On Violence in the Picture Shows

When I tell people that I'm interested in film, and ESPECIALLY if I tell them that I like Quentin Tarantino a lot, they'll start bitching and moaning about violence in movies. When this happens I say one of two things (if my lungs are full of air, I'll say both):

1. Film is a visual medium. Something that film can do that books, pictures, music or spoken word can't is move. They call them the moving pictures. Now, what's the most extreme form of motion? Yeah, violence. One of the things that film is best-suited to is showing violence. No other medium can capture the shock or visceral nature of violence like film can.

2. Violence in art is nothing new. If you think it's new, and if you think film invented it, you're a fucking chump. And here we come back to my first point. ANY violence shown on screen is about a hundred times worse than reading about it. If I say "and then the dude stabbed the other dude", you wouldn't bat an eye, but if I showed you a man stabbing another man, it would be pretty horrifying.

GOOD. Violence isn't pretty. It shouldn't be pretty. When you take the blood out of violence, you're prettying it up. Anything short of extreme violence is stylized violence, and if there's any sort of violence that's dangerous to our collective consciousness, it's stylized violence. Ultimately, this falls under "taste", though. I just think that portraying violence as horrific is the only way to simulate a realistic reaction to violence. Of course, not every filmmaker wants their audience to vomit during their summer blockbuster, and that's okay, too.


Note the "if". The worst thing you could possibly say about violence in movies is that it desensitizes you to make-believe violence. After you see a few hundred brutal decapitations, you probably don't mind seeing any more brutal decapitations.

But that doesn't mean anything. I very rarely find any make-believe violence truly repugnant (shock is a different reaction), but I'm sure I wouldn't just roll my eyes if someone were decapitated in front of me.

To say that violence in movies causes violence is to shortchange your own species and culture completely. People don't go see Inglourious Basterds because they think it's real and it gives them a boner, they see it because violence evokes reactions that you don't get in every day life. People say that violence is like a drug, when, in fact, it's adrenaline that's the drug.

Ultimately, violence is just like any other tool in an artist's fannypack. There's a danger and a fear that anyone can relate to, and that's the fear of death. We all have survival instincts and we can all relate to death. People who complain about violence in film are people who are unwilling to consume any art that isn't immediately pleasurable. These are the people who are unwilling to go along with the work and commit to the experience. And these are the people who will never truly experience great art.