[x]

Yes, there was violence in the 1950’s too but it was not GRAPHIC with exploding heads and chests or savage beatings like in the spiderman movies.

You could make the case that it's video games as much or more than movies that influence these kooks.

Just look at the 1960’s tongue & cheek Batman series compared to the stream of Batman films that have come out in recent years. Look at the Joker for example. Cesar Romero played the Joker in the 1960’s.

Well, as you say, it was a tongue-in-cheek version made for the family television audience, so there wasn't an opportunity for graphic violence.

I watched a documentary about exploitation film director Roger Corman recently. He's been doing some very gory and grisly stuff for almost 60 years now, without it having much effect, so far as I know.

To be sure, though, Roger Corman's movies were so low budget and cheesy and the effects were so obvious that few self-respecting nuts would want to imitate them.

[Netz]

No doubt that the video game world has added to this bloody, gory, realism but combine this with Hollywood's fascination with violence and Armageddon scenarios (New York has already been wiped off the map 26 times) and you get a disaster-oriented, blood splattering, Rambo - it's cool to “waste ‘em” society. Even in the JFK, famous “Zapruder” film where JFK is murdered graphically, it took from 1963 to 1975 just to release the segment to the American public. No, we are all de-sensitized now and require greater and greater violence thresholds just to get the thrill of movie going.