Battle Royale

[Hephaestus]

The Book, Movie, and Manga.

I've never read the Manga or seen the movie but I loved the book and have heard good things about the movie. So everyone, discuss...

[Matthew]

The movie is excellent. The sequel is terrible. A very potent examination of social organisation and the human condition. I never read the book or the manga, though I perused them. I have heard good things about it in all media.

[Jack Squat]

which movie? the 1967 one or the recent one?

Books supposed to be good; might actually get around to reading it sometime...

[Matthew]

1967 one? Off I go to IMDB...

[Edit] Can't find what you're talking about. Battle Royale (2000) is presumably the movie under discussion here.

[Jack Squat]

...for some reason I was thinking Casino Royale. I need some caffeine

Reading the plot, looks like some spinoff of Lord of the Flies. I'd proabably watch it.

[Om]

The movie is good and works on numerous levels. Its become quite popular over here in the past few years.

[Jerthanis]

Battle Royale is quite possibly the most depressing movie that has a happy ending ever made. (by the way, if you haven't seen it, don't read that sentence) You come away from it feeling the utter unfairness, the sheer randomness of death, the cruelty of humans, and the only reason it works is that despite its almost silly premise, it's done so well that you believe it every step of the way.

[Ambrogino]

HAving seen (and loved) the movie first, I was very disappointed with the early sections of the book and gave up on it. (I should really give it another go, but my reading piles still pretty big). The movies reasoning for the program (children are out of control, and the program is intended to work as a deterent) rang much truer to me than the books (which in the first few chapters at least, is solely that the Tyrant/Prime Minister is mental). I found it much harder to grok why society would be in the position it was, and ended up going off to read something more engaging.

[TimeWizard]

The book was my favorite of the three formats, followed by the movie at a close second and the manga is... well, the child of the family you keep upstairs when guests come over. The book does the pyschological breakdown even better then the movie, becuase you can get into the characters heads and see what makes them tick. No spoilers but you even get a touch of sympathy for one of the antagonists. The movie was more suspenseful, but thats to be expected becuase of genius sound and mood settings.

It is much, much more then a "lord of the flies knockoff"

[Crazy Owl]

I loved the first film but didnt bother with the sequel mainly because a lot of reviews in Empire said it was terrible compared with the origional.

[WampaX]

Only seen movie.
Liked movie.

Haven't seen movie in over 2 years, so its tough for me to articulate any non-high level observations.

[ravenkith]

Having taught middle school, and having seen the film, my response is:

Yes.

Seriously. The way society is today, especially here in the states, and the way things continue to go, the premise set forth by this story seems to be a logical solution to some very real problems.

The Problems:
A. First, we have the problem of world overpopulation. There already six billion of us teeming over this planets surface, and there simply aren't enough resources available to continue to support unchecked expansion of the human race.

B. Second, we have the problem, especially in the western world, of children become unruly and unmanageable, in some cases uneducatable, simply for the sake of rebellion and the lack of consequences. At the moment, if a child chooses to misbehave, there is very little a teacher can do to reprimand them.

Some people respond to different stimuli in different ways: some may react better to positive reinforcement, while others negative, but most require a mixture of the two.

C. Then there is the problem of the criminal element still prevalent in society, despite our supposedly having reached an enlightened state of civilization, and having come out of the dark ages.

In the US alone, out of a total of 301 million estimated people, the US Department of Justice estimates that 6.6% (20 million) will be or have been in prison (not jail, but prison). That number is from 2001, and has supposedly been increasing.

We simply have too many criminals that cost us too much money every single year. The problem here is that many turn to criminal activity out of desperation: they can't get a lawful job because they don't have an education, or simply can't make ends meet on the low pay they CAN get.

Then of course, there are the psycopaths who do it because they like it.

Things ARE going to get worse before they get better, if they get better at all. We're on the road to hell as it is, with a permissive society that sets boundaries, but doesn't go to any real effort to enforce most of them.

We've set our own future generations up for failure, and it's our fault...because we spent years saying: "I'd never do that to my kids", and we didn't, and now we know why we should've sent the kids to hardline boarding schools, allowed physical punishment to stay in schools and in the hands of the parents. Pain teaches: it reaches people on an instinctual level, when otherwise their conscious minds would shut out the lesson they are supposed to be learning.

