Let’s Make Football Violent Again

December 24, 2019August 22, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

“Make football violent again,” was a hat the safety for the Minnesota Vikings, Andrew Sendejo, wore in an NFL training camp. The instinctive reaction we might have to such a call is that Sendejo is trying to be provocative, for no one who knows anything about violence would condone it in anyway. We might also say that, as a professional football player, Sendejo is setting a poor example for the youth who look up to him. Our society should be moving in the exact opposite direction, others might say, especially when it comes to young men.

An argument that condones violence in any way will never make its way to a broadcasting booth of any kind, unless to condemn it, but that doesn’t mean it’s without merit, when it comes to football at least. If the argument did make it on air, in some form, we have to imagine that the broadcasters would say, “I don’t condone violence, but …” to distance themselves from Sendejo’s argument, but there is a but argument that is worthy of some consideration. The but argument focuses on the unpleasant fact that some young men have violent impulses, and they need an outlet, or a ‘somewhat’ controlled and monitored environment, to indulge that primal impulse for violence. Most audiences don’t want to hear anything about that. They prefer a more rational discussion that focuses on ways to make would young men less violent in a way that might help make our world less violent. No rational discussion by a professional in any field would focus on the need for an outlet for violent activity.

The well-intentioned opponents of the game now know that football is too entrenched for them to make any strides with regard to banning football from the high school level on up. Yet, they are making strides at banning tackle football in youth groups, and they are using the banner of ‘player safety’ to lessen the impact of some of the more violent hits in the game from the high school level on up. Proponents of the traditional game know that some measures are required to make the game safer, as athletes become stronger and faster, but as these measures to remove violence from the game progress, proponents warn, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

We’ve all heard horrific tales of the wide array of what can happen on a football field, and we’re all sympathetic to the players and their families affected by it. Among these stories, are those that involve brain injuries, including concussions and repeated severe concussions that could lead to CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). We’ve heard that various forms of CTE have ruined lives. We’ve heard neurologists state that scientific studies of the harm football causes young people is now irrefutable. We’ve had neighbors tell us that these studies scare them so much, they won’t let their children play the game. The NFL has heard all of this too, and they’ve made substantial rule changes to try to lessen the violent impact of the game, in the hopes of influencing college football, and high school football officials to follow suit.

The ‘be careful what you wish for’ crowd has heard all of these arguments too, and they’re sensitive to them. No one wants to see a young life affected to the degree we’ve witnessed in far too many instances, but when esteemed neurologists list sports’ alternatives for concerned parents, proponents suggest that they fail to recognize the need young boys have to hit one another in a violent manner. Those other sports might satisfy the need young people have for competitive athletic activity, team play, and various other character-building exercises that build self-esteem, but they don’t satisfy the primal impulses young men have to commit violent acts on one another.

Those of us, who played an inordinate amount of unnecessarily violent, pickup games of tackle football, know that football was our favorite way to satiate that primal need for violence. We didn’t know anything about these beneficial qualities, and we didn’t know the possible harm we were doing to ourselves when we played these games, but we saw our non-football playing friends go out for the evening just to “crack some skulls.” We thought they were joking, or engaging in some false bravado, but they had all this pent-up rage, and this general sense of animosity and anger that they couldn’t explain. They needed to unleash in an impulsive, irrational manner. They wanted to hurt someone, and they always got hurt in the process, but they wore their bruises and open cuts as symbols of valor. They failed to adequately explain what a rush it was to the rest of us, because they probably couldn’t understand it well enough to explain it. The only thing they knew was that they gained respect from their peers for their violent tendencies, and it did wonders for their self-esteem. They also enjoyed an element of team spirit in some cases. Those fight nights gained them what the rest of us attained playing football.

