape and terrorism. Those things are real; we have no escape from the facts of our world. I honestly sincerely wish that they were different, but they are not. Our world has an awful lot of beauty in it, but is also has its full measure of horror.

Do we then need people to make up their own fictions even worse that what is already? I know that I don’t. Actually, what I know is that I don’t need to see or hear or read those stories. Every person on the earth has full rights and privileges to their ideas, be they dreams or nightmares. If that person wants to even put their image on canvas or celluloid, their story or tape or script, they should be allowed to do that. Ideas alone can do us no harm.

But I reserve full right, as well, to not read that person’s words, to close my ears tot their stories. And you do as well. I chose to see Seven and to read Grapes of Wrath; any problems that these may have caused me are fully of my own choosing. What I do not have full rights and privileges to do is to tell you what you cannot watch and may not hear. Your mind is your own whether you choose to pour into is beautiful tales or horrible pictures.

Lately the debate had come to us on whether our new televisions should have a new microchip to block violent programs from ever reaching us. These V-chips would keeps Cops and GI Jo, old Chuck Norris movies, and undoubtedly Seven from ever showing on the small screen. But already we have a few things that can do this more effectively and less in the fashion of Big Brother. We have remote controls, on-off cottons, and our minds. If I want to see blood and guts, then I should be fully allowed to, and if someday my children want to, then I should be the one to convince them not to. GE shouldn’t; Bob Bole shouldn’t; my neighbors shouldn’t; and neither should you.

But personally I would much rather kick back, pop some popcorn, and see the Roadrunner give Wil E. Coyote a good whack across the head; or maybe pop in a tape and ice the beer when it’s time for some good ole’ butt-kickin’ football. Anything as long as I don’t have to see Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman again…ooh, nightmares…

I've seen the flick once since then, and it's still a very well-made film that reulses me thoroughly. I think I would've liked this ending better.