What Are We Watching?: Imaginary vs. Real Life Violence

Sitting down with a bowl of popcorn on the couch with one of my best friends, I finally bucked up and did it—I watched The Hunger Games. Now, being a young person, it’s practically a faux pas that I have not seen it yet. I was drawn in and found myself enjoying the movie; when it was finished, I was left with several troubling questions. The Hunger Games has definitely been sensational; the horrifying event of the Hunger Games itself, kids killing kids, is seemingly assuaged by its crowd pleasing qualities (in-movie and real-life crowds); however, it does bring up some very interesting commentary on today’s society.

It is normal to walk into a PG-13 movie and expect some punching, kicking, weapon-wielding, probably some mild blood splattering. Guts, gore, and Mel Gibson style blood spurting is (usually) bumped up to R. The violence in The Hunger Games, while unsettling because of youth killing youth (sometimes with happy vigor), is nothing uncommon.

Having said this, I bring up the idea of imaginary violence on the silver screen. Most of it can pass for PG-13 and children are encouraged to see it (thousands of children lining up to see The Dark Knight Rises comes to mind). But when we step into the realm of real life hardship, even with fictitious characters, we seem to drift towards the R rating; unless, of course, Disney has gotten hold of it.

Movies like this, such as Precious or George Clooney’s The Descendants, deal with many gritty things real life people have had to deal with. It seems as if Hollywood believes we should not be exposed to real life hardship and strife. Now this comes with obvious reasons—movies are supposed to take us away from everyday life and transport us somewhere fantastical.

However, many of these movies are entertaining and really make you think. One genre in particular, documentaries, are especially aimed at entertaining and educating all in one. Some of you may remember that when The Hunger Games came to theaters this past March, so too did the controversial documentary Bully. It received a lot of buzz about its R rating (for bad language—language kids hear every day in school regardless) and there were several movements to get it down to PG-13 so that its target audience, kids, could watch it—but most of this was overshadowed by the extreme hysteria over The Hunger Games’ release.

As I watched The Hunger Games, I racked my brain for a reason why a movie about kids killing kids got a PG-13 rating while a documentary about the real life struggle of children who are the victims of bullying and a flawed education system received an R rating. One is meant to entertain and crowd-please, the other is meant to educate and open eyes.

We as the public need to be conscious about what Hollywood wants us to watch. We need to be more sensitive to the problems faced by the children of Bully and all those they represent. The violence in The Hunger Games was certainly controversial—how could a society revel so much in children killing one another? But it is saying something about us in contemporary times; do we not ourselves revel in violence?—do we not ourselves allow violence toward children, in the form of bullying, to go on?