"POW!" "SWA-A-P" "KAPOW!" "SWOOSH!" "URRK!"

Perhaps the oldest debate in cinema, what is "appropriate" to show on screen, has recently flared up yet again. From the Hayes Code of 1934 to Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 to Kick-Ass there has always been some expression of how far the boundaries of realistic violence should be stretched. Never has the argument been resolved. Instead it always seems to get shelved until the next boundary pushing movie is released. This time it's a movie involving an 11-year old girl who brutally kills at least 30 people and then is beaten nearly to death (we have certainly come a long ways from this). I cannot relate to the controversies of old, as they seem painfully tame in comparison to what is shown today, but I can't help thinking that Kick-Ass is endemic of a change in the way that we view all visual media. The criticism of Kick-Ass is split almost by generation, with Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott, as usual, writing most eloquently against the film, and a mixed bag of younger bloggers writing for it.

I can't speak for many people, but of the ones that I know, I can safely say that they spend a much greater amount of time in front of a screen (whether it be computer, TV, or movie theater) than their parents. Does this mean that we are desensitized to a greater degree? Well, certainly, but desensitized to what? We're certainly desensitized to violence, sex, and swearing on screen, but I am less sure if we're more desensitized to these things in real life.

Our generation has had to adapt to marking a distinction between the real world and the virtual one like no other generation ever has, and I would argue that there are none better equipped to separate the two. This is much like someone who often experiences pain learns to manage it or how our taste-buds are often determined by what is available for us to eat. There will always be those unable to separate fiction from reality, and there will probably be a greater and greater number as the two inevitably grow closer to one another, but the vast majority may end up being better prepared, and also unwilling to go back. I don't mean to come down on one side or the other (I almost never do, even to myself) but it seems to me that my generation is not given enough credit for our capacity to separate the real world from the false one. There are very good arguments that a line needs to be drawn somewhere, but where that line is drawn will never be agreed upon.