Violence in GrindHouse

Violence, inarguably, is one of the easiest vehicles that the film industry has at its disposable to increase a movie's chances at being successful. Recently, I saw the movie GrindHouse. I won't even bother going into a plot explanation on this one, because there really wasn't one. It was basically an incredibly long movie that left you questioning the integrity of your own body. Granted, much of the special effects were cheesy and low-budget, as the film was a homage to the mass-produced shock films of the 70's and 80's that were screened in shoddy, run down theaters referred to as "grindhouses". This cultural reference was probably the only redeeming quality that the film possessed. However, I think that the fact that movies depicting such incessant violence and gore are in existence says something about our society in general, about the role that violence plays in our modern lives.
Media, as in photographs, pictures, blogs, movie, etc..., are really nothing more than abstractions from reality. They allow us to do indirectly experience events, emotions, and predicaments, without feeling the true consequences of the experience. The same argument could be made about our entire culture. The advancement of technology and society over the course of history, aside from making our lives much easier, has been a series of increasing developments upon abstractions from reality. Warfare is a perfect example of this. With each new weapon, the wrath inflicted upon humanity as a result of its use increases exponentially, while the actual physical interactions between the those who get fucked over and those who do the fucking over are diminished. I highly doubt that similar emotions are shared between someone who kills one person with a knife compared to a person who drops a bomb over a city in the Middle East. As our emotions exist only as a result of our senses, is it possible that the remorse felt by our actions are lessened if they are realized by fewer of our senses? Has this then been the aim of our weapons technology? Or has the main motivating factor been a desire to one-up the opponent? Either way, something's not right.
If Western Society has subconsciously driving at alienating ourselves from personal experience, than violence in our media says something about Human nature; we crave it. Our society today has an unusual exposure level to real, direct violence. At the very least the youth of our Society does. It seems to me that throughout the course of History, violence has been much more prevalent than it is in modern times. Perhaps not so much prevalent as universal. Our country seems to be divided between those who do and don't experience violence, whereas the norm throughout History, with obvious exceptions, has been that the population as a whole has been affected by violence in one way or another. So how do the masses of our country who live comfortably in suburbia with their mid-budget sedan, shopping mall addictions and semi-conscious outlooks on life get their fix of violence? They go to the box office, buy a movie ticket, and sit through a movie; getting the methadone that they need for our culture's addiction to violence.