The Virtue of Violence: Dimensions of Development in Walter Hill's The Warriors.

MOTION picture industry; VIOLENCE; SOCIAL interaction; MASS media; CULTURAL industries

The article discusses on the virtue of violence that are displayed in motion pictures. Violence in some movies clearly increases their appeal. It includes, rather, the sort of physical and psychological threats normally associated with street crime and related acts and threats against individuals and their property. It involves, characteristically, adolescents. An understanding of how violence appeals requires an appreciation of the source and the force of fears that life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short. As a result, great importance attaches to those values, which promote group solidarity. Fear of violence must override various forms of selfishness and related anti-social tendencies in order for people to unite. In this respect, the political compromises which social life generally demands recapitulate the psychological processes of maturation which individuals need to undergo.