A bit out of the ordinary for Hollywood

pinnah said:
To answer Hickory's OP, the reason Hollywood generally portrays knives as a threat is because humans are hardwired to monitor threat, which is why violence is the crack cocaine or heroin of all media (much more so than porn). I recall hearing a US Army psychologist interviewed once on the roll of violence in the media and he talked about lessons learned in US military training on habituating people to violent responses. He noted the advances that led the rate of infantry firing on the enemy in WW2 from about 40% to over 90% in Vietnam.

He noted that we've learned some key things about the human brain and violence and chief among them is that humans are hard wired to monitor for threat. This is why newsrooms follow the adage, "If it bleeds, it leads" and why cable news keeps a live ticker running with some threat inducing crap running on it.

Anyway... Peaky Blinders... the gang members kept razor blades in the brim of their scaly caps and use them often. Like like Gibbs cutting a steak with a ZT or Longmire killing (1, 2, how many) people with his 110, generally speaking knives are props for inducing the element of threat - which is why we watch the shows.

Putting it another way, the problem isn't Hollywood. They just make stuff that we like to watch. The problem is us. We like to watch menace and violence - even more than sex.
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Poor Hollywood. So misunderstood and heaped with blame for all these years for simply giving us what we want.:(
Thanks for all the help giving us the federal automatic knife bans we all wanted!:thumbsup::rolleyes:
 

At 2:05, the switchblade is so bad it doesn't fully open and the kid has to use his hand to open it the rest of the way...

Jim
 
I guess I just want something that will never be, I want Hollywood to portray folding knives as the mundane everyday tool that they are more often than they do.
There has to be excitement and action and theatrics and all that, but I know they could make it happen if they wanted to.
 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Even if Hollywood showed mundane tool use of a pocketknife in every show, people who view knives as weapons would likely still see them mostly as such. The best way to help create a more positive image of knives as tools is for one's self to be that positive example, if you happen to find yourself in such a position.

Jim
 
While various shows I've noticed various types of knives being used to give tracheotomies in the wild, I can't remember a specific example as I often have shows on in the background
 
Hickory n steel said:
I guess I just want something that will never be, I want Hollywood to portray folding knives as the mundane everyday tool that they are more often than they do.
There has to be excitement and action and theatrics and all that, but I know they could make it happen if they wanted to.
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Guillermo del Toro has stated that the natural state of a film is to not get made. You are presuming that what you see on screen just happens? Hollywood is a place, not a company, not even a cohesive group of people. It is honestly shocking that anything good gets made, so no, "they" cannot "just make it happen"
My young friend, you spend a lot of time wishing for the world to be a certain way without really thinking about if that idealist world ever existed or is even possible. The thing with idealism is that reality always rains on the parade, and inevitably the idealist ends up disillusioned, and that generally leads to cynicism. However if you approach the world as a realist, even a pessimist you find that often the world surprises and delights you. But that is on you, not the world, its not going to change without people to change it. I understand where you are coming from, but nostalgia is toxic, nostalgia for a world that never existed, doubly so.
 
gadgetgeek said:
Guillermo del Toro has stated that the natural state of a film is to not get made. You are presuming that what you see on screen just happens? Hollywood is a place, not a company, not even a cohesive group of people. It is honestly shocking that anything good gets made, so no, "they" cannot "just make it happen"
My young friend, you spend a lot of time wishing for the world to be a certain way without really thinking about if that idealist world ever existed or is even possible. The thing with idealism is that reality always rains on the parade, and inevitably the idealist ends up disillusioned, and that generally leads to cynicism. However if you approach the world as a realist, even a pessimist you find that often the world surprises and delights you. But that is on you, not the world, its not going to change without people to change it. I understand where you are coming from, but nostalgia is toxic, nostalgia for a world that never existed, doubly so.
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Very well said; I wholeheartedly agree with you.

What you say about drama is spot on. A good example of a knife being used ‘as a knife’ rather than a weapon is ‘The Edge’, Hopkins & Baldwin starring. But although the knife is used sensibly, the context is very dramatic. People wouldn’t pay money to watch Anthony Hopkins pottering about the house cutting open the odd package. ;)

Thinking about it, the OP might enjoy ‘The Edge’, featuring as it does a trad folder.
 
Pilsner said:
Very well said; I wholeheartedly agree with you.

What you say about drama is spot on. A good example of a knife being used ‘as a knife’ rather than a weapon is ‘The Edge’, Hopkins & Baldwin starring. But although the knife is used sensibly, the context is very dramatic. People wouldn’t pay money to watch Anthony Hopkins pottering about the house cutting open the odd package. ;)

Thinking about it, the OP might enjoy ‘The Edge’, featuring as it does a trad folder.
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a pretty nice folder too. always liked that film. entertaining.
 
Pilsner said:
V
What you say about drama is spot on. A good example of a knife being used ‘as a knife’ rather than a weapon is ‘The Edge’, Hopkins & Baldwin starring. But although the knife is used sensibly, the context is very dramatic. People wouldn’t pay money to watch Anthony Hopkins pottering about the house cutting open the odd package. ;)
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The Edge is a good example as the knife does come up a couple times, and is pretty central to the story, from a character point of view.

I think that the vast majority of knife users who are not so involved that they are on the internet to talk about it, just don't think that much about it. The contrast to the simpsons, "Don't thank me, Thank the KNIFE!" they use a knife like they breath or blink. I mean the number of techs that I used to work with where you'd have to remind them to pocket dump before we went out on the grids (catwalks above stage) or when working with projector screens that were easily 10s of thousands of dollars, and they had a knife out an open above it. A lot of them would not be able to tell you what they were carrying without looking at it. Because they didn't care, either it worked or it got replaced. But those guys certainly used their knives. It was probably the same as the normal population, out of 10, two know the name of the guy who designed their knife, six have a knife that works, and two are borrowing.
You don't need to be an enthusiast to be a knife user, just like you don't need to be a gear-head to drive. And when people make art, they make art from what they are enthusiastic about.
 
Having a gearhead to drive is usually much more entertaining - at least til the red lights come on behind you. Even then it can still be pretty entertaining with certain gearheads I have known. To me this whole current "terror' response of seeing a knife being used is very much like all of these restuarant managers that will actually tell a uniformed cop that he must take his sidearm outside and leave it in his car because "our company policy is that we do not allow guns in our business". You are actually serious? WOW.
 
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