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Have had many moments of epiphany while chatting on IRC, most of which have now vanished into the ether without a trace. (Unless somebody happened to log them, I guess.) But this one is so important that I have to set it down now.
We all know that everything is funnier when sped up and accompanied by excitable music. But there is a corollary to this:
An action committed in slow-motion has no moral consequences.
Think about it. If a man pulled out a machinegun and blew away dozens of civilians/security guards/cops/etc, that's murder. Even if the ones he's shooting are criminals, we often have to ask ourselves - is this *justified*? Could he perhaps have captured them instead, or achieved his goals without aiming for the maximum possible body count?
But when he does it in slo-mo, casings sparkling in the light as they shower from his gun (and I do not _only_ speak of 'Matrix' here), these deaths do not stain his Karma. We can cheer him as he widows a man's wife, orphans his children, and yet know that when Anubis weighs the sins of our heart against the feather of Ma'at this pleasure will not be held against us.
When Susan Sarandon undresses before her lover, it does not trouble us that she is violating her professional ethics - or that a previous lover lies in a coffin upstairs, not entirely dead - or that she may well be destined for the same fate. Not when she undresses in slow-motion.
ObGamer: I guess this explains a lot about the Cult of Ecstasy.
We all know that everything is funnier when sped up and accompanied by excitable music. But there is a corollary to this:
An action committed in slow-motion has no moral consequences.
Think about it. If a man pulled out a machinegun and blew away dozens of civilians/security guards/cops/etc, that's murder. Even if the ones he's shooting are criminals, we often have to ask ourselves - is this *justified*? Could he perhaps have captured them instead, or achieved his goals without aiming for the maximum possible body count?
But when he does it in slo-mo, casings sparkling in the light as they shower from his gun (and I do not _only_ speak of 'Matrix' here), these deaths do not stain his Karma. We can cheer him as he widows a man's wife, orphans his children, and yet know that when Anubis weighs the sins of our heart against the feather of Ma'at this pleasure will not be held against us.
When Susan Sarandon undresses before her lover, it does not trouble us that she is violating her professional ethics - or that a previous lover lies in a coffin upstairs, not entirely dead - or that she may well be destined for the same fate. Not when she undresses in slow-motion.
ObGamer: I guess this explains a lot about the Cult of Ecstasy.
