(no subject)

[leahbobet]

Okay, so a couple of us are talking about The Box aka "Button, Button" and just how terribly easy it is to break that plot. I mean:

"Hi, push this killing button and I'll give you all this money!"
"No, thanks."
"Moving on, then."

Or, as tanaise paraphrases the NPR blog on the matter, "It is not a hard decision for me because I AM NOT A HITMAN."

And this makes me wonder whether many specimens of that sort of moral-choice horror story aren't actually about the moral choice, about Would you kill someone? but more, subtextually, about "So...if it was like this and this, would I be allowed to kill someone? How 'bout now?"

When is it okay, socially, for me to just kill someone?*

Because, y'know, sometimes people are just getting so much joy out of the thing.

*This also applies to the "Ethnic drug lords killed my family/kidnapped my blond daughter/etc. and now I must middle-class raaaaaaaage!" genre of film.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

My version is: "Um, can I think about it?" *does not touch the box* *calls the cops*

Which is sadly lacking in explosions, I grant you.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hee!

Okay, you win.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

*preens*

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes. Or the same, but feeding the thing through a woodchipper so no one else can, either.

[jonhansen.livejournal.com]

This is true. It's like breaking a knock-knock joke, frankly.

"Knock knock."
"Come in!"

[kats-kradle.livejournal.com]

I don't know, if I could be sure of who I killed and get a million bucks...but again it goes back to being/becoming a hitman.

[ringwoodcomics.livejournal.com]

Like that experiment. Um, I forget the name of it -- the people told to quiz strangers and shock them with increasingly greater voltage if they get answers wrong, and they keep doing it because the guy in the white lab coat says it's not their responsibility.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't believe most of my neighbors are not hitmen because they are not that good with weapons. I believe they are not hitmen because they do not want to kill people. This is how I go about my life.

This is part of why I say I have the urge to kick things and people: because I do have the urge to kick them. I do not have the urge to kill them.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Is this related to the problem some viewers had with "Indecent Proposal?"

Robert Redford: would you sleep with me for a million dollars?

Female lead; Uhhhh...let me think...

Approx 80% of women in the audience: Hell yeah! I'd give you a million dollars!

[mekkavandexter.livejournal.com]

i'm more interested in being a hitman than having a million dollars. I think perhaps I need to watch less Grosse Pointe Blank.

just saying :P

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

So you're saying if I ever need someone killed cheaply....?