“No one is saying that if we ban football or make it less violent, it will automatically lead to more violent young men, but if you think it will make them less violent, be careful what you wish for,” proponents say to parents who will not allow their children to play football. When our grade school banned football on the playground, we played kill the man with the ball. Our school administrators caught on, and they banned that. Soon after that, we played kill the man with the pine cone. If we dilute football to the point of hopscotch, proponents say, boys will find a way to hit each other, tackle each other, or some way to inflict pain on one another, because we cannot legislate the impulsive, primal nature out of boys and young men. Most parents, who raise their children in safe, happy climates cannot understand why they have violent tendencies, and we might not remember why we did, but football proponents suggest that the sport satisfies something in us that no other non-contact sport can.

Even though this impulsive need for an outlet to indulge violent tendencies has existed throughout human history, we have to imagine that B.C. humans didn’t want to discuss it in polite company either. The games the cavemen and the ancient Romans played were more violent, of course, and modern man might think he stands above that which occurred back then, and we might have a more advanced brain than those who sit below us in the animal kingdom, but the primal need for an outlet still exists in some. This conversation is so unpleasant and uncomfortable that the major broadcasts networks will never cover it on one of their pregame broadcasts, and I don’t think we’ll ever hear this as a topic on one of the all too numerous sports radio programs, because it feeds into the portrayal of young men as primal beasts. Yet, we all know this unpleasant side of young men exists, and if we don’t provide them a monitored, somewhat controlled method of channeling their impulses and needs, it might result in other unintended consequences our society doesn’t want to consider.

Sons of Anarchy, and the war of words on violence in the media

October 18, 2013October 30, 2014 Rilaly2 Comments

What would cause a forty-seven year old man to become so enraged that he regresses back to his high school days, and his favorite high school swears, by calling another grown man “a f***ing douchebag”? What would cause a seemingly brilliant mind —a mind that created six seasons of a highly rated television show— to become so desperate in an argument against a critical opponent he calls them “an idiot that is idiotic, unintelligent, not bright, and an angry white guy with an exclusionary plan, using fear and (G)od to spread a gospel of ignorance?” What would then cause other men —men purported to be respected in the mainstream— to read such a letter and regard it as “widely respected”?

Founder of the Parents Television Council (PTC), and current Media Research Center (MRC) member, Brent Bozell, and Sons of Anarchy creator, and primary screenwriter, Kurt Sutter engaged in a war of words regarding the violent nature of that show’s September 10, 2013 season premiere for its sixth season.

Brent Bozell claimed, in a Fox Nation piece, that the show’s premiere was gratuitous with it’s depiction of violence. Some of the scenes, that Bozell catalogued from the show include, a Columbine-style “School shooting, ‘milking a fictional Catholic school shooting for commercial gain,’ as well as two rapes, and a man drowning in a bathtub of urine.”{1} Sons of Anarchy creator, primary screenwriter, and showrunner, Kurt Sutter, claimed that he didn’t include any of those particular violent scenes for shock value, and Bozell responded to that, and a war of words was born.

Most of the back and forth that occurred between these two doesn’t interest me. I’m not overly concerned with Bozell’s greater, moralistic fears for society, or the role of Michelle Obama in this matter… or any other matter. I also don’t think Sutter’s “widely distributed, widely read, and widely praised” letter was effective, but the reason I deem this exchange newsworthy is Brent Bozell’s attempt to dissect the motivations for making violent TV shows today, by using Sons of Anarchy as a focal point for that argument.

Sutter wants people to believe that the larger plot point was how the biker gang, in this series, is going to (slowly, over many episodes) reap the consequences of their gun-running. But we know what the “bigger objective of the episode” is: “Ka-ching.” You load as much sensationalistic sludge in your debut episode to build some ratings momentum. The “narrative arc” that follows may try to make some sense of that avalanche, but it doesn’t justify it.”

