Ram the Wrestler vs. Snuggles the Kitten

Some people believe we are what we eat. If that’s true, I’m a taco salad with a side of tortilla chips. But surely we’re also what we see, what we hear, and what we think about all day.

I believe what we witness has a cumulative effect on our psyches, just as excess calories accumulate on our thighs. I plead guilty to putting too many carbohydrates into my body, but I’m really careful about what I put into my head. 

I won’t watch TV shows with violence. At least, I don’t watch them with my eyes open. If there is unexpected bloodshed or cruelty, I close my eyes and cover my ears. Sometimes I jump ship and go do the laundry or scrub the toilet. Either task is preferable to poisoning my mind with the ugliness of man’s inhumanity to man.

I sound like a priss, don’t I? Listen, I’m not some hothouse flower who faints at the sight of blood I simply don’t want those pictures in my head, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep them out.

There’s a popular theory that being exposed to increasingly violent images makes us numb to them eventually. I’m simply asking the question, why do we accept violence as entertainment and adjust our tolerance to it? This is like accepting air pollution with the notion that our lungs will adapt to the bad air.

Sometimes I knowingly expose myself to cinematic violence, as when we went to see “The Wrestler.” I was curious to see Mickey Rourke’s Oscar-nominated performance, and anyway, it was Keeper’s turn to pick.

I don’t want to give away too much, but if you’ve seen the trailer, you know that Rourke’s character, Ram, is way past his prime but is still hanging on to his glory days, mostly because he has nothing else in his life. He performs for small crowds in school gyms and legion halls and goes home alone to his dismal trailer, when he’s not locked out of it for failure to pay his rent. It’s a sad life and he’s a broken man.

Obviously, a movie about a professional wrestler is bound to have some bloodshed. That’s what this form of entertainment is all about – guys beating the crap out of each other while other guys alternately boo and cheer them on. Of course, the moves are choreographed and the outcomes predetermined, but the falls, though highly exaggerated, still hurt. 

And then there’s the scene with the staple gun. I’m serious. Ram’s opponent attacks him (and his own forehead) with a staple gun. Even Keeper closed his eyes through most of this.

The movie was such a relentless downer that I could hardly drive home. Keeper offered to buy me a brownie, but even the thought of chocolate didn’t rouse me from my funk.

I had to resort to The Antidote. We got home and I went directly to the computer. I fired up my browser and sat staring at a live Kitty Cam for more than 20 minutes. 

Even the sight of kittens tumbling, swatting, and snuggling didn’t undo my mental fugue. I had to take a two-hour nap, watch a Seinfeld episode (the one with Elaine dancing) AND eat a brownie to counteract the movie.

The violence in “The Wrestler” was not gratuitous; it was integral to the story. And the story is this: in the end, violence as entertainment diminishes us all – those who produce it and those who watch.