I was reading the New York Times today and I stumbled upon a very interesting article that raised the question of whether Americans will want to see violent, gory movies in the coming months.  If you remember back to the period after the Columbine shootings, there was a movement for more restrictions on the violence in movies.  This is especially relevant in the case of the Virginia Tech shooting with the connection between Cho and that violent Korean film “Old Boy”.  So, will this be a wakeup call to take up the cause of cleaning up the violence in games and movies?  The sequel to the movie Hostel is scheduled to premiere fairly soon.  If anyone has seen the first Hostel, you know that that was a very gory film.  In one scene, an eye is ripped out of the socket.  Will people want to see movies like this in the wake of this tragedy? 

My answer is an overwhelming yes.  Even with the reaction to Columbine and the call for less violence in movies, the entertainment industry eventually returned to the point it had been at in the first place.  In the past few years, the films and games have only gotten worse.  You see, the American public has an extremely short attention span.  We can only champion a cause of moral righteousness for so long before we revert back to what we really are: a violence-hungry society. 

My belief is only strengthened by the reaction the country has had to the Virginia Tech shooting.  While it was a pleasant surprise to see the media lay off the Virginia Tech story after only a week, it also signals a changing attitude towards this type of tragedy.  It is almost as if American people are becoming callous to these massacres, which is reasonable because we have had so many lately.  In the past year there has been Virginia Tech, the Amish School House shooting, the shooting in the Kansas City mall the other day, and I am sure a few more that I am just missing right now.  We are not reacting with the kind of emotion that we did to Columbine because we are becoming so used to this sort of thing.  When I talk about a response, I am not saying there should be new legislation, since I can’t see anything we can do to stem this tide of violence.  The response that I would like to see is one of emotional outpouring.  It’s almost as if after 9/11, tragedies are now expected and can’t be dwelled on.  This callousness will be demonstrated when Hostel 2 (a movie based on the torture of college students at a European hostel) rakes in $50 million at the box office only a month or two after the massacre of 32 college students. 

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