The fact that the narrative arc may not ever justify the inclusion of violence is true, but for many of us that just doesn’t matter. Most of us don’t care what happens in the aftermath of such scenes. We don’t care if there is a greater moral message, or if the character learns from his depravity, we just want the scenes. We want to rubberneck on that interstate accident to see that guy’s leg sticking out of the car, every night, in primetime, and in the comfort of our living room. We want to see a Mr. White cut off a policeman’s ear, as happened in the brilliant Reservoir Dogs, to speak into it. He cut off the cops ear and said stuff into it. Suh-weet!!! What happened to Mr. White in the end? Did he learn from his malfeasance? I honestly don’t remember, because I don’t care. We want to see blood fly, and we want to see the perpetrators of the violent act walk away like it’s just another manic Monday. This, as Mr. Christopher states in the quote below, is what is called “torture-porn”. Writers know all about torture-porn, as do screenwriters, and everybody that’s into this type of fiction, but it doesn’t advance their agenda to talk about it in this manner, so we don’t. We call it art, we defend it as art, and we expect our audience to define it as art regardless how far down the pole we slide.

(Sons of Anarchy) began as a well-produced, white-washed examination of morally ambiguous bikers,” writes Tommy Christopher for Mediaite, “But it has devolved into melodramatic torture-porn.”{2}

As Mr. Christopher alludes, most creators/show runners have one, maybe two, and possibly three seasons of a television show, in mind even before the production of the first season begins. They have it all logged in what is called a show’s bible. That bible contains tight scripts, motives for actions, reactions, characters, characterizations, beginnings and endings, and anything and everything showrunners can think of to pitch to the networks then make what they hope to be a great show. If they are lucky, and that term may be considered relative over time, and their show gets renewed a couple times, the showrunner begins to realize that the material in his bible is finite.

Most showrunners don’t plan on making a season six when they begin. They can’t. They have to take it day by day, and season by season. It’s the nature of the business. If a showrunner is lucky enough to have a season six, one cannot blame them for feeling some desperation, and some pressure, be it external, or internal, to create a sixth season that is as great as his first or second. The first couple of seasons of tight scripts that the showrunner pined over for years, and in some cases a decade, are gone, and they’re left with months to produce cutting edge material that keeps them atop the hip, cutting edge, cut-throat world of TV.

One has to guess that in place of those tight narratives, Sutter chose to supplant them with torture-porn, and murder-porn, scenes that kept his show cutting-edge and popular. One has to guess that there was great deal of pressure on Sutter to make this season’s premiere the greatest ever made, just as there is immense pressure on every writer to do it, and possibly overdo it every time out, until “it” hopefully becomes unforgettable. If Sutter were not under such pressure from the network, and their advertisers, one would think that Sutter would have been able to shrug off Bozell’s charges better, and say that the man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Sutter’s juvenile attack on Bozell, suggest that Bozell must have nailed Sutter’s motivations so well that Sutter had no defense for it.

The You-So-Stupid defense

“I would imagine these (PTC and MRC members) are not evil people,” Sutter says, in an attempt to be sardonic. “But they are just not very intuitive or intelligent individuals. It’s such a small and simple view of process. The fact that people want to be monitoring what my children watch is terrifying. There is no awareness of what is the bigger objective of that episode is, the bigger point of the narrative.”{3}

It’s not complicated, I would counter and Mr. Sutter knows it, and that’s what makes him so sensitive to Bozell’s charges. Sutter wanted to have provocative, cutting-edge, timely, and popular scenes. He got eight million viewers. Do you know how many showrunners would kill for eight million viewers? You did it Mr. Sutter. Quit trying to make it seem more complicated than it is. You won!?

Bozell countered Sutter’s charge:

“(Sutter and his team) are getting paid millions to offend as aggressively as they can possibly imagine. They have nothing to discuss but their own “intelligent and intuitive” work and how outrageously hip they are.”

OUCH! Placing myself in Sutter’s shoes —as a creative writer that writes scenes that are violent, based on the numerous violent scenes that I have enjoyed in fiction, movies, and TV— I have to say that Bozell’s insightful condemnations would wreck me. I like to think that I’m a creative, intuitive, and intelligent writer, but when someone takes away my ammunition as thoroughly as Bozell did in two sentences, I would probably start making mean faces and throwing spitballs too.

