The Reconstitution of Ireland

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Glorification of violence

This is an extract from The Reconstitution of Ireland

In May 1996 a report appeared in the Irish Times about a speech that Dustin Hoffman had given at the 49th Cannes Film Festival, in which he criticised the level of violence in movies and on TV. The actor was quoted as saying that “Commerce and violence are mixed together now in a way like I’ve never seen before in my lifetime.”

            The report said that Hoffman drew a connection between film and video violence and massacres in Port Arthur, Australia, and in Dunblane, Scotland, in the same year. He echoed comments made by the Irish film censor, Mr Sheamus Smith, when he rejected the violent US film From Dusk till Dawn.

            In Ireland now, according to the Irish Film Censor’s Office (IFCO) only the 2014 remake of From Dusk till Dawn as a TV series is classified. Various episodes are rated as suitable for either 15 and over or 18 and over. The 1996 film is available to purchase as a download on YouTube, and there is no mention of it on the Irish Film Censor’s Office (IFCO) website.

According to a BBC News report of 2010, the Dunblane shooting led to strict controls over firearms in the UK which, among other things, made it illegal to buy or possess a handgun. These changes were credited with making mass shootings in the UK “extremely rare”. Similarly, the Port Arthur massacre led to fundamental changes to Australia’s gun laws.

           

            On May 18th 1996 Robert Dunlop had a letter in the Irish Times under the heading “Glorification of violence”. He agreed with Dustin Hoffman, and I had some sympathy for their argument as I read the letter, particularly as I had heard a high-ranking Garda say that, in his experience, criminals in Ireland were often influenced by films and TV in the way they handled their guns. Then I got to Mr. Dunlop’s suggestion that the Judeo-Christian ethic could be of assistance in reversing the perceived trend towards more violence in society. I had to respond.

GLORIFICATION OF VIOLENCE Sir, — It might be true that violent movies lead to violent acts in our streets, as implied by Robert Dunlop in your letters page (May 18th). Or it might not. In any event Mr. Dunlop’s objective in starting a debate on the topic is a worthy one. The mind boggles, however, at his suggestion that the Judeo-Christian ethic can be of assistance in reversing the perceived trend towards more violence in society. This is a tradition that is predicated on violence. In our schools, young children are invited to dwell on every smallest detail of the execution of a man through his being suspended on a specially constructed device by means of nails driven through his limbs. His death was used for centuries, in its turn, as a justification for the insidious violence of anti-Semitism. The idea was, as enunciated to this writer by his primary school teacher in the 1950s, that the Jews were “condemned to wander the earth because they crucified our Lord.” In history, we have had the Crusades, where countless thousands of innocent men, women and children were brutally put to death; The institutionalized torture of the Spanish Inquisition; the routine and officially sanctioned burning alive of “heretics”; Oliver Cromwell opining that “God will be pleased” at the handiwork of his troops in the cities of Limerick and Drogheda. There is now the situation in Northern Ireland which has, by the most generous analysis, been exacerbated by the refusal of various Church authorities to countenance integrated education. The same page that contained Mr. Dunlop’s letter had another one deploring the violence done to young males by circumcision, another Judeo-Christian specialty. We seem to have only very recently ended an era where one particular branch of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Roman Catholic Church, presided over a system of public education where brutality and violence were used as tools of instruction. Very obvious psychopaths were given free reign over children in the name of education, including religious instruction. In the process whole generations were given the clear message that violence was a legitimate means to achieve any objective, and it could even be practiced on the youngest and most vulnerable members of society. A screenplay by Vincent Tarantino would not make a good blueprint of how society might be ordered. However, on the evidence of history to date, it might just be preferable to using the Judeo-Christian example of how things should be done. — Yours, etc., SEAMUS McKENNA, Findrum, Convoy, Co. Donegal.