Is Violence as Entertainment Okay?
Nations and society as a whole have struggled to balance artistic expression with moral conscious. From the printing press to the moving image to the video game the state has sought to control what the public is able to consume for the preservation of social order. This has meant the destruction, banning and censoring of material that was considered indecent or immoral. In the 20th century film censorship was government enforced (BBFC in the UK) and industry imposed (MPAA in the United States), whim to public pressure from religious and conservative groups who believed in the corruptive capability of the medium.
Looking at the Hays code of early Hollywood and the response of the British government in the 1980s to the so-called ‘video nasties’ in retrospect, the fears that people and institutions had about the damaging nature of filmmaking were largely unfounded. The modern debate about video games and moral decay mirrors discussions about film and literature in the past — the public fear seemingly transitioning to the latest technology.
While censorship and discourse has been about the use of offensive language and depictions of sex in media the greatest controversy has been in the prevalence and application of violence. It is an unavoidable truth in life that violence shapes our world at both the personal level and at a global scale in many forms, and artists seek to explore the impact of such violence on society. At the same time a culture exists where the celebration of violence has penetrated popular media, to the point that actors careers and whole genres are built on explosions, guns and fists.
Recently I have been questioning the violence that I see in popular media and the context in which this violence is perpetrated. I’ve been accused in the past of being desensitized in relation to the movies and television I choose to watch, and which video games I choose to play. I think those accusations are true — I have been desensitized. To some degree many one of us has been numbed to the realities of violence, to the point that we can actually enjoy violence because of how it has been packaged and sold to us. We’re not being presented with real violence but a fictionalized and consequence-free recreation of violence as a source of entertainment.
Is this okay? Should we be so accepting of media that trivializes rather than condemns violence?
Disclaimer: I don’t believe that a book, movie, television show or video game will drive a person to commit actual violence against others. I believe a person’s actions are determined by the cumulative effects of said individual’s experiences during their lifetime, and no singular event or moment can be wholly responsible. While I don’t think popular media will lead us to commit offenses I do think it’s conceivable that exploiting violence as entertainment has a subliminal effect on our perception of violence.
Violent media isn’t explicitly going to make us harm others, but that doesn’t mean violent media has no harmful effects.
Dehumanization
In warfare it was common for soldiers to use crude terms and slang when referring to their enemies. In the Second World War Gerry and Jap were used in propaganda and everyday conversation, while in Somalia in 1991 American special forces used the term ‘skinnies’ for the local militia — a reference to an alien race in Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers.
Storytelling has a variety of ways to present violence as acceptable to readers, and the most frequently used is to reduce the casualties of violence as less than human. The subjects are not three dimensional, fleshed out characters with their own identities — in this scenario they are nameless, faceless figures presented as obstacles to be overcome. They’re henchmen. They’re cannon fodder. Sometimes the antagonists are physically non-human, and therefore any violence committed against them isn’t true to life but escapist — orcs can be hacked down and aliens can be blasted away.
Stories can present the reader with moral binaries that simplify the true causes for violence and aggressive action — there are good guys and there are bad guys, and we want the good guys to win. The bad guys will have a clear and evil intent that we can collectively stand opposed to, such as world domination or organized crime. In the action film genre there is a history of ‘safe’ antagonists that heroes can kill without us doubting their violent methods — Nazis, communists, Islamic extremists, gangsters — we accept their deaths as being righteous. Intense graphic violence against bad guys is ‘allowed’ to be entertaining.
We can be manipulated into seeing violence as permissible and entertaining because of how the victims of violence can be reduced to simplified, diametrically opposing foes deserving of retaliation.
Glory and Fetish
During an early scene in Paul Verhoeven’s loose adaptation of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers a class of impressionable students are being educated by Mr. Rasczak about the foundation of their society. He describes the shaping of history as being determined by political force. “And force, my friends, is violence — the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.” In the world of the Federation, military service provides privilege and preserves the fascist system. Violent action is rewarded by the state — to those who survive.
The satire of Paul Verhoeven’s film is apparently lost to directors who glorify the military and warfare. Where there are films that examine the real life consequences of military action, there are other films that present combat as entertainment, choosing to ignore the greater ramifications and fixate on zipping bullets, big bangs and hardware. American filmmaking in particular is prone to presenting violence with a patriotic eye that reflects the military in a positive light. Director Michael Bay champions the armed forces as being an overwhelming force for good, while portraying diplomacy as ineffectual and the government hierarchy as incompetent and corrupt. Such depictions instill the notion that military action shouldn’t be considered a last resort but the first — a notion at odds with the real world.
Action movies can present morally questionable members of the police who operate outside of the law they have sworn to protect. They circumvent the chain of command and take the law into their own hands, abusing their position in law enforcement as a means of imposing their own brand of justice. They are the people who ‘get the job done’. We are shown cops who torture, blackmail and frame people to further their investigations in the belief they are doing so for a greater cause - we’re supposed to condone their methods.
Clint Eastwood’s character Harry Callahan is synonymous with the .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world. Action stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Dwayne Johnson have fetishized the image of big men with big guns in their films, symbolic of the toxic masculinity that affirms violence as power and control. Weapons are given nicknames, jokingly called toys, and spoken about with affection and reverence. They are photographed like luxury cars to be awestruck by. The fantasy and metaphorical power of guns and other weapons undermines the true nature of such weapons and their primary function — to kill.
The Catch
Despite my criticism of popular media perpetuating violence as entertainment I’m guilty of belonging to that audience. I’ve grown up watching violent movies and playing violent video games, and it’s only recently that I have been questioning my relationship with such content. How can I enjoy watching violence? Why do audiences celebrate action heroes who dish out routine killings?
The effect of viewing violence as entertainment may be the latent normalizing of our exposure to violence in the real world. Similarly the objectification, stereotyping and misogynistic imagery seen in pornography is believed by researchers to be distorting young people’s conceptions about their own sexuality and relationships — without guidance and more positive representations about sex in popular media the problem persists. Without accurate depiction of the immediate- and after effects of violence experienced by the victims and perpetrators the disconnect between fiction and truth will only continue.
We have to accept that the simplification and trivializing of violence is disrespectful and offensive to those who have suffered physically, emotionally, and with their lives. For the victims of police brutality, the soldiers experiencing PTSD, the families devastated by loss and so many more — they deserve better from us and from our entertainment.
This doesn’t mean the eradication of violence from our screens nor the end of action and adventure movies — why not have more action heroes who save lives rather than take them? It means that we present violence for what it truly is, rather than what culture has transformed it into. We should strive to distance ourselves from the practices of dehumanizing people and fetishizing instruments of death. We should show the complexities and debate against a culture that has long misrepresented and glorified the inglorious.
Coming soon: Leaping Out of Your Skin
