In the Line of Fire (1993) is about assassinating the president. Hanibal eats people. One could go on and on.

There are all sorts of fictional storytelling in Hollywood, novels, etc that chronicles savage behavior.

BEARUPINDC is right, as is presumably the 93% of people who aren't polluting social media with their senseless outrage

concordtom said:

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Oh, you think everything is okay if it's art or entertainment?
Freedom of speech and expression, right?

Honest question here:
Would it be okay if we had a simulator shoot em up video game with a realistic floor map/model of the US Capitol and it's House and Senate buildings which flak the capitol on the right and left?
How about if we included the same for the Supreme Court, right behind the Capitol. A shooter could score lots of points if it were rehearsed over and over again.
The game would be even more realistic if it included the tunnels which connect all the above. I know them. I used to work there.

And how about the same for the White House grounds, and the VP residence up Mass Ave.
Might as well also include all the DC political offices. So many targets.
What do you think of that?

....

My wife came home and told me about a company their investors are looking at that does just this (well, not the targets I listed). A realistic combat game with VR goggles and a multi-directional treadmill so that players/shooters could realistically move thru a combat site. A specifically programmed combat site.
The number one investor? US Military.
Think Fallujah.

We train our brains so that we can act.
Our thoughts translate to action.

GoldenOne is onto something when he criticizes me.
My satire is protected under the First Amendment. But he's not wrong.

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concordtom said:

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Oh, you think everything is okay if it's art or entertainment?
Freedom of speech and expression, right?

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GBear4Life said:

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In the Line of Fire (1993) is about assassinating the president. Hanibal eats people. One could go on and on.

There are all sorts of fictional storytelling in Hollywood, novels, etc that chronicles savage behavior.

BEARUPINDC is right, as is presumably the 93% of people who aren't polluting social media with their senseless outrage

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Trump is an absolute daily outrage. And you are an utter fool if you cannot acknowledge that assertion as fact.
How would you like for those of us who recognize this fact to deal with it??
Better to come on here and vent than some other impulses I can think of.

All these things being discussed here have value for consideration.
Where is the line drawn between free expression, satire, entertainment and yelling fire in a theater, or otherwise inciting a public panic or encouraging misdeeds?

It's not a little question.

A game that used the actual maps of the White House, Supreme Court, etc., should not and probably would not be allowed for national security reasons. I'm not sure how a game company would get such information in the first place, though.

A game that just has assassination as a plot point? Probably fine. Lots of past art and storytelling has dealt with such subject matter.

A game that puts you in the shoes of the person doing the assassination, where you can only "win" by accomplishing it? That's pretty dicey. Not illegal, but could be in very poor taste depending on the context. (A movie like In the Line of Fire clearly has its sympathies with the Secret Service agents trying to prevent the assassination.)

Only way to tell what this film is really about, plot, theme, subtext, is to watch it...and you'll still have this debate but with some fuel. Look, if Hollywood can turn the Banana Splits into a feature length horror pic...who knows what this really is.

The logic that the medium must present some sort of empathy towards righteous behavior in order to be "acceptable fictional storytelling" is absurd and a principle we don't demand on other subject matters that we universally acknowledge as behaviors we don't want citizens to emulate.

Here's the Supreme Court, Tom. Figure you've already got the White House

sycasey said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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sycasey said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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GBear4Life said:

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When there is a rape scene in a movie, is that tone deaf or in poor taste? Homicides? Pedophilia? Lying?

Why is this all of a sudden out of bounds by virtue of a pretext that it would be really horrible in real life, and we don't want to possibly influence anybody?

90% of what's in a movie is something we don't want to emulate. Tell me what I'm missing here, please.

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Some of us view some that as distasteful, but I see your point.

But with all the crap happening with mass shootings, political stuff like at UofVirgina, and the like, the mass shooting of groups for political reasons is hitting a little to close to home. It's like a movie about flying planes into buildings right after 911, or Nazi concentration camps right after WWII. No one but Hollywood would think that is a good idea.

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A lot of this stuff gets written long before the movie makes it to screen, so usually the "in poor taste" nature of this kind of thing is just bad luck.

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I can see that in most cases. Maybe not this one.

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As I understand it, the "conservative" types are really the good guys in the movie.

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so the real reason Hollywood stopped it .... I kid.

I get that there are a lot of plots dealing with political killing or mass murders, etc. I wouldn't put out a movie with mass shooting at a Walmart now due to sensitivities, but I can see how they could be in a plot of a movie that started a while back and now nearing screening. But the stuff with politically motivated killings like at UofVA have been going on for some time. If I'm a studio head, I have to ask these guys what were they thinking?