Cinematic Violence: Can Anything Be Justified?

[knives]

Pardon the assumption, but seeing as no one here is legitimately asking for a legalized censorship of the film maybe we should turn our eyes to a more interesting question it brings up. At what point can exploitation hide behind the veneer of politics or artistry. What makes this Serbian film, sight unseen admittedly, as morally absurd and deranged, but something like Salo or The Baby of Macon as perfectly fine artistic illustrations of political things. (well maybe not perfect in Macon's case) Does this turn me into a hypocrite, or worse yet a lowered distaste version of the Guardian 'Crash' reviewer? That I think is where the real question behind this movie is.

[Zumpano]

Wow, I can't believe a film I knew nothing about a few hours ago, already has a gushing review up on AICN.

Is he really calling for a Paranormal Activity type of hype/ad campaign for this? And it seems like Harry is in total denial regarding the

Spoiler

baby rape.

[Tribe]

can't we say that the production, screening and viewing of the ultra-nasty stuff seriously desensitizes us to the extent where we can convince ourselves that everything is fair game except for snuff films?

I've has this kind of discussion before, and the question of desensitization is usually always brought up; but rather than being confined simply to what is tolerated onscreen, as your post does, Tribe, the question is usually extended to what we will tolerate from people in society as well....

Most excellent points you've raised there regarding desensitization...and certainly, when I raised the issue I didn't consider the implications...after thinking about this, as much as I hate to admit it, this entire discussion inherently involves some judgment about that amorphous concept called morals and we are leveling some moral judgment about certain movies. Since morals or one's perception of morality is at the heart of all this, personal responsibility is never relieved because of desensitization...rather one always (as you intimated, if not said directly) has a choice to act or not.

But its precisely because of choice that a film maker can (and do) act irresponsibly.

[Tribe]

Pardon the assumption, but seeing as no one here is legitimately asking for a legalized censorship of the film maybe we should turn our eyes to a more interesting question it brings up. At what point can exploitation hide behind the veneer of politics or artistry. What makes this Serbian film, sight unseen admittedly, as morally absurd and deranged, but something like Salo or The Baby of Macon as perfectly fine artistic illustrations of political things. (well maybe not perfect in Macon's case) Does this turn me into a hypocrite, or worse yet a lowered distaste version of the Guardian 'Crash' reviewer? That I think is where the real question behind this movie is.

I think in the movies you mention (and these are assumptions of mine...I have nothing direct to point to), the "artistry" consists of making the very point you raise, namely, exploitation under the thin veneer of art. I think that's very different from sheer deranged depictions of violence for its own sake or merely to prove that it can be done or depicted....after all, even Greenaway did not actually show the gang rape in Macon...we could hear it, but not see it.

[knives]

You are very right in your points, but is self-awareness, or rather reflexivity, enough an excuse in itself? After all a baby rape scene would not be too out of place in Salo. While the Centipede thing can be easily dismissed as pure exploitation the Serbian workers claim it as a call against censorship with actual political thought, or so they claim. (of course this would place it more in the territory of Arabian Nights rather than Salo) Is making a point of the difference, or lack thereof, between trash and 'legitimate' cinema the only way to stay in the later. Where would this place something like Pink Flamingos or any other early Waters experiment?

[domino harvey]

I think the bigger issue is one of titillation: Entries in the so-called "torture porn" field are so labeled because the prurient interest they exhibit in violence is one that borders on fetishized sexuality. The divide is what separates de Sade's level and quite absurd catalog of atrocities in 120 Days of Sodom from, say, that Girls Aloud cannibal story that got the UK guy arrested last year: one serves as pornography and the other doesn't. There's a trailer floating around for A Serbian Film that I'll let you find for yourself, and you tell me that the tone is one of political commentary and not It Goes There-iness

[James]

Maybe I'm not as desensitized as some of you, but the concept behind The Human Centipede sounds generally pretty frightening to me, and it is a horror movie.

