The Fascination of Film Violence

Henry Bacon

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137476432
• eBook ISBN: 9781137476449
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Art General

The Fascination of Film Violence is a study of why fictional violence is such an integral part of fiction film. How can something dreadful be a source of art and entertainment? Explanations are sought from the way social and cultural norms and practices have shaped biologically conditioned violence related traits in human behavior.

1

The Biocultural Evolution of Representing Violence

Controlling violence and its representations

Violence is as much a part of art and entertainment as it is of life – if not even more so. Stories can be used to model the motivations, consequences and moral implications of action. Thus fiction is one of the most important ways by which we both as individuals and communities seek to cope with violence and the fears that it evokes in us. But even as we might genuinely learn something about the brutality and sordidness of real violence from its fictional representations, paradoxically enough, these representations can also serve as a source of pleasure and entertainment.

In nature aggression derives almost exclusively from immediate needs: hunting, self-defence or defeating competitors in mating, protecting offspring, and securing territory and material sources. Among many animals there also occur violent struggles related to hierarchy within the herd. As the dominant male gets the best chances of mating, agonistic interaction within the group has the evolutionary function of maximizing the strength of the group. Within human communities such aggressive behaviour becomes much more complex.¹ Consciousness and symbolic communication allow for subtle ways of manipulation which can partly substitute for physical violence as ways of establishing and maintaining hierarchies and power relationships, thus giving rise to what may be termed structural violence: subordinate members of the community can challenge the established order only at their peril. Consciousness also allows for violent behaviour to be detached from immediate biologically conditioned needs, if only to allow for violence to be used in the service of more distant, socially defined ends. In order to keep such impulses in check, the community must establish social and moral norms for its members to internalize. Various kinds of narratives, both factual and fictitious, have a major role in inculcating such norms together with a general sense of moral responsibility.

Within the sphere of Western cultural history, the role of violence in human affairs has been treated fictionally at least since the Greek tragedies. One crucial theme which emerges in them is tragic necessity, the need to assume action that is morally highly questionable, even evil, with the purpose of securing some greater good, such as overthrowing an evil regime at the cost of great loss of life. The characters bear the burden of moral responsibility for their actions even when they follow prevailing norms, make choices between alternatives that are all unacceptable, or find the tension between conflicting social and psychological pressures intolerable. They may well think of themselves as mere playthings of the gods or blind fate. Yet, necessity or even ignorance does not serve as a sufficient excuse. Part of the tragedy of being human is that a person can be at his most certain when he commits his gravest errors. Some impulse such as thirst for revenge blinds him to the extent that he can only see a single acceptable line of action and choose it even when it inexorably leads to destruction. He may see revenge as his sacred duty, but as the victim is not likely to find the revenge justified at all, he or his beloved will respond with equal measure giving rise to a mutually destructive spiral of revenge – a theme thoroughly treated in the television mini-series Hatfields and McCoys (Reynolds 2012). According to the French historian and philosopher René Girard there is only one way out: societies must create institutions which assume the burden of punishing. It is of crucial importance that these institutions have an unequivocal position which transcends private interests. Only then can their rulings put an end to the spiral of revenge: “The decisions of the judiciary are invariably presented as the final world on vengeance.”² Aeschylus’ Oresteia concludes with a dramatization of this idea: a tribunal is created which will assume the task of retribution in Athens.

But the problems of controlling violence do not end here. Sophocles’ Antigone finds herself torn between equally strong but conflicting moral responsibilities. Her brothers Eteocles and Polyneices have died while leading opposing factions in a civil war that has wrecked Thebes. Creon, who has assumed power over the city state, has denied the rebel Polyneices all funeral rites and ordered his body to be cast away. Antigone, however, is convinced that tradition demands that she must bury her relatives, and thus she ends up challenging the new head of the city state. Creon tries to persuade her, but she is adamant. Finally Creon orders her to be buried alive. He retains his formal authority, but pays a high price for it: his son, Antigone’s fiancé Haemon, perishes together with his bride. When Haemon’s mother Eurydice hears of this, she commits suicide. Thus, by simply upholding the prevailing law and order, Creon has offended common sense of justice and caused irreparable destruction. At the core of the drama there is the fundamental question that all human societies may have to face due to the limitations of law and its enforcers in reflecting deeply felt notions about morality: which is more fundamental, the obligation to obey the laws of the land, or one’s own sense of moral responsibility? When does subversiveness become a moral duty? Who is able to present his or her moral view as the right one; whose moral ground is the firmest? In real life, moral complications are never as clear-cut as in a tragedy designed to put such issues into sharp focus. The conclusion of a drama usually offers some kind of solution, albeit not always an entirely convincing one. But usually it is at least much more satisfying than the inconclusive ways things tend turn out in real life.