In 50 short years, all order has left the classroom, and now chaos rules. Have the teachers changed the way they teach? No. Was what they were doing before working? For the most part, yes.

Because the kids don't learn, the standards have been lowered, devaluing a college education. Everything up through high school is supposed to either prepare you to enter the workforce, after acquiring some trade-skills, or else prepare you for a college education. Newsflash: by the time kids exit high school nowadays, they are usually prepared for neither.

Colleges have to offer remedial classes to incoming students to teach them things they should have learned in high school, including classes on how to open a book and freaking study (I'm not making this up, I swear!). Most classes taken to earn a degree only cover the basics, never really getting into the higher level stuff because of too much time being spent on needed retraining. As a result, bachelor's degrees aren't worth a whole lot anymore, partly due to the devalutation, and partly because of inflation.

In order to live the same lifestyle as someone who had a bachelor's degree in the 50s, an individual has to pretty much get a master's degree today, except in certain limited cases, in specific fields.

Because of the education problems, more people turn to crime, and the prisons fill up, setting us up for the revolving door set up we hear so much about.

Michigan state alone has well over 50,000 inmates, an all time high for that states' penal system.

Alone, these problems might not be so bad, and could be tackled...but together, they're an anchor that is set to drag the US into the obscurity of history, to join the Romans and the Byzantines in being remembered as something once great, but brought low by foolishness.

Some Solutions:
A. The only three possible solutions for this problem are:
1. Interplanetary population relocation - technologically feasible, but only just.
2. Voluntary population reduction (i.e. removing unwanted/dangerous elements from society).
3. 95-100% recycling rate

A common theme in science fiction shows is the need to spread out. Less common, but present, is voluntary reduction of population. Shows like Sliders, Space: Above & Beyond, Firefly & the Outer Limits have all dealt with what-if type scenarios based on these concepts.

Ultimately, if we don't want to start killing our own, either calmly & rationally, or through fighting over dwindling resources, we have got to get off this hunk of rock floating in space, and spread out to other hunks of rock, just so we can all have what we need to survive and grow.

B. Education: The best teacher in the universe, is pain. Very rarely do people voluntarily burn themself on a stove after the first time they make that mistake. The problem of education is a thorny one, as everyone has an opinion, and humans are naturally protective of their offspring (we are mammals, after all).

Possible solutions include:
1. Reintroduction of corporal punishment in controlled conditions.
2. Permanent explusion after a set number of violations (never to be admitted to school again - if you don't want to learn, we won't bother trying to teach you, and you can get your GED on your own time & dime after you figure out what a dumb ass you were)
3. Punitive 'boot camps', where the students in question go to a prison-type environment where they have nothing to do but learn, 24/7, except when they are sleeping, or eating meals, or excercising. No TV, no playstation, no anything until you are getting straight a's and are caught up with the rest of your class.

C. Crime: a toughie, that's for sure. Long prison sentences don't make people afraid any more, because prisons don't resemble 'The Rock' in it's heyday. Cable tv, work out rooms, free food and shelter, with little to no work in most cases...sometimes peoples lives are actually better while they are in jail, as long as they aren't woried about getting up and seeing what's over that next hill. For repeat criminal offenders, removal from the gene pool seems appropriate (Chemical Sterilization), as well as a mandatory 10 year sentence to hard labor in a prison camp, doing some of the most dangerous jobs in the world, with no cushy extras. For repeat offenders in cases involving violence, execution via gladiatorial combat sounds perfect. Televise that crap: it's Survivor, only you vote with knives, etc. The Survivor's prize? He gets to go to jail, in solitary, for the rest of his natural life. No Parole. No nice stuff, just three hots and a cot 'til he dies.

I know, a lot of the above sounds extreme, and maybe ignorant or uninformed, especially to extremely liberal individuals. But the fact remains that these problems do exist, and while they won't spell the end of the USA in my lifetime, these things are, I feel, the beginning of the end, and demanding of solutions before they spin too far out of control.

