The fast, furious, and reckless action movies portray street racing and exaggerated masculinity, plus moronic risk-taking with extra helpings of over-the-top explosions and mission impossible wonderment. Cartoonish depictions of impossible and reckless stunts become glorified and slick juvenilia for popcorn-munching viewers, usually youngsters with undeveloped gerbil brains. Closer to the point, many of these popular productions for our screens involve superheroes, or those shows featuring fast-paced fights, car chases, and mind-numbing stunts in all but plotless presentations. Pure escape is the point, short term excitement, entertainment for those who, during another era, might enjoy reveling in the Three Stooges or the whacky chase scenes in the Keystone Cops. The bar set for this sort of entertainment is Limbo low.
Without needing to suffer through the unabridged features, I measure their worth by viewing previews and promotional clips. What claptrap. Why would I want to invest time in full-length screen crap? As it happens, violence, sex, profanity, and gratuitous fireballs of all sorts are exactly what a thought-challenged movie watcher wants. Oh, yeah! And it is dangerous. Because valorizing dangerous behavior undeniably leads to imitation by malleable viewers. And these movies are geared for nascent noggins, viewers likely to be bored by anything less than jury-rigged thrills. Studies have limited value in proving links between media releases and risk-taking behavior, but an intuitive conclusion is easily reached: SODOTO—see one, do one, teach one.
To illustrate the point, years ago I took a coffee break as I did my rounds as a legal messenger. I settled in with a croissant and the newspaper across the street from a theater featuring a James Bond movie. What I witnessed as the crowd exited into harsh sunshine drew me back to the same cafe a couple more times to verify what I had witnessed. Still captured by the soigné and masculine fantasy of James Bond, many, if not most, of the men exiting the theater had become James Bond, or pretended to be, at least until they reached their dented VW Bugs in the littered parking lot behind the 7-Eleven. These starstruck men were unwittingly doing the Chekhov acting technique, each one expressing internal impulses and feelings in the manner of their gestures and movements. By golly, those male moviegoers had become James Bond. Why not? We identify with characters we see on screen. Some of us, anyway. Sometimes. Danger has its appeal. Why not become a jackass and get some attention? Speaking of which—
“Jackass” MTV television series and the “Jackass Forever” large screen series are perfect examples of extravagant dares and dangerous stunts, not to mention humiliations and serious injuries that result. People love watching others do ghastly deeds for the sake of humor. Is it funny to hit someone’s genitalia with great force? To blow up a porta potty with someone in it? To light a match to someone’s intestinal gas? The answer is yes for those who enjoy depraved humor. Keep in mind a premise of humor is often the shock of the unexpected. Is there a thrill in watching a jackass kiss a venous snake or drink a concoction that causes him vomit for the camera? Well, yeah, after the cringe reaction will come a smile either from relief or from the notion that there but for the grace of God go I. Schadenfreude delivers a smile and a chuckle. Incongruity (the graceful ballet dancer slips on a banana peel and falls face-first) can bring a big laugh. Funny is cruel.
This much is certain, show the Fast and Furious crap in a movie house filled with impressionable teenage drivers and risk-taking results will show up in traffic court in subsequent weeks. [i] Um, yes, what is easily correlated is behavior modeled after what we see, what we imitate.
[i] Anupam B. Jena, Aakash Jain and Tanner R. Hicks, NYT January 2018