"One cannot help but notice that in American culture at least, in spite of more than a millennium of the antihonor discourse, revenge retains its allure. It still motivates more of our action than we like to admit, but that is nothing compared to how it motivates the plots of the movies we pay to see. We still hunger for revenge in one way or another. If we can't take it ourselves because the law and other competing internal inhibitions won't let us, we still thrill to fantasies constructed around it. Even the authorities, the guardians and purveyors of the official discourse, are ambivalent about revenge. The very polity that will not allow its citizens to claim revenge as justification in its courts of law sees nothing strange about telling its people that revenge and honor are good reasons for invading another state. When God claimed vengeance to himself-- "vengeance is mine, saith the Lord"-- one senses he is not taking upon himself a burden but rather selfishly reserving to himself a pleasure, too good to share with mere mortals. It was because revenge was so alluring that barriers of sinfulness, criminality, and other forms of taxing it were felt to be necessary."
-from "Clint Eastwood and Equity: Popular Culture's Theory of Revenge," William Ian Miller
