Violent Spectacle Quotes

'American Sniper' is a film that erases history, spectacularizes violence, and reduces war and its aftermath to cheap entertainment, with an underexplained referent to the mental problems many vets live with when they return home from the war.

At first, an awful silence prevailed; at length, some cries of “Vive La République!” [Long Live the Republic] were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied, and in less than ten minutes, this cry, a thousand times repeated, became the universal shout of the multitude and every hat was in the air .... Many in the crowd went to the scaffold, and soaked their handkerchiefs in the Kings blood as a souvenir of the event.

I'd like a big fight in America, it would cap off my career in a great way.

Bullfights are hugely popular because you can sit comfortably with a hot dog and possibly watch a man die. It won't be me, but I can sit comfortably and watch it.

The horses forced into the chuckwagon races die of heart attacks, broken necks, broken legs, and other injuries. It'd be easy to get off on western tradition without this bloody spectacle. Dude, it's the Old West, not ancient Rome!

We are spectators to violence, and therefore are, how well we don't know and make sure we don't know the difference of real violence to that of simulation.

One day we're going to watch people fight to the death, like Roman times. Instead of being in a coliseum, we're going to watch it on TV.

The evening commenced with bear-baiting, badger and coon drawing, wolf-hunting and rat-killing. The bear was baited by five dogs until he caught them in his paws and crunched them half to death, amid the yells and cheers of the assembled fancy...

Wrestling and horror just sort of go together.

Say the average arena is 20,000 people. You're in the very center of that arena, and you're playing to the worst seat in the house up there. So everything is very big, very large. It's like a very violent form of Broadway in a 20x20 ring.

People pay to see blood, they pay to see war and that's why people are supporting my journey because I deliver every time I step in the ring.