Thursday, May 19, 2011

Violence as a political project (1)

The frame for my toughts here is the doctoral thesis of John Lundstøl called The authoritative man and the book Violence in our time of Hannah Arendt. My purpose is to politicize the violence that is increasingly prevalent in our society and try to inspire political action against violence. I have also taken advantage of the book Human Destructiveness by Anthony Storr and Violent images in everyday life by Kristin Skjørten.
In 1996, there were a number of cinemas in Norway that would not set up David Cronenbergs film Crash because of the film's violent nature. The film is about traffic death that allegedly provides a sexual arousal. According to several newspaper reports on this time, film critics meant the film was really deeply critical of society and portrays the "death of reason" and the "chaotic postmodernity". The film and the debate surrounding it seems shows that violent depictions of this type of entertainment is nihilism in its hoteste fashion. Even though the film Crash was described by many cinema managers as too poor quality wise to be set up at the cinema, it was claimed by many that the film had to be set up. As it became. Some argue that the film is a groundbreaking critique of modern society where the car has become the unifying icon, others are afraid that the movie is disruptive to our social norms. The film caused much debate and made it difficult for politicians and movie officials to choose between the demands for freedom of expression and cultural littering.
We live in an era of violence. The last 150 years has been called the war and revolution era. It has been estimated that between 1820 and 1945 around 59 million people have been killed because of war, murder, or other lethal activities. During World War 2 about 5000 died people every day in Auschwitz. A systematic extermination of people for only 50 years ago. At least 5 million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis in 30 concentration camps during the war. Most of those who were employed in these camps were ordinary citizens. Historically, we can claim that it is only our imagination which prevents us from understanding the extent of man's violent actions. Violence has haunted us from generation to generation.

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