People follow rules for one reason only: the fear of being punished by society when they get caught breaking them. If there's no fear, either because the punishments aren't harsh enough, or because the individuals in question never face negative consequences for their actions, well, why would they ever follow the rules, if they're not inclined to do so?

Of course there are some that insist that man's natural state is goodness: you are wrong. Civilization is a thin coating of politeness spread over the caveman that lurks beneath, that did all his voting with a club/spear. (See exhibit a: New Orleans, LA., after Katrina).

[Om]

Seriously. The way society is today, especially here in the states, and the way things continue to go, the premise set forth by this story seems to be a logical solution to some very real problems.Hang on... you actually agree with the idea of putting school children on an island and forcing them to kill each other? :smallconfused:

[Don Beegles]

I agree. I mean, yes, all the things you mention are problems that need solving, but Battle Royale is not the way to do it, and you really don't tie the idea together withb the rest of your post. Is that really what you mean, or is there a subtext to the book that I'm unaware or, never having read it?

[Jerthanis]

Having taught middle school, and having seen the film, my response is:

Yes.

Seriously. The way society is today, especially here in the states, and the way things continue to go, the premise set forth by this story seems to be a logical solution to some very real problems.


"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates

2400 years ago children were getting pretty riled up and were getting close to being too rambunctious to really learn anything at all, and over the next 2350 years it got slightly worse, but TODAY we're facing an EPIDEMIC! It's a serious problem that is verging on apocalyptic in the VERY NEAR FUTURE! OH NOES! Except it isn't, take a long view of history and things are going to look a lot less drastic than in the immediate sense. So children are significantly more disorderly these days, and it's causing them to fail at school, which devalues education because education is forced to lower its standards to the lowest common denominator, yet our society continues to produce a high percentage of white collar jobs, and unemployment isn't out of hand like it has been in the past, wierd how our standard of living has gotten better since people stopped behaving in class. We have problems certainly, but producing a killing ground solves none of them.

The overpopulation of the planet and the verging lack of resources is a myth, appropriate fodder for such science fiction as you describe. In most industrialized nations the average births per female are generally somewhere around 2.1 children, and in many nations, such as Japan, it's significantly less than 2/female, meaning the population is actually dwindling within their borders. Of note is that Battle Royale is a Japanese book/movie, so the intent of showing a doomed overpopulation problem from a Japanese perspective is probably a slim to nonexistent possibility. The real problem with overpopulation comes from places like China and India, but I'm not an expert on the causes of overpopulation within these places, but the simple fact that resources are limited assures that the population cannot exceed the levels that those limited resources provide for.

Since overpopulation isn't the dire and immediate threat it's sometimes made out to be, and that children in our schools, while having discipline problems, may not benefit from a publicly announced program involving the murder of said children, we come to your point about a prevalent criminal element in our society. Now, despite the fact that the story about Battle Royale has no aspect at ALL that addresses a criminal mindset, your post in a discussion about Battle Royale, attempting to convince people that BR's program would be a "logical solution to some very real problems" states a criminal mindset as one of the problems which BR is a logical solution to. Your post cites very adult reasons for turning to criminality, but your suggested solution involves corporal punishment of children, which doesn't seem to follow from my perspective. Perhaps there is some merit in corporal punishment, Pain teaches... but perhaps there are those who believe that inflicting pain on children may teach them that in our society, inflicting pain is accepted and encouraged, which could lead to them those "psycopaths" who do crime because they like it. Maybe corporal punishment IS the answer, but I find it hard to believe in, and it would take a lot more evidence and strong argument than some false platitudes to convince me otherwise.

I'd also like to state that I'm glad some brilliant person thought of including "No cruel and unusual punishments" in our constitution to protect both the guilty and the innocent from people like you. (Think about all the people who are being exonerated from their crimes who have served time on death row, who were proven innocent due to evidence being tested for genetic matches, and think about the horror and pain and death you're suggesting be visited upon those people... think about that and just TRY to have a clean conscience)

[Silkenfist]

ravenkith: I could spend a lengthy post disproving your arguments and spending two hours of my life or I could just ask you one question:

"If your arguent is correct, why do the nations with the most severe punishments have more problems with crime than others?"

