There's been a great deal of talk about violence in media (meaning film and video-games), painting all fictional violence with a damning brush. It’s an important conversation, and one I’d like to have. But I’m not for toning down the violence in film. I’m for making it better. By which I mean, making it matter.
The trouble is not the violence. The trouble is violence without consequence.
There are a lot of talented writers out there, writing brilliant stories. But a lot of what I see in the Action-Adventure movie world has no weight, because violence has no cost. A guy fires off a million rounds of ammo, mowing down faceless badguys. It can be visually awesome, and it’s fun to watch, and you forget it ten minutes later. It has no weight.
For me, all violence should tell a story. That story should never be easy, never comfortable. It can be enjoyable, sure. Even better, it can be inspiring, heart-pounding, and cathartic.
I’m a fan of Shakespeare. I love his plays. And Shakespeare learned the rules of his craft from Aristotle, including the importance of catharsis, the cleansing that happens through a shared trial. As an audience, we share the hero’s trial. The greater the trial, the deeper the catharsis. That’s the theory.
Unlike Aristotle, Shakespeare never wrote down rules, or at least he didn’t pass them along to us. But reading his plays, there are some very definite rules at work:
- Instigate an act of violence, and you will receive a violent end
- There is no justification for murder. Ever.
- Justice is for the authority of King, Prince, or God, not the average man
None of this is to say that Shakespeare doesn’t have his characters flout these rules. Nor do these rules apply to warfare, where armies meet. But he is absolute in his rules for personal violence. If you commit violence, or if you take the law into your own hands, you are sowing the seeds for your own destruction.
A few examples:
- Romeo attacks Tybalt for murdering his friend, Mercutio. Though in our eyes he’s justified, he is taking the law into his own hands. And by killing Tybalt, he is dooming himself and Juliet.
- Titus Andronicus, whose sons have been murdered and his daughter raped, kills the rapists and cooks them into meat dishes to serve to their mother. Revenge is achieved, and perhaps some form of justice, but he is again placing himself in the place of authority, and dies. Unlike Romeo, he accepts this as the cost of his revenge.
- Laertes agrees to kill Hamlet in revenge for the Danish Prince murdering his father Polonius behind the arras. Laertes, of course, is cut with the same poisoned blade he used to cut Hamlet, a lovely ironic touch, mirroring the old phrase ‘when setting out for revenge, first dig two graves.’
- Brutus, the best example of all. He tries to save Rome from monarchy by killing his friend and mentor Caesar. He is clearly portrayed as a good and honorable man doing a very bad deed for the best of reasons. It is still a bad deed, and he pays the ultimate price for it.
Then there are those who are not even trying to justify their violent deeds – Macbeth, Iago, Richard – who commit acts of violence to satisfy their ambitions, their jealousies, and their rage at life. None of them live. In Shakespeare, the instigators of violence are always, always, consumed by violence.
In short, there is never violence without consequence.
Next time – a look at violence done well in entertainment today.
If you're interested in writing violence, this is now available. Just sayin'.
David, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head right out of the gate. (I can mix metaphors – YOU’RE the writer;) The problem with violence in media is indeed not volume, but impact.
When I saw The Avengers movie, I was decidedly underwhelmed. I felt that the scale of the destruction was so huge, but the human impact of all the havoc so small, that I had to conclude either that “it’s just a movie, where nothing is real,” or that “no one on screen really cares about the carnage, so why should I?” As an older viewer, I chose the former, but I worry that younger viewers, with (for better or worse) less solidly-formed opinions about violence, might go with the latter. (Perhaps we can discuss the iterative nature of violence in media later.)
On the other end of the spectrum, I give you The Princess Bride: yes, a few nameless, faceless kerns are killed, but as the tone of the film is that of a fairytale, I was OK with the “consequence-free action” aspect of these moments. However, when Inigo and Count Rugen have their final duel, every single cut hurt, and the coup de grace carried enormous weight. It was impactful because it was emotionally satisfying, and vise versa. I cared because they cared.
There is a moment in one of my favorite films, Brazil, which illustrates your point quite well, I think: Jonathan Price’s character is making his bold escape from the clutches of the totalitarian State with the able assistance of Kim Greist, the Woman of his Dreams. At one point, their path is blocked by a trailer which is ostensibly filled with government stormtroopers. Price and Greist bust through the roadblock, causing the trailer to explode in flames.
In a Bruckhimer film, that would have been the end of it. But in Gilliam’s film, Price looks back to see immolated men spilling out the engulfed trailer, writhing in agony. We cut back to Price’s face, suddenly cognizant of – and horrified by – what he has done.
I, too, love how violence tells a story. But that story is told in the eyes of the characters it affects, and in their words and consequent actions. Provided the writers care whether or not the characters care, or whether or not we should.
Thanks Alan. Yeah, that moment in Brazil is perfect. And I’m certainly okay with occasional consequence-free violence, especially for humor. But if you want us to care, there has to be a human element. I talk more about that in part two.
Very good article – food for thought indeed, especially for my pirate-based adventure Sea Witch series. Pirates were notoriously violent, the terrorists of their day (although my pirate is attempting to become a respectable merchant but keeps finding himself in situations he doesn’t want to be situated in – that’s the point of an adventure story of course!) What does amaze me are the comments I occasionally get for my serious historical fiction concerning battles – that my battle scenes are too violent. Um, yes. Battles were violent. What is the point of writing a novel about the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and then not portraying the course of the battle? Plus, I would have thought that a bit of a clue as to the possibility of violence was in the nature of the book – the words Battle of Hastings being a rather large clue. Other HF authors have found the same thing – the past was a violent place. Battles, murder, rape – it happened. Are we, then to write only the ‘nice’ side of history?
Helen – I know! One reviews on Goodreads commented that she could tell the book was “written by a guy” because she thought I was reveling in the violence. No, I was depicting it. We have to make violence as awful as it is, or what are we doing?
Don’t forget in “Hamlet” that Claudius, who murdered a king to get his throne(and his wife), ends up getting his just desserts by accidentally killing the Queen and being savagely killed by the rightful heir.