The quantity of film violence has certainly escalated, but I doubt that its quality has. UN CHIEN ANDALOU, with its eyeball sequence, is one of the most violent scenes in film. I would be hard pressed to name its equal in the nearly 70 years since that film was made. More recent films (e.g. TRUE LIES) have an increasingly unreal approach to violence which gives it a video game quality and distances the audience from it. But,absent emotions of fear and horror, it isn't really violence at all but a form of choreographed activity. It seems to me that most audiences can watch choreographed filmic violence from which they are distanced without being desensitized to real violence in the real world. Apart from desensitization, however, is the problem of imitation - where a violent character is made to seem appealing and worth imitating.A good example is the Travis Bickle character in TAXI DRIVER.But That's an issue for another day. Peter Latham ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]