The fight to extend and defend Americans’ constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is a sub-set of a larger culture war. If civilian disarmament advocates make guns socially unacceptable — a goal Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged back in the day — they will be able to do, well, what they’re doing (e.g., New York’s ironically-named SAFE ACT). There’s one big problem with this anti-gun cultural campaign: guns. People love ’em. Firearms-based entertainment is big business. Gun games and movies generate tens of billions of dollars. Which creates a major disconnect for the liberal owners of the distribution channels. To wit . . .
“We no longer accept ads showing semiautomatic weapons and guns pointed at people,” Time Warner Cable said in a statement. “We stand by this policy. If it’s essential to a business owner to show this kind of imagery in their commercials, there are other advertising options in the marketplace.”
But it’s OK to show movies and TV shows with guns pointed at people. Maybe, I dunno, shooting one another. As John Davidson would say, that’s incredible!
Of course they cant stop making movies with people shooting guns they would go bankrupt, not many male viewers want to watch the “notebook” in cinemas remade a 100 times.
I don’t know, if you bring along a lady friend “watching” The Notebook doesn’t actually involve watching The Notebook.
I saw “The Notebook” once, grew ovaries and wanted to kill myself. The only cure was watching “Commando” three times in a row. I don’t know which was worse, the treatment or the disease, but at least I got my nuts back.
I don’t know which was worse, the treatment or the disease, but at least I got my nuts back.
Were they stuffed into a little black Speedo when you go them back?
I always loved the anti-large building claymore mines!
Actually, if Hollywood had any reel imagination, they could make myriad films with good stories and characters. It’s far to easy, however, to remake crap, or have lotsastuff explode. Most ‘gunplay’ in films are annoyingly absurd, anyway. I tend to avoid that sort of movie, and mostly watch foreign films where they don’t have the money to blow stuff up, so have to rely on an actual plot.
“… if Hollywood had any reel imagination …
I see what you did there.
EXACTLY. Lack of imagination, perhaps. Methinks a Hollyfoot culture of conformity and nuts is more to blame.
EVEN IN THE FIFTIES such craven conformity wasn’t seen. We had Rod Serling, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl. Even that traitor STEVE ALLEN, back then.
Teehee. Clever.
I can’t remember… Is Stallone one of the anti-rights guys?
Oh yeah, YES HE IS.
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“It [2nd Amendment] has to be stopped, and someone really has to go on the line, a certain dauntless political figure, and say, ‘It’s ending, it’s over, all bets are off. It’s not 200 years ago, we don’t need this anymore, and the rest of the world doesn’t have it. Why should we?”
Sylvester Stallone on Access Hollywood, June 8, 1998
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“I know we use guns in films,” but insisted the time has come “to be a little more accountable and realize that this is an escalating problem that’s eventually going to lead to, I think, urban warfare.”
Sylvester Stallone on Access Hollywood, June 8, 1998
Wow, all this said during the Clinton AWB? Was he taking real hits while filming Rocky?
SLY? That turd fires staff for his mother IF THEY LOOK HER IN THE EYE.
That there’s someone I’d like to see run over by an Abrams. But unlike the guy in Tianenmen Square, he’s a lousy coward.
Not to mention ugly.
The media is big on free speech and free expression, as long as it’s theirs. Yours, on the other hand, can pound sand.
They promote equality…as long as they’re more equal than us.
I like Sung Kang and Sly, and I’ll admit, I might be mildy entertained by this movie, but I think I might still prefer John Woo’s cheesy 1990 classic, “Bullet IN the Head”:
John Woo is never cheesy. Only unsubtle.
+ some insanely huge number. Ringo Lam’s no slouch either.
Yet they still make movies mowing hundreds down. What hypocrite but that’s hollyweird.
The idea of not having guns pointing at people in the trailer is already been done. Check out the imfdb pages for Cop Out and go down to the trivia section. There were other movies that did the same thing such as Iron Man (I think those pictures were removed) and Indiana Jones.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Cop_Out
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Kingdom_of_the_Crystal_Skull
However, you can still see them pointing the guns at people in the red band trailers. So this isn’t anything new unless they are banning it in red band trailers too.
Asinine. This makes the Hollywood equivalent to those stupid “half-covers” they put on Cosmo at the grocery store, except this is “nobly” self inflicted.
A meaningless and empty act by Time Warner. If they banned guns in their actual entertainment then they’d have something to talk about.
I thought it was policy out of Hollywood that trailers never have weapons pointed at actors. If so, TWC’s policy is straight out of the Department of Redundancy Department.
It’s been remarked by writers on the subject that the “heroes” of such movies would have to be total psychopaths to behave the way they do, even when killing characters who are clearly “bad.” History has shown that for normal people, killing is traumatic. Studies after WWII showed that effective firing rates among infantry men were as low as 10%. The military had to change training to lower the inhibition to kill. Firing rates increased markedly in Vietnam and even more so by the time of the Gulf Wars. See “On Killing,” http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358636720&sr=1-1&keywords=on+killing+the+psychological+cost+of+learning+to+kill+in+war+and+society
The movie and more so the book “Generation Killhttp://www.amazon.com/Generation-Kill-Evan-Wright/dp/0425224740 ” by Evan Wright also explores the phenomenon.
The point being, for us law-abiding “normal” gun owners, just about all of us, we certainly aren’t looking for a fight. We just want to be able to if no other choices remain.
The hypocrisy continues.
Maybe Hollywood should foot the bill for getting armed guards into our schools, you know, because they’ve made billions of dollars off glorifying guns, rape, crime, reality TV, and every conceivable spectacle of “violence” our society has to offer for decades. There are also many movies featuring mass shootings, terrorist acts, and lots of templates for would-be crazy people to emulate as well…
The same Hollywood that released Djano Unchained mere weeks after Sandy Hook. Priceless.
Just sayin’.
Any face on the nightly news like his that collects a paycheck dutifully reporting a focused agenda on the horrible violent things in the world has no ground to stand on. There are a lot of truly good, unselfish, inspiring and benevolent things that happen in the world every day but thanks to the MSM you’d hardly know it.
Here it is hypocritical, however, I must say, if someone (a studio, actor, w/e) came out and said: “We/I will not profit any further from the glorification of violence in media.” And if actions followed words, regardless of their political stance or motivation, I would thoroughly respect the source.
The fewer on-screen role models misusing guns the better.