"A Mother is God to a child.."

by **AlanStrangis** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 5:12 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>zombies are symbolic, speaking of the 'walking dead' who question nothing they see. what you guys think of this?<hr></blockquote> I couldn't agree more. The original Dawn of the Dead is still one of my personal faves, despite (or because?) it's dated feel and relatively low production values. I didn't know what to expect from "Land of the Dead" last year, but I was grooving to John Leguizamo's Osama vs. Dennis Hopper's M/I complex, and the fact that the zombies were starting to think for themselves.

by **Sarutama** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 6:45 pm

Firstly I just need to say to AlanStrangis that I LOVE the original Dawn of the Dead, actually have the logo tattooed on my calf. Now to a more on topic post. I think that the ratcheting up of gore/torture/destruction/whatever is happening do to the fact that we see that and more on the news day in and day out. Its in our daily lives. We are bombarded with stories of torture, war atrocities, etc everyday so naturally its going to seap into art. This might seem strange, but I think some of it can actually serve a postive purpose. We hear about torture but, personally, I always found it hard to indetify with. I mean I always new it was awful, but never had any real emotional connection with the word as I had no earthly idea how bad it could be. Then you see something like Hostel, where torture is right in front of you (actually, alot of it you don't see, but thats not really the point.) I found myself thinking "Wow, this made me incredibly uncomfortable and I KNOW its fake." The next time I heard about our soldiers and intelligence agencies torturing people I instantly, without thinking about it, flashed back to that uncomfortable place. Some how the fictional torture had made the real torture that much more real. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=sarutama@rigorousintuition>Sarutama</A> at: 8/23/06 4:52 pm

by **orz** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:54 pm

Best thing about Blair Witch (paging HMW! <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eek.gif ALT=":eek"> ) was when I went to see it in a packed cinema at the peak of the hype, and some wag in the audience screamed at the sight of the BBFC certificate! <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/laugh.gif ALT=":lol"> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>yup i remember the gratuitously violent scene in spiderman 2 when the octopus guy go nuts in a surgery room and basically kills everybody with blood all over the wall and a nurse scrapes her freaking nails on the floor leaving marks. i remember thinking "was that necessary??"<hr></blockquote> Strange, I remember thinking "I wish the whole film was this good" <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"> But alas the rest of it was largly devoted to soft focus closeups of Kirsten Dunst's mug as far as I remember. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"> As for King Kong... I don't know how to respond to anyone unable to appreciate this film... I can vaguely understand some of your concerns about the media etc but for me to fail to appreciate the audacious genius of making a family movie as intense as a Tsukamoto or Zulawski film, (and with really harsh homage to italian cannibal movies thrown in for good measure), is to fail to understand cinema full stop. To quote (paraphrase?) the greatest line from a DVD director's commentry of all time: "Anyone who hates Charlies Angels: Full Throttle really just hates themself." <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/roll.gif ALT=":rollin">

