One reason that real violence looks so ugly is because we have been exposed to so much mythical violence. (…) Contemporary film style may give many people the sense that entertainment violence is, if anything, too realistic. Nothing could be farther from the truth. … [They] miss the most important dynamics of violence: that it starts from confrontational tension and fear, that most of the time it is bluster, and that the circumstances that allow this tension to be over­ come lead to violence that is more ugly than entertaining. (…)

A second myth is that fights are long. (…) Whereas most film and stage dramas compress real time to gloss over the dull and routine moments of ordinary life, they expand fighting time by many times over. (…) In reality, most serious fights on the individual or small-group level are extremely short.

{ Randall Collins | via OvercomingBias | Continue reading }

archives, ideas, incidents | October 9th, 2009