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Longmont Daily Times-Call
Day & Night Entertainment Magazine
March 10, 2006
Our
Faith in Evil studies effects of film violence
Book signing features
Longmont author Greg Desilet
By Valerie Singleton
The Daily Times Call
LONGMONT—John
Wayne and Alan Ladd hold special places in the heart of film enthusiast
and author Greg Desilet.
Both
are heroes of American cinema—Wayne, the audacious cowboy in
Howard Hawk’s Red River (1948), and Ladd,
a stoic presence in George Stevens’s Shane
(1953).
And
yet, in these two films they stand on opposite sides of the cinematic
fence, according to Desilet’s latest book, Our
Faith in Evil: Melodrama and the Effects of Entertainment Violence.
“I like Shane,
“ Desilet says, sitting inside his Longmont home.
“But I
think, overall, it’s a film I would caution people from
embracing
fully. I want people to question Shane.”
On
the one hand, the film offers various approaches for handling conflict.
“I think maybe the hero, Shane,
doesn’t find the right answer,” Desilet says.
Tragic
dramas, on the
other hand, allow viewers to empathize with opposing sides of a violent
conflict and present opportunities for cathartic release, Desilet says.
“It’s amazing the power that has on an
audience,” he
says, with his own examples of tragic dramas—including the
book Memoirs of a Geisha and the DVD version of the
John Wayne classic Red River—scattered across his coffee
table.
“You don’t
end up celebrating the violence. You end up feeling the profound
tragedy of violence,” Desilet says. “Whereas in a
melodrama, you celebrate the violence. You celebrate the destruction of
the villain. That should cause some concern.”
Our
Faith in Evil
does not posit that all melodramatic film is essentially negative in
its effects, nor does Desilet suggest that those who view it will
immediately commit vicious crimes as a result.
He
is, however, wary of
what, if any, detrimental effects the pent-up rage created from
watching such films has on the human psyche.
“It’s
exhilarating,” he says, “but where do you take that
anger
in the theater?”
Our
Faith in Evil
addresses an age-old issue: Grimm’s fairy tales.
“Hansel
and Gretel,” for example, features the very melodramatic
violence
that can prove unhealthy, Desilet says.
Even
one of Desilet’s contemporaries, author Richard Slotkin, has
suggested that the story of America’s history is a melodrama
of
sorts.
The
subject began percolating in Desilet’s brain more than 20
years
ago when he received his master’s degree in communication
studies
from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He already had studied
communication as an undergraduate at the University of California at
Santa Barbara.
In
school, he blended many interests, including film and philosophy and
the inherent link between debate and conflict.
“It
was a personal quest,” Desilet says. “I was deeply
interested in where it would lead.”
He
became truly intrigued after watching the graphic World War II film Merry
Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
(1983). The film stirred in Desilet a sense of dramatic irony; he left
the theater feeling that both the American prisoners of war and their
Japanese captors had been shown in an unsettling way that revealed
their blend of strengths and weakness and undermined the stark
polarization of the conflict.
Two
decades after the release of that film, Desilet has written two books
regarding violence (he released Cult of the Kill: Traditional
Metaphysics of Rhetoric, Truth, and Violence in a Postmodern World
in 2002).
With
this new effort,
he hopes readers and audiences take a closer look at the effects of
melodramatic film.
“We
have to ask, what are we doing to ourselves over the long term when we
repeat this form of storytelling over and over?”
Book Signing: 1:00pm
Saturday, March 11
Location: Borders Books,
Music, and Café, Hover Street, Longmont
Click on the
following link to preview works on Media Violence
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