Even if we might not wish to be as cynical as to think of all social relationships in terms of power and control, we have to acknowledge that in order to survive and maintain its hierarchy, a society must be able to control violence and violent impulses of its members both internally and in respect of the surrounding world. The society must be able to maintain order and a sense of security by defining frameworks within which violence may or must be used. As a rule, violence is allowed only for persons specifically selected for the purpose of suppressing other forms of violence – such activity may be called counterviolence. It has been reported that many people do not think of pain and injury-inflicting acts as violence if they serve a socially acceptable or useful functions. ³ This also applies to the justification of military defence.

In order to maintain itself, a community must be able to react appropriately to the threat of aggression coming from outside. As we know even from recent history, leaders of powerful nations may see it fit to attack other nations or targets even on the other side of the globe. This might necessitate calling to arms people who are not likely to benefit in any way from reaching the goals of the intended military action. It seldom suffices to appeal to reason only, particularly as the arguments in favour of the action are all too often fabricated. In order to incite the necessary enthusiasm, the leaders of such aggressive nations have to appeal to a sense of imaginary community. The historian Benedict Anderson emphasizes that the identity of a society is determined above all by the way it is imagined, the way certain notions about its identity capture people’s imagination to the extent that they can be persuaded to kill and even die for it.⁴ This is why stories stemming from the common ground of myths and history have a major role in creating a sense of national identity. Such narratives, irrespective of whether they take the form of sagas, historical accounts, or historical fiction, serve the important function of maintaining the legitimacy of the prevailing order in an emotionally appealing way. But the sense of imaginary community must be further supported by stories of heroes active in our own day. Their ethos is based on the idea that the nation or the community only resorts to violent means in the face of violent aggression from the outside. ⁵ The protagonist is often depicted as the most reluctant of all to take up arms, but when he does so, he turns out to be more formidable than anyone else – the Mel Gibson character in Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot (2000) is a very clear-cut example of this kind of action hero.

It is obvious that the appeal of such stories is not based simply on people being socially conditioned to react favourably to certain notions of heroism. Cultural evolution has shaped certain of our biologically evolved tendencies to react to dangers and threats into attitudes and practices which more or less coincide with individual and social interests. This is how evolution functions: the species that has the best ways of coping with dangers and exploiting the affordances that the environment offers is more likely to survive than others. Furthermore, the crucial point about evolution is not the survival of individuals but that of the species. Thus it is perfectly natural that communities celebrate stories about heroes who sacrifice themselves for the sake of the community. They offer models in which cultural factors may override even the survival instinct of the individual to the extent that the hero might give his or her life for the community – or just another person.

Culture may also produce social phenomena which go against evolutionary optimization. Role models might emerge which distort an individual’s sense of relevance to the extent that he loses his adaptability. This might affect an entire community. Through the course of history this has happened to many societies, and now it might be happening to humanity as a whole because of the ruthless exploitation of our natural environment. Wars have a tendency to escalate to proportions which become hugely costly for all parties. Notions about military glory are highly likely to lead into maximizing destruction on both sides. Clint Eastwood dramatizes this effectively in his Letters from Iwo Jima (2006). The Japanese officers see as their only possible line of action to fight to the bitter end. As we know from history, of the 18,000 men defending this minuscule but strategically important island, most perished and only 200 were caught as prisoners. In the film, the Japanese appear by no means as fanatical war maniacs, but rather as honest people who seek to behave in a desperate situation as properly as they possibly can. Within their own terms of reference, they are caught in the meshes of tragic necessity.

Resorting and relating to different types of violence

Irrespective of the moral considerations involved, violence can be deemed to be rational when it is used as a means for reaching a goal. Such instrumental violence is targeted at people who are thought to constitute a threat of some sort or simply to stand in the way of the interests or the prosperity of the community or its individual members. In a given social context there may be more or less generally accepted norms which prescribe the circumstances in which resorting to violence is acceptable or even desirable. But violence might be at least ostensibly rational also in the sense that a certain group may resort to violence as a form of making a statement. Terrorists and perpetrators of hate crimes have their own ideas about the justification of violence. Other people, even the rest of their own community, might think that their very starting points are misconceived and irrational, but they will insist on presenting their violent activities as a rational and even legitimate response to, say, the oppression of the group to which they belong. In a group that has a strong sense of tradition and identity such notions may persist through centuries, keeping up an unquenchable thirst for revenge. But it may also crop up quite suddenly when there is a need to find a scapegoat. Due to psychological, social and historical reasons, the target of such hate may vary according to ethnicity, religion, class, sex, sexual orientation or almost any social factor. Often political and cultural rhetoric is employed to target aggressive behaviour towards groups that are labelled as enemies or just somehow inferior. In the eyes of an outsider, the arguments may appear groundless and the people who act according to such proscriptions as victims of manipulation, but the violence that stems from this kind of thinking has its own logic and purpose.