[lubitsch]

The violence per se doesn't seem to be the main point, but the attitude of the resulting work of art (whatever its real worth is) is the crucial point for me. If you want to make a serious film about war or rape, you should have the opportunity to choose either a very veiled approach which risks a softening of the impact or a brutally frank one which might be termed exploitative.
However the violence for violence's sake thing always disturbed and at the risk of sounding very old-fashioned, I find it already in some classical noirs pointlessly used, stylized as hip, in cool looking shadows, completely removing the experience of human pain. From there on it's only a gradual shift of the intensity level, but I find already Leone or Peckinpah highly problematic. What's the idea behind gunning people in these spaghetti western down as if they were targets in a shooting gallery. Films like Kill Bill are simply promoting an enjoyable way to look at violence. Hate it, despise it. And most certainly the makers of the film can't decide if their films are exploitation or serious art because every little crap director would (and does) claim artistic significance for his nasty trash.
So I think one has to draw the line either very early on very rigidly or very late basically demanding that no law is broken during filming.

It's also worth noting that there are different ideas about free speech and how far it should be extended. While the USA have a very broad acceptance allowing everybody to talk any rubbish, in Germany and other European countries there's a stronger line against hate speech and similar things, in Germany based on the experiences of the Weimar Republic which granted its enemies every right including the one to destroy it.
But there's always the problem who should decide what exactly is hate speech and should not be allowed. The famous Vorbehaltsfilme of the Third Reich are locked, while Birth of a Nation isn't though it's hardly less revolting. And there's e.g. in Germany the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons which banned Tarzan comics in the 50s and films from Carpenter's Thing to Terminator, the last one still being on the Index which means that it can't be openly sold, advertised, rented so that children may see it or can't be sent by mail order (even for adults). If there would be a clear line, ok, but the situation is ridiculous and shows clearly the problem with all kinds of censorship.
Nevertheless I find the entertaining violence on movie screens one of the most disturbing aspects of cinema.

[Mr Sausage]

Another question to raise is the hightened standard we have for atrocity on film. The Human Centipede, while it sounds like a despicable thing to film, would be perfectly at home in a book like Naked Lunch; and the stuff in A Serbian Film may very well have been described in that book, amidst all the other awful things. Now, obviously, Naked Lunch's artistic merit was vindicated when it overcame the obscenity charges against it, and of course we cannot judge the artistic merit of A Serbian Film or The Human Centipede without having seen it. But I'm wondering if people are more likely to accept these kinds of things being described in a book (which means the book wishes you to imagine and picture in your head each awful detail it describes) than being depicted visually on film, and if so, should it be this way?

Final observation: it's hard for shock to be valuable as an aesthetic criteria in 2010 because pretty much everything is permitted, violence-wise at least. Shock is most valuable when the moral atmosphere is most repressive. Stuff like the movies in the TCM Forbidden Hollywood sets or even Ulmer's the Black Cat, with its devil-worship, necrophilia, and scenes of skin-flaying, are more valuable as shock even now based on what we know of their contexts. Watching them, you can still feel like you're getting away with something. There is no context today that can give shocking violence any cultural value, so isn't the one-upmanship going on among horror movies pointless?

[Hopscotch]

I'm wondering if people are more likely to accept these kinds of things being described in a book (which means the book wishes you to imagine and picture in your head each awful detail it describes) than being depicted visually on film, and if so, should it be this way?

Would love to see this debated more. Does Sontag address this in "The Pornographic Imagination"? I can't remember, nor can I determine at this juncture the relevance of that essay to the discussion going on here. (I borrowed Styles of Radical Will from the library months ago, but it's dimming fast in my memory.)

[domino harvey]

Film is the most powerful artistic medium, so yes, I would say that a graphic image in a film is worse than one read. As Claude Chabrol said about Monsieur Verdoux, words aren't as effective as the filmic image, which is why movies cost so much to make!

[Murdoch]

Exactly, important to consider is the degree of disconnect between images described in books and shown in film. For example there is a large difference between reading about a person's murder in a newspaper and actually watching a filmed version of the murder. A film has the intensity of the audience experiencing the event first hand whereas a book relies on its language and prose to provide an accurate picture. The suddenness of a gunshot has a delay in a book since the author must describe the action, whereas in film the event can be rather instantaneous. I think this, combined with the idea of film as giving its audience the position of voyeur, leads to a very different effect between gratuitous imagery in a book and in a film.

[colinr0380]

It might also be worth looking back to the last time we got into a discussion on such issues when Cannibal Holocaust was getting that deluxe DVD release by Grindhouse back in 2004.

Human Centipede sounds foul (though it does share a cast member with The Lost Honor Of Katarina Blum!), but then I've learnt to never trust synopses of horror films as a true guide to what actually gets shown in a film. (For example I find the marketing materials for the Saw series far more disturbing that most of the stuff in the films themselves) Usually either the filmmakers prefer to imply it through either a sense of aesthetic morality, or to create a more powerful dramatic effect (or more likely the lack of funds to produce a convincing gore effect!)

