A new movie could be sending the wrong message
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“Welcome to New York’s underground. Where the competition is brutal and everyone’s fighting to be the best.”
I’m a movie buff and so being, I cruise the Yahoo! Movies page frequently to check out new trailers and movie news. Today I discovered a trailer for a new movie called “Fighting.”
I’m not typically prone to moral outrage, but for some reason this movie sparked some.
Consider that I had just seen a news report on teen fight videos gaining popularity on YouTube. (Check out this piece on USA Today.)
My moral outrage at the movie came in the same vein as my outrage at the news of senseless teen violence. Apparently, teens, boys and girls, are increasingly starting fights and recording them on video for posting online all just for kicks. And these are brutal fights. In some cases the fights are started by gangs of young boys and involve unsuspecting teens.
What’s got me is that this new movie is targeted at teens, who I can only assume will flock to the theaters to watch Channing Tatum take off his shirt and punch guys to the gangster rap soundtrack, all the while glorifying a barbaric phenomenon that’s jeopardizing our youth.
Why can’t all movies be as inspiring as Gran Torino??? Now that’s a movie with a good lesson to teach.
Did you learn much from the racist lines of Clint Eastwood’s Torino? Or did you end up senselessly laughing with the rest of the audience?
Sanctioned fighting is simply more mainstream than it has ever been in the past. Mixed Martial Arts is my favorite sport and it’s catching on. This “barbaric” sport is not a phenomenon, nor a fad.
I hope you’re speaking to unsanctioned fighting only.
Like the gangster rap which deteriorates the moral utopia of some, sanctioned fighting is a legitimate art form, a sport. You might not like it but it’s part of the American landscape and won’t be going anywhere. Just like rap music, it is not “jeopardizing our youth” as much as it is challenging the parents of those youths.
You want a good story Jeff, I would suggest looking around for a high school wrestler in your area who trains in Mixed Martial Arts at one of the many MMA studios in Minneapolis. I bet you could find someone, and I bet it would make a GREAT video news story. But I’ve gotten pushback in my area in trying to do this story, because the moral gatekeepers don’t like the idea of giving attention to the sport they despise.
One thing to keep in mind, a trained mixed martial artist is more often than not going to be just like you, appalled at anything which promotes unsanctioned fighting.