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Graphic cinematic violence is a magnet for controversy.  From passionate defenses to outraged protests, theories abound concerning this defining feature of modern film: Is it art or exploitation, dangerous or liberating? 

Screening Violence  provides an even-handed examination of the history, merits, and effects of cinematic “ultraviolence.”  Movie reviewers, cinematographers, film scholars, psychologists, and sociologists all contribute essays exploring topics such as:

· the origins and innovations of film violence and attempts to regulate it

(from Hollywood’s Production Code to the evolution of the ratings system)

· the explosion of screen violence following the 1967 releases of Bonnie and Clyde  and The Dirty Dozen, and the lasting effects of those landmark films

· the aesthetics of increasingly graphic screen violence

· the implications of our growing desensitization to murder and  mayhem, from The Wild Bunch  to The Terminator