People Not So Much

"Technology changes, people not so much."

There is a common misconception that the modern world's idea of entertainment has become sick and wrong and has a negative effect on the modern mind. I'm not going to entirely disagree with this.  I mean, nobody who's seen a film like Saw or The Human Centipede can say that genre is exactly wholesome. What I want to point out is, this is nothing new. A good example being how in the middle ages public hanging was considered entertainment.

I'm studying Classical Civilisations and the literature we're looking at is pretty messed up. The most celebrated Greek play is Oedipus Rex, where the main character accidently kills his father and finds himself marrying and having children by his mother without realising it. When he does realise, he gouges out his own eyes. Another play, Hippolytus, has a heroine who kills herself and falsely accuses her own stepson of her rape. It's worse than a soap opera. My personal favourite is Medea, where the crazy woman murders her husband's new wife, the wife's father, and both of her own children to get back at her husband. She doesn't do it in a nice way either. She sends the wife a pretty garland that will actually kill her when she puts it on. The girl's "flesh melted from her bones." She becomes "so misshapen only a loving parent would find it easy to recognise her." Then, when her father comes along and touches her, he gets caught up with her and "if he pulled violently, he kept tearing his old flesh from his bones."

Nice.

Then you have the epic poem 'The Iliad'. This is pretty famous and I assume you've heard of it. It is considered the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilisation and tells the story of the siege of Troy. It is basically pages and pages of who killed who and how. You read how Achilleus - considered a hero of the piece - avenges the killing of his friend by killing the murderer then dragging the fellow's body by its feet behind his chariot, round and round Troy, while the guy's family are watching from the battlements.   

And all these were written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. My point is really that people haven't changed much. Our somewhat edgy taste in movies and that doesn't mean society is degrading. We've just had thousands of years to perfect the art and technological advances makes it easier to create. Our collective minds have always been that sordid.