MELLIPOP LOVES NOAM AND HATES VIOLENCE

Ok, so I hired out the Manufacturing Consent DVD the other day, as I had a huge pile of ironing that I had been neglecting for weeks. I like to iron and watch Mellipop-friendly material on DVD. Chick flicks like Bridget Jones Diary, old classics like Little Women, new classics like Pride and Prejudice (or anything with Colin Firth in it) and intelligent, thought-provoking documentaries. Anton only likes docos with meerkats and badgers in them...

So Manufacturing Consent was a 167 minute long doco that followed my favourite academic genius Noam Chomsky around, centring mainly on his "Propaganda Model" critique of the media, rather than his work criticising American foreign policy. Now, it had a G rating, Ok. I mean, I don't know why any kid would be watching it in the first place, as it was really just a dry academic piece anyway. So the rating didn't surprise me. Until they showed footage of the Holocaust.

SINCE WHEN DID ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE OF PILES OF EMACIATED HUMAN BODIES BEING BULLDOZED INTO MASS GRAVES BECOME G-RATED IMAGERY!?!

I mean, this is incredibly disturbing to me. These were REAL PEOPLE. Not just extras in some tacky Schwarzenegger film. So I composed myself enough to check the cover and not one word of warning was posted next to that shiny happy big G-rating on the front cover. The kind of rating attached to Disney animations and Wiggles DVDs. NOT HORRIFYING IMAGES OF MASS GENOCIDE!

Now I was similarly shocked when I saw Fahrenheit 911 at the cinema recently, which was one of the hardest things I have ever had to sit through. It was all I could do not to rush out in tears and had to literally look away from the screen to get through it with my lunch still intact. I mean, none of the reviews mentioned the images of dead babies, burnt to a crisp. Or children with their limbs blown off. Or footage of dancing Iraqis beating the charred corpse of an American soldier with a piece of freakin' 4 x 2. And the other atrocities that I no doubt missed as I turned my head away in abject despair. And again - THERE WAS NO PRIOR WARNING AT THE START OF THE FILM.

Are we that desensitised to violence now that we aren't even granted the cliched warning that "Some of the images you see might be disturbing"? Are our kids are desensitised enough to see this kind of crap in G-rated films? These days I refuse to hire a MA 15 + film that warns of Medium Level Violence. Have you noticed what types of televised violence Medium Level refers to now!! The movie and TV guys are steadily ramping it up on us people. Don't let it numb you....

THIS WHOLE CULTURE IS TOTALLY FUCKED!!!! VIOLENCE IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT!!! YOU ARE ALL SICK!!!!!

Christ, I had intended this post as a paean to my beloved hero Noam Chomksy. The man is a legend. If you want to know what is really going on in the world, read his stuff. If you want to stay anaesthetised and happily ignorant, rock on down to your local cinema and see a few people get their heads blown off. Either way it's disturbing.....