But there have always been films that focused on gory bits of business and material that a viewer might wish they had never seen, had never thought about before, and wished that they had never had to think about. It is not a recent thing. For instance during the commentary for The Most Dangerous Game, Bruce Eder describes a whole sequence in the basement torture chamber of Count Zaroff that would make some modern films look tame (and for a classic 'torture-porn' film, just look at elements from The Black Cat, though Mr Sausage got there first!) Then there is the filmed and dropped spider pit sequence from King Kong.

I must admit to having my own limits but I don't really consider them to be about the material (though I really don't like 'real' material - mostly the indefensible animal violence of the Italian cannibal films, but I also cannot stomach the Brakhage autopsy film despite it obviously having far more 'merit' as a piece of work. I'd much rather people fake it and try and create the same feelings through artistic means than shock ones) as much as how the material is handled. This can take a number of forms from the obvious one of whether I personally think the filmmakers are sincere in their use of horror or are just doing it for a cheap, easily marketable gimmick; whether the film uses its horror in service of an important, or even just entertaining point; and whether it actually adds something interesting to cinema - a powerful image or intense experience.

The discussion about the 'sincerity' of a horror filmmaker seems to be something that is currently occurring in the Antichrist thread. I personally love Lars von Trier and his provocations but have a few issues with Antichrist, not because of the explicit sex and violence but more because I feel that all of his films have seemed like horror films about mutual and self destructing relationships and societies anyway, so it seems too obvious a theme film to tackle head on as well as re-covering old ground, strangely making the film seem more ordinary and accessible than something like Dogville or Element of Crime. And the theme of parents and children and the damage they do to each other is also explored in different ways in both Dancer In The Dark and The Kingdom. But I don't doubt his sincerity in making the film, just whether it was really a necessary step in his career. But then it appears to have been wildly successful (when even 'normal' people at my workplace are talking about it, albeit that they preferred Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel more(!), it certainly has achieved a certain level of penetration that perhaps only a film marketed within an obvious 'genre' can), which itself could be seen as a justification for having made the film.

For me someone like Andrey Iskanov and his four hour black and white pretentious torture fest updating Men Behind The Sun for the noughties, Philosophy Of A Knife, is a much more troubling example of a filmmaker claiming a higher significance behind their work while suspiciously seeming to just use their material an excuse to portray a number of gruelling human experiments (But then I have issues with the 'perceived sincerity' of many different kinds of films, not just gruelling horror ones) And mention of Men Behind The Sun makes me think of the semi-sequel to that film, Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre. I haven't yet seen the recently well reviewed City Of Life And Death but something tells me that there may not be a grindhouse-style scene of a pregnant woman having her baby removed (and then skewered) by a bayonet wielding soldier. Or an appallingly impressive final scene of environmental pollution on a massive scale as thousands of bodies are burnt. One might be a more acceptable, and not as ludicrous, film but maybe Black Sun in its single (and simple) minded portrayal of large scale nihilistic war atrocities perhaps shows the dangerous power that exploitation material can wield. Which makes the 'perceived sincerity' issue even more important.

Another issue is one that I've also commented a lot about in other threads - the recent cycle of remakes and that most, if not all, of them seem soulless because they take material that once had a meaning and repeats it out of context. Then the gore level has to get ramped up to compensate for the general emptiness elsewhere. And that also makes the violence or horror that occurs seem far more gratuitous. The Last House On The Left remake is a particularly egregious recent example.

I also agree that the internet has helped 'up the ante' by making every conceivable horror far more accessible than ever before. And unfortunately there is of course an added sense of realism to a lot of these clips that makes me queasy. I have to admit to tracking down the footage of the Vic Morrow helicopter accident from the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie just to see this bizarre, much talked about accident. But I didn't feel proud of myself for doing that afterwards.