by **Jezebelladonna** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:58 am

If I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. ~ Stephen King

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 2:28 am

I tried to watch The Blair Witch Project but the hyper-shaky camera technique made me ill and I soon left and got my money back. (I don't do well on spin rides at the amusement park either.) According to the theater manager quite a few people had the same reaction to the camera work and he was handing out refunds right and left. I wonder whether that was an experiment in itself. Remember when the hand-held camera style first began on...was it NYPD Blue? It started off quite jerky and then after many episodes eventually settled down to a much more subtle hand-held motion that implied the same 'real' point of view without the roller coaster ride. As you are all too painfully aware, I see movies as the ultimate spychiatrist-advised product and violent images on TV have long been recognized by researchers as creating violence in some people. Funny how the TV networks get away with ratcheting up the violence as if...violent response in the audience was precisely the intended goal. Because it is. (See 'Dr. Narut.') This hypnotism and subconscious expert named Eldon Taylor testifed in the CBS - Judas Priest-backwards masking trial involving two boys who committed shotgun suicide around Christmas time in the early 90s. Taylor has a webpage that outlines the slow creeping up of TV and movie violence like a drug dose over a few decades. <img src="http://www.innertalk.com/progressive/papers/Child_Violence_illus.gif" style="border:0;"/> Taylor attempts to explain what brain stresses could cause a Columbine High School massacre and links these to the brain's reaction to images of violence. Now we know that there are 'mirror neurons' in the brain that cause us to imitate what we see as a survival tool. Evolution has bestowed us with our herd's survival skills by having us imitate what who we see and that 'who' is by definition a survivor and thus a good candidate for imitation. So any images put in front of kid's eyes will create atleast some echo effect. When violent female role models like Zena the Warrior and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were put on TV it only took a few years for America's playgrounds to have a violent girl problem added to the violent boy problem. Perfect for military recruiters. Taylor's explanation of the brain chemistry of stress is quite good and anyone with any familiarity with MK-ULTRA and Dr. Narut's bombshell announcement of how US military intelligence uses filmed violence to prepare assassins by first desensitizing them can extrapolate the effect of visual violence on the youth watching. Consider how 'normalizing' the sight of atrocity might prevent "the 1960s" (anti-war protests) from recurring during a 'permanent' war. If you are used to seeing things worse than the little Vietnamese girl with her clothes burned off by US napalm, you might not go out and try to stop the war, for instance. The threshold of outrage has been pushed further away. I'm a little leary of Taylor's part in the Judas Priest trial because that's the kind of trial that the CIA manages from both sides to shape our views of both psychology and media, their most important tools of governance. It also took place just as the vacuum of the 'won Cold War' had spooks looking around for new justifications for their budgets. So terror must've looked good to them as a replacement. Definitely worth a read- http://www.innertalk.com/progressive/articles/Thinking_Without_Thinking.html Here is Taylor's paper on how our brains are conditioned by stress chemicals (VERY appropriate in a discussion of 'horror') and the media manipulation of them- http://www.innertalk.com/progressive/papers/Semantic_distortion.html <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Here are some facts about stress: 1. Stressful stimuli (stressors) lead to the “stress response” which is an excitation or arousal of the central nervous system (CNS) and this raises the activity in the CNS. 2. Stressors may summate where the total sum of stressors lead to a suppression of the immune and endocrine system. 3. The stress response initially affects the discharge of sympathetic neurons and the secretion of catecholamines and later the increased level in cortisol (perhaps a tail off affect). 4. Increased levels of cortisol have been dramatically linked to everything from memory loss to the destruction of selected brain cells. 5. The summation and accumulation of so-called ordinary stress can lead to a helpless and hopeless attitude which itself negatively influences the immune system to say nothing of its potentiation of heightened anxiety or depression. 6. Some stressors are actually “thrillers” depending upon the human context in which they are viewed. Thrillers can aggregate with stressors. 7. Stress affects and influences behavior, sometimes toward inhibition (fear and anxiety) and in the opposite direction (anger and hostility). 8. Stress uses energy. It can deplete energy levels leaving one exhausted even upon waking after a night's sleep. 9. From serious psychiatric disorders, including bi-polar and affective personality disorders, to simple acne, stress is a disrupter. 10. Accumulated stressors and/or thrillers lead to a continued state of heightened arousal which in turn fundamentally alters brain chemistry, of particular interest in this context, corticosteroids (most important of which is cortisol) and the catecholamines epinephrine and norepinephrine. (Stanford, S.C and Salmon, P., 1993) ..... Fantasy Formation It is not an aside to discuss a well known mechanism known as fantasy formation at this point. For as a stimulus is systematically increased leading to a new threshold which in turn requires an ever greater stimuli to meet arousal requirements, the accompany fantasy is also altered. That is, as everyone incorporates material suggested by outside sources in their fantasies, as the threshold of arousal changes so does the fantasy. Take for example sexual fantasies. The initial fantasy held before a sexual experience is greatly different than say the fantasy of an older male who has traveled the world. The experience of forming a fantasy, fantasizing about it, whether carried out or not, fundamentally changes the fantasy. Further, the introduction of ideas also fundamentally alters fantasy. The fantasy formation mechanism is such that in order for a fantasy to satisfy its basic definition, it must lead to arousal of some nature, even if the arousal is only a passing feeling of self gratification. The “copy cat” crime is an a priori example of how suggestion becomes intertwined with fantasy, which in turn all too often leads to the actual acting out of the fantasy. The so-called vicarious experience that arouses anger, sex, revenge, etc., portrayed in entertainment is particularly dangerous when offered up with justification. It’s natural for Rambo to seek revenge since he didn’t draw first blood. Some people are just “natural born killers.” When the fantasy has socially accepted framework, particularly that which leads to one’s ability to blame something or someone else for the behavior, then the likelihood of the fantasy turning into some act is increased.  