[ravenkith]

@Om: I never advocated actually dropping kids on an island to kill each other.

@Jerthanis: Thank you for your accusatory knee-jerk reaction! Also, thank you for not reading my post in full! See my post to Om. P.S. You have kids.

@Silkenfist: It's called bureacratic corruption. Look into it. Highly prevalent in lesser-developed nations, where the most extreme punishements are often meted out (usually as a response to pre-existing high crime rates as a result of a poor police force). According to statistics I found (google, 5 secs) apparently the majority of the western world, with solid, codified laws that are enforced more consistently, are, unsurprisingly, the better places to live (crime rates being a major factor in such calculations).

It is very common for rich, successful criminals to (Shock! Horror!) bribe their way out of such extreme punishments, and as such, there is little to no fear of them. After all, most criminals don't have any intentions of being 'small time'.

@All, particularly Don Beegles:

My post is based on a number of opinions I hold. Please, allow me to explain by taking you through a 'logic train':

1. Criminal behaviour is anti-social, selfish behaviour, taken to the extreme. Criminals are people who care only about what's in it for them, and the people they happen to care about: their immediate circle, if you will, and don't care what they have to do to secure their own happiness & comfort.

2. It is my belief that criminal behaviour is learned. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who says that people are born to be criminals. That kind of behaviour is almost always the result of the upbringing of the individuals in question: it is what they are exposed to, over time, that shapes their view on the law, and whether it is to be respected, or ignored when feasible.

3. Extreme anti-social behaviour as a youth is indicative of possible future criminal tendencies.

4. People are resistant to change. Once they begin down a path, it is very difficult to get them to change that path. The further down that path they are, the harder it is to get them to change paths, as things become habitual. Short term change can be forced, but the only real hope for permanant, long-term change is education: the ability to make informed decisions.

See cigarette smokers: even though the dangers & costs of smoking are now public knowledge, people continue to do it, and more pick up their first cigarette everyday. The rate of increase has slowed, but there are new smokers coming into existence to replace the old ones that are dying off. Over time, it is my belief that eventually, there won't be enough smokers to support the industry, as older ones die off faster than newer ones pick up the habit. It is preferable and advisable to try to alter a person's course at the earliest opportunity as habits are harder to break people of than whims.

5. If a criminal is incorrigible, it is far more preferable to remove that person from circulation completely than to let them go back out and hurt someone else.

Battle Royale describes the worst of the worst, the most anti-social, the most disrespectful of the students in all of the schools, nationwide, being placed on an island, and being told that only one of them can walk off the island. That they must kill each other if they want to be that one person.

They are then given weapons. They then choose whether to kill each other. Some don't: they band up, and find hide-outs, and do their best to avoid getting killed, while trying to find a way to fight the system. Some go out and hunt the others. Bottom line: They do it to themselves.

It's cold & unemotional, but the logic is there: if the kids chose not to kill, they could stay on the island togther, not killing each other, until the countdown ends.

The moment they kill, they deserve to be there.

The main idea here, the one that had me saying "yes" is that something drastic must be done, at an early age, to prevent society from falling into disarray. Whatever the solution chosen, the choice will be a difficult one to make, because the solution has to be drastic, if you agree with #4, and anything drastic will not go down well with parents.

While Socrates was a very smart man, what he was talking about is a little different than what we are discussing: he was talking about the youth of his day & age having ideas and expressing themselves, even when told not to. He wasn't talking about kids going out and raping other kids, or killing other kids for their tennis shoes. Quoting him in this situation is like quoting John Lennon "All you need is love,": It's nice and all, but it has very little relevance.

The Problems:
It's important to realise that the world over-population problem is very real, and the main reasons for it are the two countries you previously mentioned: China and India.

It was SO bad in China that they made it illegal for chinese women to have more than one child ever. This is a fact: the chinese government saw the writing on the wall, realised that they would have to go to war to expand their territory to match their population if things continued in the vein that they were moving in, as regards their population, and took direct, immediate extreme action to address the situation.