Yet I'd worry about imposing censorship - yes there might be some terrible, real life atrocity stuff out there, or dumb jackass clips or 2 Girls, 1 Cup (which I have been fortunate enough to have avoided so far!), but if all of this was removed to 'clean up the internet' you'd run the risk of getting rid of the important material such as the recent Wikileaked Iraq war footage and all the other material that might be too graphic to broadcast in this much more sanitised age (see Hearts and Minds for an interesting discussion of the way that the military didn't really think of controlling the footage shot of the Vietnam War, and that this perhaps lost the war back at home when, say, the napalmed naked girl became a seminal image of the conflict. Then compare that to the extremely locked down, stage managed, embedded reportered, green zoned Iraq Wars) but thanks to the internet has influenced the discourse in important ways. Redacted couldn't have been made without the internet age, nor A Mighty Heart. Or at least they could not have been made in the same way, trading on the assumption that the viewer has already been exposed to the source material (much as Oliver Stone's World Trade Center film trades on the absence of the most famous footage from his movie, secure in the knowledge that the viewer is more than capable of adding that element by themselves)

The internet can be scary and upsetting but also an enlightening and wonderful place. Restrictions I think just leads to trouble. Instead there should be more encouragement of discourse and informed debate, rather than hoping that someone else will step in and somehow protect us. I can cope with potentially seeing some awful video when it is set against the great amount of actually useful and enlightening information out there. Much as I can deal with seeing awful films of all kinds just in case one turns out to be truly great. One day it may be Human Centipede or Men Behind The Sun, another day it could be Martyrs or City Of Life And Death.

[Tribe]

You are very right in your points, but is self-awareness, or rather reflexivity, enough an excuse in itself? After all a baby rape scene would not be too out of place in Salo. While the Centipede thing can be easily dismissed as pure exploitation the Serbian workers claim it as a call against censorship with actual political thought, or so they claim. (of course this would place it more in the territory of Arabian Nights rather than Salo) Is making a point of the difference, or lack thereof, between trash and 'legitimate' cinema the only way to stay in the later. Where would this place something like Pink Flamingos or any other early Waters experiment?

Tough line to draw...but doesn't intent have a lot to do with it...the intent to make an artistic statement in Baby of Macon and/or Salo and the utter lack of any genuine artistic intent in say, Human Centipede (which I haven't seen)? On the other hand, I don't think the debate here is between trash and legitimate film...rather the issue points to reprehensible portrayals of degrading violence for the sack of it. John Waters' movies (they appear quaint these days, don't they?)...I always thought Waters had some artistic motivation, even if it arose solely out of his effort to replicate exploitation movies. At this juncture, Divine eating dog shit seems to be the least of our worries, huh?

[Mr Sausage]

Film is the most powerful artistic medium, so yes, I would say that a graphic image in a film is worse than one read. As Claude Chabrol said about Monsieur Verdoux, words aren't as effective as the filmic image, which is why movies cost so much to make!

Powerful in terms of what? And on what basis? Historically? Aesthetically? Politically? And in what sense is one image "worse" than another? Worse morally? Worse in terms of psychic harm? Worse in terms of social acceptance?

I think the question of comparing the reactions to violence between different mediums worth discussing, but you've treated your answer like a foregone conclusion that I've simply failed to see.

[domino harvey]

I'm certainly operating under the personal assumption that film is ultimate form of artistic expression, granted, and from your other posts on the board I sort of gather you are more inclined to side with literature. So there is that divide that I may be incapable of fording, as I can find value in literature or music (etc) but I am still biased towards film. Of all the non-transient visual arts, film comes closest to replicating reality while of course simultaneously doing nothing of the sort. This is not to say that films are real, but they invoke the largest possible avenues of artistic expression compared to the levels of removal from text to image vs image to image. When the audience reads even the most graphic of descriptions, they control the image's interpretation stronger than if they see it. Now of course visual arts too are open to interpretation, obviously, but not to the extent of literature. There are more cues to consider in a film, more codes and attributes, than in a written text. Is this a privileged position I'm placing film in? Yes, but if it's possible of reaching the highest highs, then it's also responsible for the lowest lows, which is why I feel it must be held to sterner criticism when it comes to the subject under discussion.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm not going to claim literature is the highest form of expression because I would suspect myself of bias and don't know how able I am to even make such a claim. But you're right, so long as you think the way you do, we're not going to find much commonality. But I'd like to make a claim anyway:

There are more cues to consider in a film, more codes and attributes, than in a written text.

