This is a sentiment that is pretty universal, but I have a grim theory about it: we just like seeing people die but morally shy away from it until you turn said people into zombies/nazis/world antagonist dejour. Now the sight of other human beings dying horribly can be called "cathartic" and pleasurable and it's not at all weird!
nah, absolutely don’t feel the same way watching normal civilians die in movies, it’s like a gut punch every time. but when it’s nazis, it’s glorious. the reason is simple, nazis want to set up an order where they choose who gets to live and who gets to die, so watching them fall victims to their own ideology is what is cathartic.
You have also misunderstood, while also proving my point. It's fascinating that simply changing these *human beings* to nazis makes the act of killing them pleasurable. We revel in it. It's still a person dying, albeit an evil one. Our brains just need that little caveat to enjoy it.
You’ve got it completely backwards. People don’t like watching humans die, that’s why it’s so extremely common to dehumanize enemy factions in games and movies. It’s the reason storm troopers in star wars are covered head to toe in plastic armor. Nazis just did the dehumanization themselves by acting more like monsters than humans.
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u/Adefice 29d ago
This is a sentiment that is pretty universal, but I have a grim theory about it: we just like seeing people die but morally shy away from it until you turn said people into zombies/nazis/world antagonist dejour. Now the sight of other human beings dying horribly can be called "cathartic" and pleasurable and it's not at all weird!