'We live in a culture of violence, and that culture is nurtured and glamorized by the movies...'

From the letters at the Los Angeles Times, "Feedback: The culture of violence":

Betsy Sharkey's premise, "A Critic Says the Problem Isn't the Movies but Real Life, Where Killing Is All Too Common," is misguided and unrealistic [Feb. 17]. If killing and violence are all too common in real life, does producing more films, which seem to glorify gratuitous killing and violence, alleviate the problem? I don't think so.

After all, fashion, sexual behavior and language in films seem to have an influential and imitative effect in people's lives. Why would violence be exempt?

Sharkey claims that nothing she's seen in movies comes close to what she's witnessed firsthand. How can this be? In real life, one kick to the head could end a life, or most likely end the fight, but in films, a dozen kicks to the head seem to prolong a fight rather than end it.

We live in a culture of violence, and that culture is nurtured and glamorized by the movies. We can become only more inured to that violence and more violent as a society, because ultimately, life imitates art.

Giuseppe Mirelli

Los Angeles

More letters at the link.

And see Instapundit, "SHILLING FOR HOLLYWOOD: L.A. Times: Violent Movies Don’t Cause Violence, but Guns Do." Also, "IF YOU’RE WATCHING THE OSCARS TONIGHT — OR IF YOU’RE NOT — you might want to read my Wall Street Journal column: The Hollywood Tax Story They Won’t Tell at the Oscars: It’s easy to demand higher levies on the ‘rich’ when your own industry gets $1.5 billion in government handouts."