After reading the "Kill Bill" thread, I need help understanding something.

Why do so many otherwise peaceful people love the "gore facter"?
My husband is one of the sweetest, most gentle men I know & he loves movies with lots of gore. I also have good friends who let their son play games like Vice City??? and other games that are all about killing people and IMHO very gross. I just don't get it.

I am an incredibly shy, peaceful, loving husband, father of a 2 year old daughter, devoted son, bleeding heart liberal. And since I was 13 I have been a slavishly devoted fan of gory movies, particularly the horror variety, as well as some of the most anti-social music and lyrics and literature you could ever hope to hear, read, see, whatever.

It's an escape. Something so far from my own reality. Also, I can differentiate what I'm seeing/hearing/reading from actual life enough so that I can marvel at how someone was able to film that scene, what effects went into it, how someone came up with that disgusting lyric or that amazingly florid gory passage in a novel.

It's separating art from reality and appreciating the artist.

I'm the same way. It's just making the distinction between what is real and what is make believe. In a video game or a movie, no one really gets hurt. It's just play, similar to playing 'war' when you were a child. No one gets hurt, and everyone is really friends. People who try to blame violence on movies and video games are on the wrong track, IMHO. I would never hurt anyone, but I really enjoy games like Vice City, and will no doubt enjoy 'Kill Bill'.

I grew up watching ALL of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies. An 11 year old with a subscription to Fangoria is a little weird I guess, but I knew it was just a movie.

Its funny that I can watch Samurai films with squirting decapitations, but I can't look at a crime scene photo. Real life stuff makes me squirm.

One distinction is I know it is fake. Show me images of real suffering, and I nearly faint.

I think part of it is the adrenaline rush, the vicarious experience of danger. Another is being in awe of the special effects ("How did they do that?"). One genre has such over-the-top blood & mayhem it is just ridiculous, and I think this serves as a tension reliever.

It's the allure movies of all genres have always presented - escapism (a break from everyday life).

Humans are predators by nature. There is a certain level of combativeness in us. The gore and violence are releases for that.

...blood and guts movies very much at all. The Matrix is about it for me. And it's pure SciFI so it hardly seems real.

Same with TV and video games. I haven't played a violent video game in almost 10 years...Actually I haven't played hardly any video games in that time period.