Much of what society accepts today as socially understandable in some overt or covert form, is truly socially unacceptable. However, a developing mind often fails to discriminate between the socially understood and the socially okay, to say nothing of society's greater problem in failing to maintain more rigid social values in face of a free society. Many years ago I was researching the influence of fear stimuli when presented subliminally. Together with a young researcher, we designed a pilot study that employed a polygraph measurement of blood pressure, galvanic skin response (GSR) and upper and lower breathing. Teenage subjects were divided into two groups. Both groups were informed that they would be hearing the gentle sounds of ocean waves for four minutes while their breathing, blood pressure and GSR were monitored. Both groups were informed that the reason for the study was to measure the effect of nature sounds on the relaxation response. The first group listened to ocean waves. The second group (the experimental group) listened to the same ocean soundtrack but with a message that repeated every 60 seconds. That message was, “Look out! Danger--danger--danger!” Both groups were debriefed after the experiment. They had both been asked to watch their reverie and report their thoughts while sitting back, eyes closed, listening to the peaceful ocean sounds. Not only did the experimental group all have physical indications of stress as measured by the polygraph, but also their reverie differed from group one totally. Group one, which showed no physical signs of stress, reported almost unanimously peaceful scenes at the beach as their reverie. Whereas the experimental group reported violent scenes ranging from assault to war. Of particular note here is the nature of the reverie. The experimental subjects incorporated their own fantasies and fears in the reverie from the undetected and unknown “danger” stimulus. For example, one young man told us of how he saw himself in the jungles of Viet Nam killing the enemy. The Viet Nam era had long been over at the time of the experiment, but the movies were playing everywhere. (Taylor, E., 1995) Fortunately, in post Columbine fashion, many people get this connection today. Therefore Congress may finally enact some responsible bill that precludes certain types of entertainment from being available to children. However, even if this happens and even if it is enforced by parents and others, the great mass of young people today have largely been overexposed to what we wish to protect tomorrow’s children from. What about them? Additionally, not all forms of entertainment are even being considered. Children listen to music that literally instructs them to commit suicide or to act in other totally unacceptable ways. Some of this music has been taken to task in courtrooms only to be relieved of any and all responsibility on the basis of first amendment rights or some other less obvious consideration. The Judas Priest case in Reno, Nevada, comes quickly to my mind. Two young troubled teenagers shot themselves in the head. One braced the shotgun and he died immediately. The other blew off the front of his face and his death came a few years later. There is no question about the fact that the boys played a particular song over and over again containing a subliminal command. There is also no question in this case as to the presence of the subliminal command, “Do it!” This command comes in the lyrics of a song that encourages suicide. Further, there is no question that there was no prior knowledge about the command and yet both boys chanted “Do it” before taking their own lives. However, the Judas Priest group somehow successfully convinced a judge that there was no connection to the act and/or in the alternative, the subliminal command was a pure coincidence of sound. That is, where they admitted putting subliminal messages in some music, they denied doing so in this particular soundtrack. Since several subliminal messages were present and recovered for the Court, the explanation was a simple denial, asserting that when the soundtracks were mixed together, the vocal command occurred as only a coincidence of vocal noise. The Judas Priest case is instructive in other ways. The mass media attacked the family, witnesses and attorneys who allegedly were only seeking personal gain from the poor picked on defendants, Judas Priest and their record company, CBS. Indeed, the Judge warned the attorneys for CBS with respect to what some have said was an outright manipulation of the press. Press management or press manipulation? The point is simple, the media has its interests, as does the politician, as does the entertainment industry, and so forth. It therefore becomes more of an individual responsibility for each member of society to look out for themselves, each other and their children. Perhaps the cynicism most hold for politics should paint a broader brush and include those informing us of the so-called “news.” An idea is a powerful thing. Ideas have revolutionized the world around us. Ideas are the stuff of thought. Ideas hold alternatives. Ideas can kindle passion. Passionate ideas can be irrational. Persistent irrational ideation leads to mental illness. Emotional disturbances are anchored by ideas that are experienced in irrational expressions. The word, the idea, the emotion, the passion, the fantasy formation, the justification, all lead a certain path to the outlet. Each outlet, each experience, compounds itself and changes the brain. In the words of Bruce Perry, “..to understand that the physical properties of neurons change with experience is crucial to understanding the concept of memory. Simply stated--the brain changes with experience--all experience, good and bad.” (1999). ..... Conclusion In summary, the human animal has basic evolutionary drives and biologically related functions. The human primitive brain thrives on arousal. The system is set up to reward arousal with pleasure. The human maturation requires education, experience, and practice. Danger stimuli both satisfy arousal needs and provide practice, education and experience with fear. The human animal is the only animal that actively seeks out fearful stimuli, usually within the context of a safety net or “protective frame.” The human animal defines itself, its ego, in classical territorial terms. Its territory, identity, beliefs and behavior are built from the description of experience. The human animal imitates just as other animals, but often the imitation is of a false to fact reality as that provided in much of our film entertainment. The need for arousal may remain constant while the arousal threshold, continually saturated with more and more stimuli, ever increases. This increasing threshold is in fact a systematic desensitization of lower older thresholds. A simple curve illustrating this can be easily depicted from our history of sex and violence in the cinema (see below). All of this leads to distortions inherently semantic in nature. These semantic distortions delimit our experience and our ambitions. They decide what and who is acceptable. They decide when we will find peace with our selves and our neighbors. They are the criteria upon which mankind builds its sanity. And for many, this sanity is a special form of modern neurosis full of false to fact descriptions of oneself and reality. ADDENDUM 1. Since a stimulus is required to generate arousal; 2. Since arousal is needed; and 3. Since the vicarious experience and fantasy formation are natural aspects of stimulus response; 4. It is therefore probable that our entertainment, recreation, habits and much of our thought processes would provide stimulus substitution or sublimation (SS) leading to practiced arousal (PA) which in turn either requires MORE, MORE, MORE (MMM) in terms of synthetic (ideation/vicarious) stimuli and/or an actual acting out of the fantasy which is naturally formed while experiencing the synthetic stimuli. (In a very real sense one can think of the MMM as a fifth drive). 5. Fear (F) bends belief (B) creating semantic distortions (SD). There are four major fears that shape attitudes and influence behavior. (There are more than four fears obviously, but I believe the four listed below are the most significant when it comes to matters of bending/shaping belief.) Further, please note that the fear of death is not one, although arguably this fear could be said to underlie much of what is known as religious belief. Nevertheless, particularly with violent acts, the fear of living in an unacceptable manner is stronger than the fear of death). The four fears are: a. Fear of rejection; b. Fear of humiliation; c. Fear of failure; and d. Fear of success. Therefore, as one increases stimulus (S) strength they increase the amount of S necessary to reach PA. Ergo, S>S1>S2=PA; then PA>PA1>PA2...PAn as PA increases semantic responses (SR) distort and become SDs which always exist with emotional disturbances (ED). Consequently, threshold arousal (TA) need increases (TAn) proportionally to the stimulus arousal relationship. S+S1+S2 TAn PA2 SD since SD must be variable to meet species arousal need (AN) and stimulus response and/or in humans, stimulus response/semantic reaction (SR). As S ƒ SR, therefore S+S1+S2+S3+...Sn=SRn, ergo SRn is relational to AT (AT, AT1, AT2...Atn) which equals PA and becomes the manipulated (PAn). Special Note: Since the original publication of this paper, school shootings have continued. School violence is escalating! The attention given a recent shooter by President Bush, publicly referring to him as a coward, was probably ill advised. This almost uniquely American problem must be addressed. Failure to do so, at whatever economic cost, will most certainly lead to disastrous results.<hr></blockquote>

