Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Gokaiger guns

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and he was deploring "gun violence" on television.  I would guess he also meant movies as well, but he didn't really specify.

It got me to thinking though, as I was watching Gokaiger later, just what constitutes "gun violence"?  The pirates in this show for kids certainly use their very fanciful space guns a lot, but only on the bad guys, especially their henchmen.  One shot usually takes them down, and there's never any blood shown.  The henchmen are or were human at one point, just an aside.  Only the lead bad guy has been shown bleeding from a bullet or whatever these guns fire, and it was literally only a flesh wound.

Our heroes are shown battered and bloody from their fights though.  Since they are pirates they also use swords, but again, no bloody cuts or gashes are shown.

My point is, if I can get to it, where does it cross the line?  The Lone Ranger show had guns in it all over the place, as well as fisticuffs, but I doubt anyone thought it was glorifying the weapons.  I watched it all the time growing up and I think I've fired a handgun once.  I never cared much for the "gun fu" movies of John Woo when they got popular in the 90s, but I also don't care for the gore genre that seemed to have to be part of it.

Is it the realistic portrayal  of guns?  No one seems to complain about the GODFATHER movies, or any of those types of gangster movies.  Where is the line drawn between what's needed for good, dramatic storytelling and what's over the top use of firearms?

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