This is very easy to say in an abstract sense, but I'd like you to consider whether or not there is a specific example of film that contains more "codes and attributes" than, for example, The Bible. Or The Divine Comedy. You earlier claimed film was the most powerful medium, and yet creating a total cosmological, mythological framework in which the entirety of human history, thought, and morality is contained is something film has yet to do, and perhaps cannot do, but which we can see that literature has. This is why I asked under what defintion of "power" you were working, because we have examples of how the entire thrust of human society was affected by the word to a degree that film has yet to equal (for example, the 13th centry Tuscan dialect of Dante's Commedia, on the strength of that book alone, became what we now know as literary Italian). One has to admit that a religion will not, and probably could not, be founded on a film, but that a book is more than enough to do it. Moreover, we can have national epics, works of literature that define the cultural identity of a country (again, the Commedia, or the Aeneid), but could you see this happening with film? I think it reflects the power of the word that the Logos has been at the centre of the Western conception of itself and the Universe since 500 BC and not the image, which may have predated it, tho' I am no anthropologist.

Now, I am not underestimating the power of film. Especially with its wide receptivity and its immediacy, film can do things that books cannot, undoubtably, and it must be ranked among the most powerful mediums ever invented. I wouldn't be posting on this site if the medium of film weren't something special to me (I like it better than music, sculpture, painting, architecture, ect.). But I think that given the historical fact of the huge importance and power of literature, most especially the capability of literature to transfer myth (film has a hard time doing this because of the difficulty photographed images have in overcoming literalness; the closest I've seen film come is with Stan Brakhage's experiment in visual myth in that film called Eye Myth) and to construct immense structures and systems--given that, we should not be so quick to dismiss its depictions of violence.

Given the power that literature is capable of (which even if you think doesn't match film, you surely must agree it approaches it, or comes nearest it, and is no slouch in that department), should we not examine why we might be more willing to accept its violence and not film's? Is the literalness and directness of a filmic image of violence in itself a moral reason to abbhor said depiction? Or should such literalness not make any difference to whether or not a violent image is justified?

I'd also like to point out that, at this point, none of us have seen (I'm assuming) The Human Centipede or The Serbian Film. It is the written accounts of the atrocities that have caused our revulsion. I'd legitimately like to know whether your reaction would have been milder or even apathetic if you'd been told instead that these things were found in a soon-to-be published book.

[TomReagan]

Most excellent points you've raised there regarding desensitization...and certainly, when I raised the issue I didn't consider the implications...after thinking about this, as much as I hate to admit it, this entire discussion inherently involves some judgment about that amorphous concept called morals and we are leveling some moral judgment about certain movies. Since morals or one's perception of morality is at the heart of all this, personal responsibility is never relieved because of desensitization...rather one always (as you intimated, if not said directly) has a choice to act or not.

But its precisely because of choice that a film maker can (and do) act irresponsibly.

This conversation brings to mind an interview I read (I believe it was with Steve Zaillian) around the time Schindler’s List came out. As Spielberg filmed the liquidation of the ghetto sequence, he insisted -- initially, anyway -- that he would not pull any punches. This included an ad hoc skeet shooting competition comprised of infants being thrown from the rooftops and shot at by certain Nazi soldiers (which, based on anecdotal accounts, actually occured). As the prop babies were brought to the set, Spielberg, the crew, and the extras realized in short order that they simply could not go through with the scene / shot.

I have always found that sort of restraint admirable.

[domino harvey]

Firstly, I would never argue that any text has historically had more far reaching relevancy and importance and yes, power, than the Bible!

Sausage, my definition of power in this argument however was one of immediacy in the present. As I'm sure you could suspect, no, I would probably not even bat an eye if I were told a short story or novel containing the objectionable sequences had been released. Certainly the written word can have profound effect on the reader, and I'm not arguing otherwise, but if it must go head to head, I still feel it can only finish second using this definition of "power". This is subjective in the extreme, but because literature is, regardless of length, more elliptical than film in that it can only present one sentence after another, while film can present paragraphs of information in cacophonous rattle, makes film more immediate and more damning/praiseworthy. I do feel that the immediacy of sensory information imparted by visual mediums holds it to higher levels of responsibility, however such morality can be measured.

[Tribe]

Given the power that literature is capable of (which even if you think doesn't match film, you surely must agree it approaches it, or comes nearest it, and is no slouch in that department), should we not examine why we might be more willing to accept its violence and not film's? Is the literalness and directness of a filmic image of violence in itself a moral reason to abbhor said depiction? Or should such literalness not make any difference to whether or not a violent image is justified?