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 2:46 am

On the topic of preparing people to accept many deaths without outrage, I've noted how misogyny is one of the tools of sustaining a male warrior class for the National inSecurity State by preventing women from influencing the more violent male culture. I'm wondering whether misogyny and counter-atrocity were combined in Canada years ago to aid weening Americans off of Vietnam Syndrome. (Did you notice that the villian in the Disney girl action figure 'Kim Possible' is named...Syndrome?) Back on Dec. 6, 1989 a man named Marc Lepine entered L'Ecole Polytechnique Engineering School in Montreal, Canada, ushered the male students out of the room, lined the female students up against the wall, and shot them. For "being feminists." Supposedly he left behind a note deploring "feminists who want credit for things they didn't do, like war." Hmm. <a href="http://www.3rdwwwave.com/display_article.cgi?111">www.3rdwwwave.com/display...le.cgi?111</a> A mere two weeks later on Dec. 20, 1989 George HW Bush invaded Panama and murdered a few thousand poor Panamanians, many of whom were buried in mass graves on US bases to hide the evidence. This was only the second overt US military action after the trauma of the Vietnam War with Reagan's diversion into Grenada being the other right when the US Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed. So perhaps the 'senseless' massacre by a Manchurian Candidate prepared the American public's collective mind for the Panama invasion complete with the wedge issue of gender as a further diversion. Recall that the Columbine School massacre happened as Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark were bombing the hell out of Kosovo as NATO. A counter-atrocity to distract from state-sanctioned war crimes? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 8/24/06 12:51 am

Website · by **MinM** » Tue Feb 16, 2016 12:10 am

FourthBase » Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:46 pmNaomi Watts reminded me of Mulholland Drive

Naomi Watts and nicole kidman are lifelong best friends. While kidman was a major star for over a decade she never tossed an acting bone to naomi. Ever. In fact while a struggling actress she served as the nanny for nicole and toms kids.

She was basically all set to say fuck this and give up and move back to Australia when she landed role in lynch Mulholland drive which made her star.

I suspect they never gave her a role because I assume she never joined scientology. If that's the case, good for her.

"A Mother is God to a child.."

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