India's problem is worse still: they have no such prohibitions in place, and the only thing keeping their population in check is the diseases that run rampant over there due to the poor hygiene conditions.

The figures you quote as regards to population growth rates only apply to those nations that have a census as far as I know, and that's mostly just the highly developed nations. Their accuracy is highly questionable.

India and China, in addition to many other populous, less-developed nations have not released such figures to my knowledge. Your data is faulty, and I could just as easily quote the world population clock at you, which is at 6.5 billion people and counting, and rising at the rate of roughly 100 people every 5 seconds.

The women of the more developed nations of the world are waiting longer to have children, and a lot of career-minded individuals never do: this also throws your numbers well out of whack, as these are also the nations your numbers are based off of.

In addition, the other reason we haven't had a much bigger problem with population is because of the AIDs epidemic that is simply destroying large populations of people at a time in the lesser-developed nations. India and Africa, in particular, are having massive problems with this disease. In fact, they say that fully 1/5 people in sub-saharan Africa is currently infected with AIDS, and since these nations have problems in getting & distributing the life-extending treatments available in more developed nations, people are dropping like flies...and yet, despite these & other counter-influences, the population clock still rises.

Whatever else you may think, there is a finite amount of life that this planet can support: we only have so much land, and a lot of it has to be devoted to oxygen production in order for any of us to live.

While the population problem has been slowed, it hasn't been stopped...and once a cure for aids & a cure for cancer become widely available (it'll happen eventually), the situation is going to get that much worse.

It's a very, very, real problem that will need some kind of solution in the next 100-200 years, I imagine. As a race, it's a pressing issue for us.

Criminals: well, the theory is, young anti-social individuals eventually become criminals, without some counter force applied to them. In past years, this force was applied by parents, but with more & more parents surrendering their child-rearing responsibilities to the state & the TV networks, this force seems in short supply, leading to the prison overcrowding we currently have to face.

More prisons are being planned & constructed as I type this. It is my belief that what we currently have in place does very little to deter crime, primarily because the prisons we have, aside from the overcrowding, are better places than the criminals are coming from. In addition, inmates are teaching other inmates how to commit other types of crimes.

This is a very real problem, and my solution is simple: You break the law the first time, and you serve ten years with no parole, in isolation, and are chemically castrated. Break the law multiple times, especially using violence, and you get a ten year sentence, plus, at the end of the ten years, if you haven't proven your innocence, you get put on the whacking island with the rest of the guys like you. I'm not talking about traffic tickets & misdemeanours here, mind.

Why castration? Because over 80% of the people in jail are men. This seems to indicate the majority of criminals are men. Men fear losing their balls/manhood more than anything. If anything will deter crime amongst the male population, it's mandatory sterilization/castration for all major crimes.
And no price, short of your life itself, could be higher.

Why isolation? Because if you don't interact with other criminals, you won't pick up more criminal behaviours. It allows people who are only mildly crooked when they go to jail a better chance at straightening out.

Education: There are many reasons education is out of whack, among them funding, teacher to student ratio, student attitude/behavior and teacher training.

Three of these play into the issues I have been discussing:

Teacher/student ratio: overpopulation leads to unfavorable ratio for learning
Student Attitude/Behavior: Anti-social individuals disrupting entire classes
Teacher training: Poor education begets poor education, as a person can only teach what they themselves know.

Funding, of course, is a whole 'nother issue.

What I'm saying is, you have to catch the kids early, set them back on track, using extreme measures, up to & including physical punishment if necessary, so they don't become uneducated thugs turning to crime to survive.

For those that still become criminals, harsh & unforgiving punishments mean that if they aren't deterred from comitting crimes, they pay the price. If they are incorrigible, they are killed.

By sterilizing & killing criminals, we reduce the growth rate of our population, and by enacting laws that will subsequently be followed in our (hopefully) ordered society, we can control the growth rate (similar to the measure in China), giving us more time to reach a higher recycling rate/and or get off the planet before we choke to death on our own exhalations.

