Please Read This

"C J Campbell" wrote in message ...

A lot of entertainment is built around that. Most modern movies seem to have
lost all concept of plot in favor of more and bigger 'special effects.'
People go to see demolition derbies. The potential for seeing a crash is, in
fact, one of the reasons that a lot of people go to races. Why is that? What
is it about people that they want to see this?

I think the *potential* excites people but the actuality of it when it
really happens is a big "downer." I know for me, when I see video of
something like that, I think, "dammit, this guy was risking his neck
to put on a show to entertain me." This is also why it's one thing to
see a big nasty crash where the driver/pilot gets up and walks away or
waves from the stretcher, versus one where a life is lost.

When I was in Spain a couple years ago on business I, being a
Hemingway fan, naturally went to see a bullfight. I mentioned it and a
bunch of my co-workers decided to come along too. It had the qualities
of opera, the Latin Mass, and NASCAR all rolled into one; A
first-class spectacle if I've ever seen it. And then at the end, when
the matador draws the sword and points it towards the bull to go for
the killing blow, that brought home that this was in fact Blood Sport,
in practice as well as principle. Having hunted deer, birds, etc.
growing up, I did not find the sight of it all so shocking as did many
of my more urbanized co-workers. But it was still to some degree a
strange thing to see, and I suspect it will largely die out within the
next couple of generations as the conventional wisdom comes to see it
as barbarism, plain and simple.

-cwk.