Tricycle | Awake in the World

Whenever we post about martial-arts movies (or when Phil posts about Kill Bill) we get a few kneejerk criticisms for being sympathetic to—or at least tolerant of—representations of violence on the screen. There's a pretty basic formula for these films—flying kicks and extraordinary violence cut with shots of meditative practice or scenic recapitulations of spiritual lessons from the protagonist's early years with the master (remember Kung Fu?). Video games, too: I posted about the Karmapa's use of violent video games as "emotional therapy" and plenty found that practice pretty distasteful. More »