The whole "violence in movies has nothing to do with violence in real life" idea is really ridiculous considering that it's wildly accepted that smoking in movies "glamorizes and glorifies" smoking. And what about blue jean advertising? If what people see in entertainment has no factor on their real lives then how do you explain the entire advertising business? Or product placement in movies? That's a huge business in and of itself. The "gun" happens to be the single biggest benefactor of free advertising in all of entertainment. Period. Of course this writer has this view that violence is not connected to what happens in entertainment -- he's the guy that wrote the scene of gangsters emerging from behind a curtain in a movie theatre to take out the place. Nonsense. All of it.

Can't say I agree with that point of view either, Michael. Movies, TV, book, music all provide 'fuel' for whatever a reader/viewer has going on in their own lives, for better or worse. From mundane -- Clark Gable not wearing a T-shirt in "It Happened One Night" causing T-shirt sales to plummet 75% -- to severe -- "The Dark Knight" and the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. There's an item in this week's upcoming Saturday Hot Links in which some outfit counted the number of deaths on screen in last weekend's top 5 movies [B.O.]: It was something like 180. This is such a can of worms given the history of censorship and movies, even before the Hayes Code, and I certainly don't have an answer, but there is a connection between what gets presented on screen and what viewers experience in their seats to the point where it can impact behavior. How can one think otherwise?

It's interesting that you mention censorship in movies. The original intent of the Hayes Office was to prevent society from being transformed by stories that elevated and glamorized bad behavior -- pretty much exactly what happened when the Hayes Office closed down in 1968. From 68-now we've seen the fruits of what morality without bounds in story telling can do to the entire world. Hopefully, society has gone from one extreme to the other and can now, without a forceful morality police, begin to be more responsible purveyors of trends, ideas and fads that are wrapped into stories. More focus on diabolical evil instead of flesh evil needs to be considered by all writers. It is the easiest (and laziest) choice in the world to go to the gun or some other shocking act of violence that replaces a genuine evil that corrupts and ruins one's soul.