[Om]

While the Starship Trooper thread has largely drained any enthusiasm that I may have had for a thread like this I was still planning on giving a detailed critique of your post. I'm something of a masochist in that regard. However then I read down to the point where you advocate castrating criminals. I'll settle for this:

Not to put too fine a point on it... you are crazy. I'm not talking cuckoo or "underwear on the head" crazy here but a far more insidious and disturbing kind of crazy. I'm actually worried that you have at some point taught children.

It really beggars belief that someone could be so far removed not just from reality but from humanity to suggest the measures that you propose. Frankly its depressing.

[ravenkith]

Think about it.

Some syllogisms:

1.
Premise 1: Crime is unwanted in society

Premise 2: Crime is on the rise

Conclusion: Current punishments do not deter criminals.

2.
Premise 1: Current punishments do not deter criminals

Premise 2: Deterrence is based on fear of consequences

Conclusion: Criminals are not afraid of current punishments

3.
Premise 1: Over 80% of criminals in prison are male.

Premise 2: The Prison population is representative of criminal population.

Conclusion: The majority of criminals are male.

4.
Premise 1: Most males value their genitalia very highly.

Premise 2: Men would be afraid of losing them.

Conclusion: Castration might work as a deterrent to crime.

In addition, if we castrate criminals, that is as much as 5% of the population, according to some surveys, that is no longer contributing to our overpopulation problems.

Plus, given that environment is the major determining factor in who becomes a criminal, isn't it society's responsibility to make sure that criminals don't raise children?

Do we really want people who murder, kill, rape and brutalize able to father children that they then raise to believe and act the same way?

From a logical standpoint, you can't deny it makes sense. Sure it's distasteful...but would it work?

I honestly don't know, but I think it's got the best shot at working...what we have now certainly isn't.

The bottom line is, unless you are a criminal, it's not something you'd have to worry about anyway.

And remember, I'm not talking about this level of punishment for misdemeanours.

[Premier]

Sorry, but those syllogisms are just wrong.



Premise 1: Crime is unwanted in society

Premise 2: Crime is on the rise

Conclusion: Current punishments do not deter criminals.

No logical connection between premise 1 and conclusion. The fact (or opinion) that current punishments do not deter criminals is in no direct logical relationship whatsoever with the statement that crime is unwanted in society.


Premise 1: Current punishments do not deter criminals

Premise 2: Deterrence is based on fear of consequences

Conclusion: Criminals are not afraid of current punishments

Premise 2 is plain-out factually incorrect. Numerous studies have shown that the effectiveness of deterrence corellates not with the severity of consequences, but with the perceived probability of getting caught.


Premise 1: Over 80% of criminals in prison are male.

Premise 2: The Prison population is representative of criminal population.

Conclusion: The majority of criminals are male.

Promise 2 incorrect. There are many types of crimes (petty thieft, for example), which are not punished with prison in many countries. It's statistically known that different types of crimes have different ratios of perpatrators' genders, and this means that the sexual ratio of these petty crimes is not reflected in prison populations. Furthermore, in a society where women tend to receive less prison time than men for the same act, prison population ratio would be further distorted.



Premise 1: Most males value their genitalia very highly.

Premise 2: Men would be afraid of losing them.

Conclusion: Castration might work as a deterrent to crime.

Premise 2 is just a restatement of premise 1 with different words. Also, they're in no direct logical connection with the conclusion.

[WampaX]

Voice of the Wampinator: Alright, lads.
you've wandered pretty far afield in this thread and are skirting dangerously close to that political minefield over there.

Rein it back in to discussion of the book/manga/movie.

[Jerthanis]

Who was everyone's favorite character?

[ravenkith]

Just when the conversation was getting interesting, too.. :(

As to the favorite, character, it's been a while since I'vve seen the movie, but my favorite group was the computer nerds who banded together and started trying to hack the system.

Not only were they smart enough to figure out that no-one could win the game they had been told to play, they pretty much stuck to self-defence, as I recall, all the while trying to do something productive, and figure out a way for all of them to get off the island, or at least survive there.

[Hephaestus]

Yuichiro Takiguchi

(In the book at least) He is the only one Mitsuko Souma shows any real caring for and the only person she is upset about having caused the death of. Also, he's described as a nerd/otaku type kid, and I can relate to that.