The Censorship Defense

“Whenever that stuff crosses the line into censorship, it’s just scary … I’m not a social guru, I’m not a guy with an agenda politically, socially or morally. I’m a f***ing storyteller.”

Most artists misuse the word censorship when someone criticizes their work. It’s their desperate attempt to thwart criticism, for in the truest definition of the word, Bozell is not capable of censoring Sutter. Bozell does not work for a government agency, he does not work for Sons of Anarchy in any manner, or for the network that airs it, and he does not have any direct pull with their advertisers. He is simply acting as a critic, in the manner Brent Bozell has always offered criticism. Anyone that pays attention to Brent Bozell knows who he is, and how and what he critiques. If you don’t like him, don’t read him. When Robin Williams denigrated religious preachers, was he censoring Jerry Falwell, or was he a righteous dude? In this game, it all depends on which side of the stadium you’re sitting on.

The Start-A-Debate Defense

At one point, Mr. Sutter claimed that he just wanted to “start a debate” on the topics covered in the show. He obviously picked that “start a debate” card out of the politician’s excuse hat that contains the cards “start a dialogue,” and “start a conversation”. The problem with using such a line is that some of the times an actual debate breaks out, and you might encounter someone that takes the other side of that debate. It appears that the debate that Mr. Sutter wanted to start was one that he was entirely unprepared for, and he was left with nothing more than personal attacks and swears.

The aspect of this debate that is utterly confounding is that anyone that reads Bozell’s actual blog on this topic, will probably have to re-read it about five times to figure out how this relatively benign criticism sent Sutter on such a tear. You’ll wonder how such a relatively benign criticism could cause a forty-seven year old man to lose his mind and write a letter that calls another grown man a “Pathetic, f****ing douchebag.” I’m not sure what school of thought Mr. Sutter currently calls home, but having nothing left but juvenile names and petty accusations says more to me about Mr. Sutter than it does Mr. Bozell.

In his letter, Sutter writes that Bozell is an “idiot” and his organizations are “idiotic”. He claims that Bozell is about nothing more than his agenda, that is “desperately trying to create a lobby”, and that Bozell and “his hate club are flaccid and impotent”. Sutter writes that Bozell is: “Not very bright, (that Bozell’s) message is archaic, and loving parents can innately sense that the PTC has no heart and no real interest in the betterment of children. You reek of McCarthyism and holy water. And right-minded folks can smell you coming a mile away.” He writes that Bozell is “just an angry white guy with an exclusionary plan, using fear and god to spread a gospel of ignorance.” Sutter then concludes his letter with: “I bet your kids hate you.” {4}

In a piece for the Washington Free Beacon, Sonny Bunch claims that this Sutter letter was: “Widely distributed, widely read, and widely praised.”{5} I know that it’s written to denounce a conservative, and I’m sure that those on the receiving end of these distributions hate conservatives, but I’ve tried to read this “widely praised” letter with objectivity, and I can’t understand how anyone would consider it a “gotcha” moment for Mr. Sutter to celebrate. It reads like a letter a teenage boy would send to a girl that just dumped him, and it makes the reader want to take Sutter aside and say, “There are other fish in the sea.” Adolescent rage are the only words that come to mind when I read Sutter include “idiot” and “idiotic” in the same sentence. When he criticizes Bozell’s attempts to lobby professionally, it sounds like the raging, teenage boy is trying to find the perfect punctuation to the letter, along the lines of, “and I hope that you don’t make the pom pom team either.”

I don’t understand why Sutter didn’t just let it go. I don’t understand why Sutter didn’t just say, ‘Bozell is a religious, conservative, and he’s not my demographic, and the only people that read his column are religious conservatives.’ I don’t understand why he would want to give Mr. Bozell’s opinions more airtime.

