[tmsh]

I think this gets at the distance between US culture, as it were, and the realities of violence. War is not the only source of violence. But it is a big one, which affects the entire culture pretty significantly.

So the 70s correspond to Vietnam. And the 40s correspond to WWII. Today, we also have wars. But we are somehow increasingly disconnected from the realities of what that means.

Anyway, it's a nice chart. But if you ever watch old movies right after WWII (in the 40s, early 50s), you can almost feel the trepidation around anything but those undervalued, safe moral environments. In some ways, it's a more mature audience / understanding -- it's more focused. But because a lot of the country has seen real horrors, it seems like now they crave some kind of careful normalcy (which doesn't have much violence). Perhaps the 70s also had that incentive. A lot of social change and some violence in the late 60s might've prompted it. Or, alternatively, people actually might've believed in non-violence for a while, and that might've stimulated other subjects.

I don't know. But obviously, according to the chart, it's a self-perpetuating phenomenon. So this can be explained by saying that US culture (perhaps increasingly in the form of high grossing films), left to its own status quo momentum, gradually disconnects us from the realities of violence.

[MC27]

I tend to think modern US blockbusters, are heavily influenced by special effects rather than characters, which usually means killing lots of stuff.