article reviews

Article 1 Everything Quentin Tarantino Really Thinks About Violence and the Movies

This article is mostly quotes about Quentin Tarantino's opinion about the relationship between violence in the media and violence in real life. It starts out with a video of him refusing to answer questions from an interviewer and just generally being rude, stuck up, and kind of pretentious (why even bother showing up to an interview if you're going to refuse to answer the questions?). It then shows a list of quotes from him about the subject he didn't want to talk about. They all boil down to the idea that he doesn't think that violent movies cause violence in real life. I'm inclined to agree with this opinion. Hearing someone say "seeing pretend violence makes normal people violent in real life" sounds just as ridiculous to me as "Seeing gay people makes straight people gay". 

Bonus!!!!!!!! I criticize the lazy writing of this "article"

So, this article began with what starts out looking like an introductory paragraph (turns out, this is the only actual paragraph of the entire "article"), which quickly turns into a description of a YouTube video, then immediately begs you to watch said video. Next in this brilliant feat of masterful "journalism" is the actual video that had just been described right above it. It goes on for quite awhile before you finally reach the parts mentioned in the paragraph describing it (You realize that you can embed YouTube videos at whatever time you need them to be at? That's right, you can start at the relevant parts!). Then the "article" just devolves into a list of eight quotes that all say the same thing. Granted, that's kind of the point, but I got the general idea waaaaay before I reached the last few quotes. There was no closing paragraph.

Article 2 Violent media poisoning nation's soul

This article is about violence and ratings in movies. The author talks about how violent movies can get and suggests changing the criteria for a pg-13 movie. He also mentions how uncomfortable he is, as a movie critic, describing his own discomfort with movies. He suggests that critics stop being afraid of their own morals and opinions and start writing honestly. I think that this would make it much easier to decide whether or not to go to a movie, or who to take with you. Even if professional critics never get around to making these changes, I'm sure there are plenty of bloggers out there who would be glad to give me their honest opinions and reviews.

Article 3 Columbine: Whose Fault is it?

Manson starts his article out by saying that the first murder ever committed didn't need any type of media to influence it, it was just human natural disposition to violence. He goes on to point out that the media seemed to need someone to blame Columbine on. According to Manson, the fault rests with everyone who is fine with children owning guns, and then they sit back and watch TV when it goes wrong. He then mentions that he had no connection to Columbine and that the boys responsible weren't even fans of his. I find it fascinating that people always need a scapegoat, even if that person had nothing to do with anything. It also seems really unfortunate that we need to make the world black and white and divide it up into good and bad, always casting someone as the villain.