> been to the scene of many car accidents and they don't carry anywhere near
> the same violent connotation as the scene of a stabbing or gunshot. (I used
There's no correlation between symbolic violence and real violence. Japan and Hong Kong have the most violent media in the world; but also the lowest murder rates. 3D videogames are chockful of violence, but gamers are not known for bloody shooting rampages.
Probably the single most frightening scene of violence in late capitalism is simply the stream of numbers issuing from Wall Street punters: the coded, symbolic forms of a ferocious social violence, of untrammeled neoliberal capital trashing one country after another, and threatening to exterminate all life on the planet.
-- Dennis