Can’t Look… Have to Look

There is a growing negative reaction to what many people perceive as gratuitous violence in film and television. Thomas Britt investigates why audiences are turning off shows with violent content like “The Walking Dead.”

Flip open a German pulp novel, and you’re likely to find a detective who doesn’t shoot a gun or break the law. Bruce Campbell explains why the weight of the Nazi past makes a German Dirty Harry an impossibility.

As Japanese filmmakers brought Godzilla back over and over again, they have used the monster as a symbol to reveal central public concerns in Japan at the time. Jason Barr is the author of The Kaiju Film: A Critical Study of Cinema’s Biggest Monsters, which looks at the history of Japanese monster movies.

Andrew Kaufman’s book Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times says that Tolstoy’s masterpiece is more relevant to readers now than ever.

Gone With the Wind, The Patriot, Born on the Fourth of July—some of America’s most important historical moments have been shown through film. Historian Jeffrey McClurken says while these movies often get the facts wrong, there’s history to be learned from the way the stories are told.