At this point in the overall debate of artistic content, so many provocative artists have defended themselves in so many ways, that all of Mr. Sutter’s defenses now sound like clichés. Sutter could’ve tried the “reflecting a culture” response that rappers give, but even that has become a cliché at this point. He could’ve tried turning the responsibility back on the parents, with the cliché: “Hey, it’s their job to watch what their kids are watching not mine.” The only response that is not cliché, and the one I would use if I had eight million viewers, is, “People watched it. Scoreboard! I provide a product in the same manner Budweiser provides a product, or Coke, or Hostess. It may not be good for you, or the culture, as Bozell puts it, but that is a decision each household has to make. That is what the free market is all about.” The only thing that would prevent me from doing an “Eight million viewers” touchdown dance would be if I had some sort of insecurity about the material I created that attracted eight million viewers.

Bozell wrote: “The (FX) network and the “creative team of Sons of Anarchy” are getting paid millions to offend as aggressively as they can possibly imagine.”

This line, more than any other, probably provoked Sutter, because it called to mind all the pressure Sutter felt to do it, and overdo it, with more shock, and more violence than he had included before. I’m sure he felt personal, and professional pressure to equal, and possibly top, the progression that began with Goodfellas, moved to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, to The Sopranos, and finally to Breaking Bad, and that he hoped to carve Sons of Anarchy a niche somewhere in that lineup. Judging by Sutter’s vitriolic response, I’m guessing Sutter feels he fell short, and Bozell’s commentary only intensified that feeling.

When Sutter tells you it’s not about the shock, I can tell you –as a writer of violent crime fiction– that it’s all about the shock. To paraphrase Bret Easton Ellis, I try to write something that will shock my friends, and my friends are pretty jaded. All the movies and shows listed above have jaded us, and we are always on the lookout for our own progression in that line. We love to shock, we live to shock, and we probably wouldn’t be writing today if it weren’t for those inspirations shocking our sensibilities into this direction.

I would not be interested in writing a story about a quirky family in New Hampshire that happens to live in, and own, a Hotel. All the power to John Irving, one of the greatest living writers, but that ain’t me. I would love to achieve the fame, and sales, of The Bridges of Madison County, and Tuesdays with Morrie, but I’ll never write stories like those. I need a little violence in my stories, to be intrigued. I need a lot of violence to be interested, and I need this violence to reflect a culture that has the perpetrators walking away from these extremely violent scenes like it’s just another manic Monday. I am not a violent person, but I think those movies listed above were monumental, and influential. All of them bordered on being gratuitously violent, in a manner that shook my foundation and my fundamentals, and after viewing them, I decided that I wanted to write the progression, and I’m sure that it was Sutter’s goal too.

The problem with being this open and honest about your intentions, or your agenda, is that you’re allowing others to see your intentions, and your agenda, and that somehow minimizes your intentions, and your agenda in a manner that makes them too apparent. If an author has a violent scene that is cool, very few of them will say that they just wanted to write a violent scene that was cool. They’ll tell you that the character, and the plot, are driven by a myriad of complications that will become clear when the narrative arc reaches its climax. Yet, if you watch these shows, and movies, as often as I do, and you read ‘the complications to come’ interviews from their author, you find that more often than not, it was all about the shock and awe of writing violent scenes that were cool. You can’t say that though. Saying things like that makes you feel too much like a carnival barker trying to get patrons to take a look at the bearded lady, and the problem with that is that there might be some critic that comes along and says it’s just another bearded lady, and you’re just another carnival barker.

{1}http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/09/21/bozell-newtown-amnesia-hollywood

{2}http://www.mediaite.com/online/brent-bozell-is-right-something-should-be-done-to-keep-kids-from-watching-sons-of-anarchy/
{3}http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2013/09/19/bozell-column-newtown-amnesia-hollywood#ixzz2hztXmyLo

{4}http://www.mediaite.com/tv/youre-a-pathetic-fcking-douchebag-sons-of-anarchy-creator-goes-off-on-conservative-activist/

{5}http://freebeacon.com/blog/brent-bozell-kurt-sutter-and-cultural-relevance/

When we talk about monsters, who are we talking about?

