[BRIEF NOTE] On Battle Royale

[rfmcdonald]

I've just watched Battle Royale for the first time and the film is, as a friend would say, "beyond." The novel (perhaps a bit too dry) and the graphc novel (likely too many abnormally enlarged secondary sexual characteristics) didn't quite prepare me the actual sight of the bizarre eruption of violence into normalcy.

My most recurring thought was that of concern about the ambient mental climate of our world: Why does the plot of my generation's version of The Lord of the Flies pivot upon our elders' desire to put the one against the other in the name of ultraviolent character-building? At least The Lord of the Flies' chaos had the virtue of being Cold War-driven and self-generating. Millennial paranoia, I assume.