In most action films, the violent characters have some fairly clearly defined motivation for their actions. When violent behaviour is not depicted as downright psychotic, the spectator will probably seek to construct some kind of an explanation in terms of more familiar ways of categorization. At its worst, this works out in terms of shallow ethnic or social stereotyping. The fears that violence provokes are projected on otherness, something alien that has to be kept in check, if not destroyed. In the most extreme cases, characters who indulge in irrational violence can only be classified as more or less severely disturbed. In such cases, otherness is not defined by traits assumed to be characteristic of a hated or despised ethnic or social group, but rather by the person not being able to adhere to any accepted norms. Coping with representations of such strange behaviour is easier when it is given at least a quasi-psychological explanation. Even in popular fiction, madness tends to be finally explained somehow, if only by some such faintly amusing account such as what has happened to Norman in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). The frightful thing appears somewhat less threatening when there is at least a semblance of logic behind it. It is much more frightening when horrible acts do not seem to make any sense. The mere idea of purely random violence emerging from such a state is almost intolerable. Yet, perpetrators of this kind of violence may appear strangely charismatic. There is often something mesmerizing in a person totally overwhelmed by rage, in a display of passion totally unconstrained by the exigencies of everyday life. This appears all the more fascinating the less we would like to be thus possessed ourselves. A person who discards all norms and constraints is in a sense authentic. John Fraser has observed a steady increase in glamorizing certain types of psychopaths. Behind this he sees a philosophical or a quasi-philosophical tradition which has found its inspiration in writers such as Nietzsche, Sade and Genet. It disparages everyday life as something so stale and meaningless, that even the life of an outlaw appears like a cool alternative. There is also a long tradition of philosophical and moral alienation, including major literary figures such as Conrad, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Kafka and Camus. A shallow reading of their works can give rise to a sense of nihilism as the truth about human condition.⁶

Between rational and irrational violence there is expressive violence, typically motivated by a wrongdoing which in the mind of the perpetrator has grown to the proportions of metaphysical injustice. That feeling may stem from prevailing norms, but the rage to which it gives rise manifests itself in violent action as a form of protest. This, of course, goes against the fundamental principle according to which punishment for evil acts must be executed solely by prescribed social institutions.

Expressive violence may emerge simply from a sense of anxiety and frustration, powerlessness in the face of the demands set by the social environment. Societies tend to suppress not only violent but also all sorts of other natural impulses. A member of a society is expected to be able to control him- or herself so as to conform to established norms. There is usually only very limited scope for criticizing those norms or the institutions that proscribe them. If the impulse to do something that goes against norms persists but is suppressed, it is likely to be processed on an imaginary level. We humans have an astonishing ability to fantasize about what we are going to do, what we would like to do, and even what we cannot possibly do. The boundaries between these are blurred, but they all have an important role to play in our mental architecture. Going through scenarios of possible as well as impossible actions is an integral part of our lived experience. We may even fantasize about doing things that go against our sense of moral and innermost needs, imagine scenarios that we would by no means want to take place in reality. This applies particularly to sex and violence. We might want to beat someone into obedience, but in addition to the limits of our physical capabilities, we may be held back by a sense of the larger context of our lives, of having to answer for our actions in the face both of the society and our own conscience. Similarly, we may feel strong sexual attraction towards a person who is neither psychologically nor socially an appropriate partner for us and pursuing whom might ruin many lives. And so, despite our desire, we remain passive. But we are always free to fantasize and enjoy fiction, largely enjoyable for being more or less detached from real life concerns and reflecting certain socially and even universally shared concerns on a more general level.

Some of the most enjoyable fictional characters are either types or archetypes. A type may appear like a unique individual, but he or she also crystallizes the crucial traits of social or communal formations in a given historical situation. An arc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  The Biocultural Evolution of Representing Violence
• 2  Symbolism of Evil in Film
• 3  The Poetics of Film Violence
• 4  Women and Physical Screen Violence
• 5  Relational and Structural Violence
• Notes
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index