Ballet of Violence

Why this extra violence in such a violent time? Is it choreographed like a bullfight; is it like a fine tragedy which one goes to although one’s own life is tangled enough? Of course it isn’t these things at all … Ten years ago, when we did not live alongside such an ocean of violence, some of us went to the fights perhaps as one keeps an aquarium. We realized most of the world was under water, but we were high and dry with Eisenhower, and knowing that life is salt and life is action, life is tears and life is water, we kept a fish tank to represent the four fifths of the world that breathed with gills.

But nowadays we’re flooded and swimming for dear life, no matter where we happen to live. That we nevertheless prefer our sports violent - the irreducible conciseness of boxing - is evidence of a relation to violence, a need and a curiosity, so basic that it cannot be sated. Though we do tire of the delirium in the streets, we are only tiring of the disorder. Make it concise, put ropes or white lines around it, and we will go, we will go , just as people on vacation go down to the roaring sea.

1) There are a lot of reasons that explain boxing’s popularity in the 1970s, but this is a particularly well written one.

2) This idea also hints toward why Rocky was such a great movie for its time and also why its violent climax may have been slightly more apt than Taxi Driver’s for 1976. (and a reason, I think, it deserved to beat Taxi Driver for Best Picture*… and yes, this is probably the only Oscars related comment I’ll make all week)

_{*If you’re one of those ridiculous people so pretentious that you fail at even being pretentious and don’t think Rocky was a great film, you need to go back and watch it again… and if you still think it’s not good then you need to not know me}