Gamer: Somewhat Inhumane?

The movie Gamer that we watched in class was quite an interesting concept of ideas. Control death row inmates as if they were a video game and if they die on screen, they die in real life. Really there is nothing virtual about this “game” outside of just viewing it on a screen. The prisoners with little likelihood of survival have given up there free will to be controlled by someone else. Which makes me think… Is this really the right way to deal with those who feel like they have no hope at being able to function in society again besides making it threw 30 levels of a game in which they have no control over? It’s simply gambling. I know this movie takes place in the future and the future changes everything but I can’t picture people actually willing to watch real people get shot, burned, and blow to little pieces. It is just inhumane to watch or do such a thing. Today people have no problem watching someone get shot in a movie because they know it is not real, it is just acting. But if they were to watch a video of someone actually dieing they would feel an uneasy feeling within them.  This leads me to believe that the people who pay to watch this are in someway brain washed into thinking that these people are not actually people. They were stripped of the pathos of feeling that there was someone on the other end of the screen whose life was taken away from them. I am curious of what year this actually was. How far in the future could this have been. There is no way at all this would have been accepted in todays society where you can just play a death row inmate just hoping for one last breath of fresh air and end getting him killed or killing others in the process. Did I mention that you have to pay large sums of money to play and pay a pay per view subscription to watch the syndical action occur.