My feeble effort at sorting this out: the graphic nature of film makes all the difference. Extreme and in your face violence and sex described only by words has limitations. First, words, while in the hands of an artist can be powerful indeed, are not the most authoritative means of description...at least when compared to art or film. As a result, more so than purely visual arts, what we read is mediated by our imagination filling in the inevitable gaps. Second, the graphic nature of film (and painting, photography) removes a lot if the interpretation that our imagination would otherwise do when interpreting a written text...it's immediate and in your face and we understand it at face value. As a result the impact is direct and since its not necessarily left to our own experience in interpreting it.

I'd also like to point out that, at this point, none of us have seen (I'm assuming) The Human Centipede or The Serbian Film. It is the written accounts of the atrocities that have caused our revulsion. I'd legitimately like to know whether your reaction would have been milder or even apathetic if you'd been told instead that these things were found in a soon-to-be published book.

I think so...for the reasons I wrote above. But also keep in mind....what hasn't been written yet? Violence and sex, in virtually all its known permutations, have been written already.

[Mr Sausage]

Firstly, I would never argue that any text has historically had more far reaching relevancy and importance and yes, power, than the Bible!

Sausage, my definition of power in this argument however was one of immediacy in the present. As I'm sure you could suspect, no, I would probably not even bat an eye if I were told a short story or novel containing the objectionable sequences had been released. Certainly the written word can have profound effect on the reader, and I'm not arguing otherwise, but if it must go head to head, I still feel it can only finish second using this definition of "power". This is subjective in the extreme, but because literature is, regardless of length, more elliptical than film in that it can only present one sentence after another, while film can present paragraphs of information in cacophonous rattle, makes film more immediate and more damning/praiseworthy. I do feel that the immediacy of sensory information imparted by visual mediums holds it to higher levels of responsibility, however such morality can be measured.

In that case, fair enough (although I do think a book's ability to act as a palimpsest counteracts the "one sentence after another" limitation, but that's neither here nor there).

But now we're left with the question of what we are truly objecting to. Clearly, as you've stated, the mere presence of an atrocity within a narrative isn't bothersome. So is the objection no longer a moral one against the depiction of the act, or against someone thinking up the act? Is it simply the desire not to be revulsed by directly witnessing the (albeit simulated) act, then? If so, we can make the same complaint against, and demand the same level of justification for, a lot of lesser film violence because of the difficulty in defining absolute limits in a case like this. There are plenty of people who I'm sure are entirely unable to stomach the violence of, say, Pan's Labyrinth (a movie even I'm not convinced is using its violence justly), or Casino, or Anti-Christ, and their own objection would be voiced in much the same way yours was in the initial post of this thread. So if it's no longer a moral objection to including an act within a narrative, and since you don't mind an author, say, trying to conjure the same image in the mind's eye of a reader, on what grounds could the filmmakers of the Human Centipede be condemned over those of Casino if the latter's violence repulsed a moviegoer as much as the former's did you? Do you think there are just certain images that cannot be ethically recovered by any amount of aestheticization or artistic necessity? If so, isn't much of our decision about that question based on our own level of desensitization? Christopher Lee reportedly walked out on Bava's Bay of Blood (Twitch of the Death Nerve) and declared it disgusting. So...?

My feeble effort at sorting this out: the graphic nature of film makes all the difference. Extreme and in your face violence and sex described only by words has limitations. First, words, while in the hands of an artist can be powerful indeed, are not the most authoritative means of description...at least when compared to art or film. As a result, more so than purely visual arts, what we read is mediated by our imagination filling in the inevitable gaps. Second, the graphic nature of film (and painting, photography) removes a lot if the interpretation that our imagination would otherwise do when interpreting a written text...it's immediate and in your face and we understand it at face value. As a result the impact is direct and since its not necessarily left to our own experience in interpreting it.

Yes, ok, this makes a lot of sense, and I don't think your effort is feeble at all. But I'm still returned to a question I made earlier: "Is the literalness and directness of a filmic image of violence in itself a moral reason to abbhor said depiction?" I think we would agree that what you said above means the filmmaker has a greater responsiblity, but we should make clear just what precisely they should be responsible for. The reaction of their audience? The psychic well-being of a viewer? Social mores? Philosophic ideals (ie. not being nihilistic with the violence)?

[Morbii]

I think the whole book vs film debate may have more to do with the viewer/reader than anything else. With written words, one can only imagine as far as they're able whatever horrific event they are reading about. Those that don't care to visualize what this might mean will have a more tame reaction to it than had they viewed it, while those that simply don't care and/or enjoy it might have a more "imaginative" sense about it. Perhaps the outcry involves those who feel the imaginary version of something is so horrid that they can't possibly imagine having to experience someone else's (who's undoubtedly more fucked up than them for making it) vision of it in a more "perceptive" (e.g. can leave a lot less to the imagination) medium.

edit: I wrote this without having read Tribe's last piece

[Mr Sausage]

On the other hand, apparently a total of 67 people have fainted while hearing Chuck Palahniuk read his short story, Guts.

