Time & Perspective Quote by Richard King

King’s question lands like a trapdoor under a familiar moral panic: the idea that movies “cause” violence against women. By pointing out cinema’s relative youth, he forces a timeline check that makes the accusation look historically illiterate. It’s a director’s defense, yes, but it’s also a critique of how societies hunt for neat culprits when confronting uglier, older structures.

The rhetorical move is simple and effective: a sarcastic compression of centuries into a century. In doing so, King reframes the debate from media effects to cultural inheritance. Violence against women isn’t a glitch introduced by the moving image; it’s a long-running system that predates it, and that conveniently gets repackaged as “entertainment” only because it already exists as a social reality. The subtext isn’t “movies are harmless.” It’s “don’t mistake representation for origin,” especially when that mistake absolves institutions - law, family norms, religious power, economic dependence - that have historically enabled harm.

There’s also a self-protective edge. Coming from a director, the line doubles as a plea for nuance: criticizing what’s on screen without interrogating what’s off screen becomes a kind of cultural shadowboxing. The context is the recurring cycle of outrage around misogynistic imagery, where the industry is asked to be both scapegoat and therapist. King’s provocation doesn’t end the conversation; it sharpens it, demanding that accountability travel farther than the theater.