This is the unedited murder of America's Christ and his Last Supper. American death is not really death anymore unless someone can capture it on film and sell the rights to network TV There the killers are celebrated in 15 minute segments between National Rifle Association commercials. And society points the finger of blame for its own guilty pleasure at the nearest convenient scapegoat. Religion, politics and violence are caught up in a whirlpool of negativity that fuels public debate and outrage.

Series 7 – The Contenders and Battle Royale engage violence as the core narrative element. This is not just a case of "designer violence" although of course that is apparent. More importantly, violence is inscribed onto, "written" on the body. The body becomes the site of violence. More significantly, violence is represented not just through the body but in a very primary sense, through that of the main protagonists. Essentially, the site of representation for violence is the "film text". This functions as a reflection of the contemporary condition and as signs that reflect into society. The question becomes what are these films telling us through their embodying/embodiment of violence.

The present generation is one that has faced the de-humanizing effect of consumerism and experienced a concomitant sense of disfranchisement. There is a complex of little hope/ view for a future; a nihilism, which manifests itself through "dysfunctional" behaviour in the form of drug-abuse, violent crime and sexual promiscuity.

In an additional phenomenon this generation in crisis retreats into fantasy and confuses fantasy with reality -– thus video-games and violent films become reflections of a reality they will mimic. At the same time another frightening aspect of contemporary violence is its meaninglessness. Yet "meaninglessness" in what context? How can a section/class of society that feels "disengaged" register its anger or antagonism towards an environment from which it feels alienated? Graffiti, skate-boarding in shopping malls, vandalism, mugging, shop lifting – these are all perceived forms of youth aggression, gratuitous acts of violence – but they are gratuitous, meaningless only because they contest the accepted definitions of social space, they centre upon what is generally regarded as social space (as exemplified by the city). In essence, this is a process whereby delinquency can be reconstructed as behaviour "out of control". This it is argued as culture at its extreme. A culture that therefore must be contained.

In a transition initiated in the 1960s generations of youths have removed themselves/been removed from parental supervision. If that supervision is no longer in the hands of the private domesticated sphere, then it "logically" will resurface in a public one. The more youth is perceived to be "out of control", the more the public at large will defer – out of a sense of panic moral panic in effect, but which is termed common sense. – to an increase in systems of surveillance. This we witness an abundance of cameras, CCTV's (Close circuit TV cameras) an increase in the policing of petty crime and in the number of private security personnel and store detectives. It is noteworthy that most of these surveillance systems prevail in areas of commodified capitalism (City shopping centres, corporate buildings, banks etc.) as well as along the institutionalised routes to these areas (public transport), or within the access stations to them (railway stations and airports).

A society/culture "out of control" as a concept assumes that there is a social order from which it deviates. In other words, there is a process of "othering", pointing to a class as "other", as a threat to the stability of the social order. The question remains what purpose does this structuring of otherness save. The young generation as constructed in the present consciousness is a site at which the struggle between order and crisis takes place. Therefore the discourses and representations of delinquency are ultimately a projection of society's anxiety around the reproduction of the social order. Those "within" the established social order of things represent "youth out of control" as a way of expressing their fears that the social order of things is unstable and in crisis. Thus the issues are ones of displacement and containment. By displacing the concept of crisis onto certain classes, the threat of a crisis to hegemony is "contained". It is placed outside the legitimated social order of things – onto youth – that is onto an age/class that is in no direct position to fundamentally threaten the greater social/corporate order of things. Finally then, and paradoxically, the concept of the "other" is important to social stability.

Both Series 7: The Contenders and Battle Royale display a society that demonizes youth, those defenders of commodity capitalism who cannot accommodate the "other", who see youth as the enemy within. These films contest/question boundaries, structuring the systems of capitalism. Meantime, the established order, the representatives of traditional society, are constantly seeking – through surveillance – to remove contain and detain dissent. What is not wanted is a new social order of things, but a reproduction of what was there before.