What is your take on "splatter" films? Or violent films in general? My boyfriend and I headed out to the Fantasy Film Fest to see, from what my understanding was, a "comedy". He said it would be a good idea to get out of the house because bedrest was a little too stifling and fresh air would do me good.
24 minutes into the film, although people were laughing, I couldn't stop shaking and I kept my head down the rest of the time. It was a typical Dutch gangster movie, where people cut off fingers and skin people alive and throw them into duffle bags. I can't stand films like this. It's a REAL wonder how I get through Dexter and Game of Thrones. My saving grace is, in GOT I know what's going to happen because I read the books and my boyfriend will let me hide in his chest until the bad parts are over.
I'm much too sensitive. There things that I just can't take in cinema. 1. RAPE scenes. (I get totally PTSD and start violently shaking) 2. RACISM (it's too factually based and something that makes me very uncomfortable 3. ANIMAL ABUSE (never funny, always vile, completely unfathomable) 4. HATRED and VIOLENCE from one human to the other (I can deal with fictional monsters. Zombies. Werewolves. Aliens. Ghosts.) But when it deals with hateful acts from one human to another... I draw the line. There are too many sickos out there, so many bigots and people do unspeakable things to each other in real life. I can't even wrap my brain around why somebody would portray it in a film and how so many people can disassociate themselves and see it for what it is "just a film". I never could... and I won't. I don't know how to. How do I put my heart away and store it somewhere safe?
This is the only time in my life, where I can abide with the saying "Ignorance is bliss."
In books, I can just close the chapter... take a few breaths... pace the room and tell myself, 'if i need to, i'll just skip these paragraphs.' If it's in a comic book? I can tell myself... 'these are drawings' and I can close the book. I had to skip a lot of things in the Preacher comics. The animal cruelty was the biggest problem for me and that book. A man beat a gorilla to death with a baseball bat... and that was a can of worms that I just wasn't going to open. Don't get me started on Warren Ellis comics... LOVE that guy but the violence is sometimes too too much for me.
How do you ever really get over something like that? When do you grow up? When does your heart become a stone? Can you desensitize yourself to it? After I've been frightened in someway or another I always feel like I'm a little girl again in a crowded city... holding up my hand and waiting for my dad to find me and pick me up. To hold me to his chest and tell me, "You're going to be fine, Nana... nothing is going to hurt you." But these things DO hurt me. Sometimes just the simplicity of turning on the news and watching it is just too much. There are horrible people out there, and they are doing terrible things to each other. The world can cast shadows on your heart... and sometimes, I think this makes it ok when we don't want to grow up. My therapist says it's called regression but a friend of mine recently told me... that's your inner child waving a white flag. And in this case... the message has definitely been received.
