IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED FUNNY GAMES YET AND DON'T WANT TO HEAR THE ENDING SKIP THIS POST (until you've watched it :) )
I just finished watching Funny Games and earlier I read the boys i mean, and I have to say I am beginning to notice a common theme. The feeling Emily described, about being left with just your thoughts after a disturbing movie, well, I've got that.
At the end of the movie, after committing all these brutal murders, in a sing-songy Willy Wonka fashion, the main bad guy kills off the last family member. When his cohort asks why he did it, he just laughs and says "besides, I was starting to get hungry." The guys in the movie and the author of the boys share the same element of emptiness of emotion, especially during events that, normally, evoke a strong reaction, i.e. murder.
I think it is this lack of emotion that people find most disturbing, and I think thats why a lot of literature with a theme like this gets banned. Rape and murder are scary, but scarier is someone who doesn't think so. When you've lost that feeling, (lol-"bring back thaaaat lovinnn feeelin'") I'm not sure exactly what to call it- remorse, empathy?- its like you are no longer human. The movie Funny Games also reminded me a lot of A Clockwork Orange, at least in the "violence for entertainment" sense (and the white outfits, but that's not really important). To respond to Deanna and Emily's comments about the last line of the boys, how maybe there isn't as much disdain toward the boys and the terrible things they do, well I'm not sure, but I feel like maybe that's hinted at in Funny Games. The first time Paul speaks directly to the camera he says something like "but you're on their side (the family), aren't you?" hinting that maybe there is some secret underlying desire of humankind to be have the ability to act out like that? I could be totally making stuff up though.
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