If We’re Numb, Why Does It Hurt So Much?

That the Virginia Tech shootings happened in the same week that the ultra-violent new double feature Grindhouse debuted in movie theaters across the country is an unhappy coincidence, but it does point up our society’s increasingly inexplicable relationship with violence. “Violence, both actual and in the media, [may] just be in our nature, doomed to come out in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways… But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think about the context in which [the Virginia Tech shooter] lived, with its endlessly streaming mayhem and ready supply of guns. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about the content and style of violent movies, television and video games.”