January 18, 2013January 21, 2016 RilalyLeave a comment

Who are you, and how close are you to becoming a monster? Are you a rational, quiet individual that wouldn’t harm a fly? If you are, and most think they are, why are you so fascinated with the talk of monsters?

If you’re one of those that shout “Just kill the guy!” at a movie screen when some fella comes along and “fronts” your main character, how close are you to handling such matters in that manner? “Don’t take that stuff!” we shout. “Kill him!” While we must take into account that this is just a movie in our scenario, and you’re just an audience member when you do this, we must also consider how many of us go to those movies that “do” what we would love to do in the confrontations of our life? How close are we to those with a penchant for violence, and why do we enjoy these movies so much?

How many of us would get a perverse thrill from having murder in our personal arsenal? Or, if that’s too irrational for you, how many of us would love to have the fear of our potential for violence on the minds of those that confront us? It’s seen as “respect” in many of the top, action movies of the day to have another back down before saying a word, because that side character knows your favorite character’s penchant for violence. How many of us have laughed at the idea that this side character backs down, because he knows not to mess with the crazy, main character? How many of us would love to have that definition of respect incorporated into our daily interactions? We may never act in a violent manner, but we would love to have that persona. How many of us get a perverse, vicarious thrill from watching our favorite characters resolve their problems in violent ways that we can’t in our civil society, and how close are we really to enacting that persona?

What is a monster, and what’s the difference between them and those that would never purposely harm another individual? The reason we developed fictional monsters in the first place, writes author John Douglas in his book Mindhunter, was to give us some distance from this question. We’re human, they’re human, and what’s the difference between us and, say, a good looking, well-educated, and seemingly benign person like a Ted Bundy? They’re monsters, said those 19th century people that understood the complexities and vagaries of the human mind far less than we do. They may seem unassuming now, but if a full moon rises, they change into a monster of inexplicable horror. They’re not like us after all. PHEW!

These people had some idea that some, seemingly benign people can have mental health problems on a scale that they may end up hurting someone, but the idea that it could be as a result of a natural chemical depletion was foreign to them, so they needed to think that there was some form of distance. They didn’t understand the resultant effects injuries can have on the brain; effects of enzymes levels, like dopamine and serotonin; effects of heredity and rearing; and they probably didn’t want to know such things. They didn’t want to think that they were that close to those they labeled heinous monsters, so they turned to the world of fiction to give them comfort from these thoughts.

When we talk about monsters, in this modern era, we all know who we’re talking about. We’ve all heard, read, and watched the stories of mass shootings, and we’ve all watched with open mouthed awe, from a comfortable distance, but at a certain point in the media saturation of these stories, some of us begin to wonder where we truly lie in the aftermath of these horrible tragedies? Who are we, and how close are we to becoming that which we fear most?

We’ve all read the books in the True Crime section of our local book stores and libraries that will start with the “It could be you” narrative, that details how a normal, Midwestern, and religious small town white boy became an assailant. His story is not that much different than ours, the theme of this narrative suggests, and this just opens our mouths wider and causes us to flip the pages faster. How close are we to this truly horrific creature we’re reading about? What was that different about their upbringing, their daily lives, and the thoughts that led to these horrible acts?

At some point in their maturation, these assailants chose a path that separated them from us, but this point of separation didn’t usually occur in one, solitary event. There isn’t, usually, a substantial fork in the road that we can point to that says, “That’s where he and I differ.” Most true crime authors don’t let us off the hook that easy, for that would be a simplistic reading of their complex, yet simple character, and they’ve written a whole book on the subject, so you’re simply going have to get to a half a bun on your chair while reading this book what could be more about you than you know.

If the author does provide some sort of separation it’s usually, and purposefully, murky. The gist of the story that “this could be more about you than you know” is the reason most of us bought the book in the first place. Some may have made the purchase based solely on the sadistic, or voyeuristic, interests in reading about torture, mayhem, destructive viciousness, and psychopaths, but most of us want to know about the separation. Most of us want to know why we haven’t gone on killing sprees, or at least what makes those who do so different. It could be that there actually is no separation, or it could be that providing unquestionable and substantial proof of the separation will lose the reader. Whatever the case is, we continue to buy these books in pursuit of a truth or an explanation regarding why some fantasize about violence in the dark recesses of their mind, and why some act on them.

