Chapter 8

Question 1: Why is the amount of sex and violence increasing in motion pictures? Is this a case of Hollywood giving society what they want or is it simply society's acceptance of what we are given?

In my opinion, the reason sex and violence in movies is increasing is a combination of both of the aforementioned reasons. I think that the theory of 'acclimation' applies here, actually. It's just like how if you were to move from California to Utah in the middle of the winter, you'd be freezing. But if you moved to Utah in the summer and the temperature gradually dropped, the more years you stayed there, the less cold you would feel. It's still cold, of course, but you are less inclined to feel it.
The same principle applies to sex and violence. If someone from the 1950s was suddenly teleported here, they'd probably be shocked and appalled at the types of movies that we let young children and impressionable teenagers watch. But for those of us who have grown up with these movies, even though they are worse than they were in the 1980s or 90s, we have become acclimated. We expect everything to be bigger, better, more dramatic, more intense, because that is what we have slowly become used to.
As for who is responsible for this gradual rise in sex and violence, and why it has become worse, I think that it is often the nature of American media to "push the envelope." People have come to expect dramatic, sometimes shocking sights and sounds from not just movies, but also television, music, radio, and even the news. The collective media has taken on the role of putting forth new, thought-provoking, or just startling programs. I think that people expect to see fiction in motion pictures, and they often expect them to be startling. I think that people probably enjoy it because it is sometimes a fulfillment of desires that they can't have themselves. The media is giving society what they want, yes, but society only wants it because the media has led them to expect it. It is something of a vicious cycle, and I don't see any way to stop it, since each side feeds the other.

Question 2: If you were a movie producer, what would you do to make a box office hit in 2008?

I think that currently, there is a push for the "strange" or the "different." People are tired of the box that politicians, authorities, and yes, the media have put us in. Many of us are tired of the same formulaic romantic comedy, or horror film, that we keep getting, year after year. So, in correlation with the answer to Question 1 of this post, I would produce a movie that both pushed the limits of what people have come to expect with sex and violence, and I would try to make it different.
I'm not talking about necessarily making the film especially risque, or making it really gory and horrible. I mean that I would try to have a different take on sex or violence.
On the other hand, however, there is a reason why the formulaic films work. Strange films, like V for Vendetta or Moulin Rouge were popular in their own right, and they did have something of a following, but they didn't exactly break the box office. Movies like Titanic, or Star Wars, or The Dark Knight, on the other hand, made at least half a million dollars. They were popular because they were a little different, but not so much that it alienated the general population.
Therefore, I think that i would try to make a movie that had both romance and violence in it (as all three of those did), but that I would focus on making the special effects bigger and better than anything people had ever seen. That was the reason Star Wars caught the imagination of so many--because it was different in a way they had never imagined.