Rage Against the Screen
In retrospect, I never thought that I'd feel the way I did walking out of the theater. Having just watched the critically acclaimed film, Mystic River, I couldn't help but feel filled with rage and disgust, not at the film, which was well made, but in its ability to, simply put, piss me off. Without revealing too much about the film, let's just say that there aren't very many redeeming characters in this film. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that there aren't any sympathetic characters in this film. The protagonist, if you want to call him that, Jimmy Markum, played by Sean Penn, is a despicable human being who, quite literally, gets away with murder, and an unjustified one at that. And the most disturbing thing about it is that it's alright. Nothing is going to happen to him. The world's going to be a swell place, and his wife, Annabeth Markum, played by Laura Linney, in what had to be one of the most disgusting scenes, essentially tells him to forget about it. Along with this, you have the played out neighborhood loyalty trick that seems to play out in a ton of films focusing on specific ethnic or regional neighborhoods. In other words, this film really pissed me off like no other recent film.

This feeling, this disgust and rage, is something that I've felt before when watching films, which led me to consider, again, the role of the media in emotional manipulation. Now, I'm not a huge proponent of the theories that people embrace that blame the media's influence for every misdeed that occurs in this country, but I do think that it does have an increasingly powerful affect that, in someone who is easily influenced, could lead to some sort of behavior modification. That notwithstanding, the point here is that I've become aware of the power films have over people. This, obviously, isn't something new. Film is a pretty powerful medium, and it has the ability to make people experience a wide array of emotions, from sadness to happiness to anger, all in the span of several hours. It's no wonder the propaganda is such a powerful tool when placed in the hands of people with less than noble intentions.

Mystic River, though, put me in mind of another film that I saw that had a similar affect on me. Possibly, this was the film that made me realize that film can make you feel different emotions depending on what's being portrayed on screen. Regardless of how you feel about the historical accuracy of the The Patriot, one character, William Tavington, played by Jason Issacs, is an utter personification of evil. His actions throughout the course of the film are despicable, disgusting, and downright heinous. But these are all done intentionally in an effort by the filmmakers to create a real villain. After seeing the film, I remarked to the friend I watched it with that it's becoming apparent that filmmakers are trying to harder and harder to create villains that are so beyond evil that only the devil himself could prove to be even more evil, and this might be a hard task to accomplish. So, throughout this entire film, all you want to do is see Tavington die. Thankfully, he does, but that leads me to the most disturbing aspect of this: how can a film that's purely fictional produce such hatred in filmgoers, and what, if any, harm is done by doing this?

I don't have any easy answers to this, but I have seen plenty of films with villains that are becoming more and more heinous in their actions that you just want to see them die at all costs. Another example Breakdown features a gang of evil men who kidnap stranded motorists and torture and kill them. Watching this film is difficult, not because it's graphic, but because it's really disturbing. All you want to do is see these men die, horrifically if possible. I don't know which is worse, watching what's happening on the screen or feeling how you feel when you leave the theater.

Maybe I'm overreacting, and I don't want to sound as if I'm calling for censorship, which is the furthest thing in my mind to an ideal situation. I just hate to think that we can be manipulated so easily into believing that seeing this person, in these cases fictional characters, die and have it done on a repeated basis. Propaganda is a powerful tool, and if I had any desire to produce some sort of mass propaganda furthering my own agenda, I'd choose film as my medium. It's scary to think about, but I think it's worthy of consideration the next time you enter the theater or put a film on to watch at home.