Disgusted by the insanity defense, a friend of mine said: “I think we can go ahead and say one thing that is not debatable, and that is that anyone that would take the life of another is, at least, a little insane. To resort to taking another man’s life as a form of problem solving that requires, at least, a temporary degree of insanity that I’ll never know.” Does one have to be insane to take another person’s life, especially if the matter at hand is somewhat innocuous, or is the determination of that person’s insanity a way of distancing one’s self from having to deal with the fact that they may be a lot more like us than we want to explore?

This mystery of what separates the rational from the irrational and the irrationally violent is not modern, and in some cases it dates back to early man. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1821; Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897; and references to Werewolves were written in ancient Greece. Trying to understand why man acts in the manner he does has fascinated other men for as long as we’ve been on the Earth. It has fascinated some, titillated others, and repulsed many so much that they don’t even want to talk about it. Those that are repulsed by such discussions believe that we are humanizing these monsters by giving them such play in the media and medical journals, and that we are giving them exactly what they want by broadcasting everything about their otherwise, anonymous lives.

We’re all fascinated with violence to some extent, some just may choose to distance themselves from that fascination that they don’t want to explore it in anyway, but is the person that is interested in exploring the differences closer or further away from the separation than those that aren’t?

Why are some prone to purchase a Rottweiler, or a Pitbull, and others a Poodle? I know, I know your Pitbull is not violent, and you’ve raised him well in a happy home, and he wouldn’t harm a fly. He’s just Ralphie. He may be Ralphie now, but he wasn’t always Ralphie. He was once a … Pitbull!!!, and if you’ve read or heard any stories about them, then you know that Pitbulls have a propensity for violence. I know, I know, you’ve heard stories about the propensity that the Chihuahua has for violence, we all have, but how many “Chihuahua bites man” cases have come before Supreme Courts? How many Supreme Court justices have found the Chihuahua to be “inherently dangerous” as they did the Pitbull in a case before the Maryland Supreme Court?{1} The Chihuahua may have a propensity for violence that matches, and in some cases exceeds, that of the Pitbull, but does anyone care based on the capabilities of the Chihuahua? The point is that potential owners are attracted to the potential and the capabilities of the Pitbull, and in this writer’s humble opinion, they love explaining that away too. If it truly is not the case that you are in some way attracted to their potential, why didn’t you just pick a Poodle, or a Puggle? They’re boring. But why are they boring? Why are there so few documentaries done on the anteater compared to number done on the shark or the alligator? Why is Shark Week an annual event on The Discovery Channel? Why do some people love the books of Stephen King, the movies of Quentin Tarantino, and violent rap music, while others read Dickenson, watch Wes Anderson movies, and listen to Brahms? Some are simply more fascinated with the propensity to violence? How close are they, and does owning a Pitbull give their owners greater distance from this potential, or does it tweak their fascination with it?

This article is not intended to be a tedious, Phil Donahue-style exercise in moral relativism, but an examination for why we are fascinated with violence and the tenuous line that exists between those that act on their fantasies and those that are fascinated by that tenuous line. If you have a quick and easy answer for where you stand on that line, how did you arrive at that answer? And why are you able to pull it out in such a quick-draw fashion? Does it provide you comfort to have this answer at the ready, especially when it didn’t require much examination in the first place, or is it just easier for you to live the unexamined life? Do you know yourself better or less than those of us constantly in search of answers? Are you confident of your answers, or are you so insecure that you can’t stand the questions, and you seek a fictional depiction of a heinous creature to give you a comfortable distance? Who are you, and how close are you to becoming that which you fear most?

{1}http://www.policymic.com/articles/8104/dog-owners-beware-maryland-warns-that-pit-bulls-are-a-danger-as-government-targets-your-pets