violence in american films

Right now I'm much too tired to write anything of recognizable coherence, but I feel compelled to slap something down. For some reason, blog-writing doesn't come easily to me in the morning or afternoon. It's only in the evening, when I'm alone and become truly sober about life that I seem to get up the motivation.
Tonight I started watching Apocalypse Now, a film I've wanted to see since I read The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad my senior year. But after Kurtz beheaded the man designated to call in the air strike (if the assassin/captain did not return by a certain time), I had had enough and decided to finish it tomorrow, where daylight might offer me some emotional oxygen.
This viewing makes the second violent, pessimistic American film for me in the past 72 hours. On Saturday I watched No Country for Old Men, the significance of which deserves a whole post in and of itself. I think tomorrow I had better watch Enchanted or something along those lines. However, to be fair, even though they sometimes disturb me, I seem to have a penchant for violent films. Now, I don't like slasher/horror movies. M. Night is about as much as I can take. But there is something about a war movie, violent drama, or well-constructed action flick that perpetuates thought and emotion in me, even if I do still hide my face during the most gruesome scenes. And with an eye on both Oscar-winners and box office sales, I realize that I am not the only one who is strangely, and often subconciously, drawn towards fatal, bloody fare.
I've been lazily pondering the significance of this since I spoke with a good friend from Europe a few years ago. It seems that, in Europe, sex takes the cake for the most prevelent, pseudo-objectionable material in movies and TV. My friend was confused as to why Americans always need guns and knives pointed at people in their moving visual media. Of course, it's not as if Americans are at all averse to sexuality on the telly, it's just that, if weighed equally, violence wins out every time. It's far more common to have a film rated R primarily because of graphic and disturbing violence rather than sexuality.
There are likely many explanations both for my personal, and our cultural, preference for violent movies. I'm only going to venture giving two.
As I watched Anton Chighur interact with Carla Jean before he murdered her in No Country for Old Men, I was reminded of the emotional intensity and intimacy that often accompanies portrayals of violence. When one individual looks at another, with the intent to harm them, for good reasons or evil, everything else just falls away. Anton Chighur tells the store owner, earlier in the film, that he should call the coin toss, with the understanding that he stands to win everything. If he loses, we as the audience will witness a man lose everything he was, is, and could be, both to himself and to those who know him. If he loses, we watch Anton Chighur play God.
The raw humanity of such a moment should not be lost, as Anton himself understands when he tells the store owner to keep the coin, to not let it get "mixed in with the others."
Sexuality is not the pinnacle of human experience, contrary to whatever the heck Freud said; people can live without sex. Relational connectedness and our fierce desire for life, whether or not we articulate it so, is what drives us. Watching the severing of the former while simultaneously seeing the struggle for the latter is often mesmerizing, even if it shouldn't be. Typically one human being wins out over another in this contest, and we as the audience are able to feel the razor sharp edge of what we know as the human experience when we watch violence. An intelligent, violent film is often that visceral. I can't remember a time when I have wept after a sex scene (although I generally try to avoid them), but this is not at all the case after a film that features violence portrayed with purpose and integrity--like Band of Brothers, for instance (I'm counting it as a film, yes).
The other reason for our preference for violence is not nearly so philosophical: the reality is that America was, and is, an extremely violent nation. When you take into consideration all of the wars, crimes, social injustices, under-the-table-we-will-help-your-evil-government deals, plus all the fiction and non-fiction books inspired by them, it's a suprise we don't have more fights/blood/guns movies.

I may add to this later as I watch more movies and garner more insight. This will have to do for now though, as I am tired and have separated myself from Apocalypse Now enough to go to sleep.