"Naughtiness" in Film

I was recently talking with some friends about movies, both good and bad.  We all seemed to agree that the only movies that are really worth watching are the very good and the very bad.  This is because good movies are (obviously) good, and bad movies are often hilarious (such as the one we had just watched, entitled The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra).  But some movies are just plain garbage.  Much of this dreg comes from the specific content of the movie in question.

I concede that while certain “naughty” things can be necessary to a film, they are all too often over-used.  Most contemporary movies don’t exactly appeal to me, owing largely to the fact that the point of the movie seems to be promoting immoral, immature, and usually illegal behaviour.  Granted, I’m a Lawrence of Arabia and Fiddler on the Roof kind of guy, but those films only included what little language or violence was needed to make the point of the movie, rather than the entirety of the movie.

Exhibit A:  Profanity

Mark Twain once said, “Profanity is the means by which a small mind seeks to express itself profoundly.”  Nowhere is that more apparent to me than in contemporary film, and indeed pop culture at large.  The dialogue of so many  movies these days includes language that doesn’t help the plot or character development, but rather seems to be there for the sake of foul language.  For instance, I don’t think it necessary for two characters to great one another thusly:

“’Sup, n!gga?”

“Yo, mothaf*cka.  Whatchu been up to?”

Ironically, many people believe that Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn needs to have the word “nigger” removed from it.  I say this is absolutely ridiculous.  In the time period depicted, it was OK to say “nigger”.  I feel it important to leave that in the book so middle and high school students who read it can see that and ask “why do they say that word?”  At that point, we can discuss that it used to be acceptable to say, and explain how our society has grown beyond that (with the exception of the rappers and “gangsta” movies out there).  We can show our children that people have improved in this country by leaving the scars of the dark past to remind us what we were and emphasize what we have become instead.

Exhibit B:  Violence

Violence can help bring about the dynamics of a character.  The title character in Lawrence of Arabia begins as a peaceful man in the British Army, and stationed in Egypt during WWI.  He is considered a genius of sorts, and is willing to do what he must in the line of duty.  But as the film progresses, he develops an air of haughtiness that the Arabs (who are fighting Ottoman Turks in the Middle East) observe as he commits acts of impetuous daring.  When there is a dispute about how exactly to punish an Arab who murdered someone from another tribe, the man must be killed, but if the opposing tribes does so, then his tribe will be forced to retaliate.  Lawrence, as their leader, declares that he will carry out the execution.  It is at that moment he finds that he gets a thrill from killing.  He continues this downward spiral, eventually being in the middle of a mêlée where he shoots Turks at point blank range and even slashes a few throats with a knife, all with a look of pure ecstasy on his face.  In this case, the violence (which is largely bloodless) is entirely necessary, as we see what a monster Lawrence becomes for a time, but then remembers his humanity by the end when the Army sends him back to England, at which point, we are reminded briefly of how the movie began.

Horror movies are the worst offenders for excessive violence.  They seem to be out to get as much gore on the screen as possible.  I understand that some of these have a really good story, but so often it gets lost in the mindless bloodbath of the presentation that I can’t justify watching the movie.  Many other movies that are not horror do this as well.  Another appropriate (though pushing it) use of violence is in Gladiator.  There is a good amount of red throughout the film; these scenes are not the main point, but rather a side-effect of the subject-matter.  After all, what else would you expect from the Coliseum of Rome?  But that can be edited out, and the film retains its excellence.

Exhibit C:  Sex

First off, let me say that I am most certainly a heterosexual, human male, and as such, fully understand what people may enjoy about that sort of thing.  However, there are hardly any instances where I think it would be meet to include such things in a movie.  I found it rather irritating when watching the Kenneth Branagh Othello, starring Lawrence Fishburne and Irene Jacob, in which is a scene after Othello and Desdemona have been married, and are readying themselves to (ahem) “get busy”.  They slowly remove clothing and give each other significant looks, and at one point Jacob is shown topless.  Nowhere in the play does it say this scene takes place (though we all know it does), but I don’t see the point in including it in the movie, as it fails to advance either character or story.

In old-time films, sex was definitely going on between characters, but they never showed it, nor did they tend to imply it.  It was simply a given that audiences were intelligent enough to comprehend on their own.  Whereas in today’s movies, our culture’s impatient, over-indulgent minds grope around (har) for only the easiest forms of entertainment instead of looking for something truly artistic, hence the popularity of the American Pie and National Lampoons types of movies.

As someone who tries to follow a moral code, I have observed that the film industry has been on the decline for the last thirty years or so.  Granted, we get truly masterful works every so often like Lord of the Rings and Les Misérables (the one with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush), but they are rare gems that are almost always based on excellent (and all-too-often forgotten) literature, or even from history.  It occurs to me that it is a symptom of larger problems in society, but I will not get into them except in saying that increased exposure to any type of behaviour does not cause, but rather increases that behaviour in people, and garbage movies tend to exacerbate the problem.