[knives]

That's because they are dumb enough to hold their breath.

[Sloper]

Very interesting discussion(s). I had a couple of thoughts:

I also try to avoid actualities like the video of the Daniel Pearl execution and the recent Wikileaks video of the journalist and other civilians being shot (even though ABC happily foisted it on me without warning during This Week this past Sunday. Thanks, assholes).

I really don't like 'real' material - mostly the indefensible animal violence of the Italian cannibal films, but I also cannot stomach the Brakhage autopsy film despite it obviously having far more 'merit' as a piece of work. I'd much rather people fake it and try and create the same feelings through artistic means than shock ones

This was also prompted by the conversation between knives and Tribe. I’d be interested to know how people feel about the execution footage in The Passenger, which I gather is real. You can justify it and rationalise it in all sorts of ways – if I say that it seems unnecessary, out of place, disconnected from what’s actually going on in the narrative, all these criticisms could be turned around to support the inclusion of the footage. But despite being a rabid Antonioni fan, I find the film as a whole crass and pretentious, and the showing of a real human being’s agonised death compounds the sense that Antonioni just didn’t have anything to say with this one, and was throwing in whatever he could to try and stimulate his jaded arthouse audience. The hyper-intellectual tone of the context, the sense that we’re supposed to think the director is making a profound statement about the unflinching, unfeeling ‘eye’ of the camera (and those of the journalist/film-maker behind it, and those of the spectators in the cinema), only makes this episode more offensive, and even makes me slightly ashamed to be a film-lover. And I don’t care if “that’s the point”, because the film seems to me to fail as a work of art; if I thought it had something valid, interesting or coherent to say I might find it easier to accept. In other words, this strikes me as an irresponsible use of real-life violence in a work of art; but I know a lot of forum members swear by this film, so it would be nice to hear others’ views.

Morality, for me, does not come from preventing the possibility of people behaving immorally, and therefore I cannot abide by the idea that movies of a certain level of violence should be opposed because they might desensitize a viewer to their contents. Morality begins with experience; if you cannot choose, then you have nothing to be moral about.

Here’s an interesting (I hope) medieval anecdote for you. There is a famous 13th-century French poem called The Romance of the Rose, which depicts (in the form of an allegorical dream vision) a young man’s prolonged attempts to seduce and copulate with a young woman; the poem ends with an allegorical description of the sex act, after which the dreamer wakes up. In about 1400, several prominent writers and theologians got into an argument (conducted via letters) about whether this extremely popular and influential poem was immoral or not. The prosecution – represented most prominently by the great poet Christine de Pizan - complained that the poem's authors had composed an Ovidian handbook for lustful men, teaching them how to ruin women; the book was corrupting its readers. The defence argued that the poem was intended ironically, and that its readers were supposed to pick up on the subtle, but fierce, mockery to which erotic love was being subjected; in fact, it was a morally improving work, capable of showing lustful young men the error of their ways. Neither side could give any ground, and the dispute remained insoluble. It continues to this day, in back-and-forths between academics who argue over whether the Rose is a frank celebration of love, or a scathing critique of it. The dispute is insoluble because of the text’s fundamental ambiguity: you can read it either way, and in a sense it serves as a moral barometer for the reader. You can judge what sort of person you are by how you react to and engage with the story. Both sides of the argument anchor their points on claims about the poem’s audience: one side says the readers are naturally suggestible and lustful, the other says those same readers are intelligent and discerning.

I think it’s the same with these debates about the effects of screen violence. Those who decry any kind of censorship often seem to take it for granted that audiences are morally aware and responsible for their own decisions, while those who decry representations of violence often seem to take it for granted that audiences are a lot of trigger-happy sponges, poised to re-enact whatever atrocities they witness in the cinema. It’s a little bit like supermarkets doing special offers on Pepsi and chocolate, then putting huge stacks of these products right in the entrance-way. Banning them from doing this would be repressive and impractical, and of course the consumer has to take responsibility for what they eat, but the provider should have a sense of responsibility as well. Today, films are more powerful than books, for the reasons Domino has given and, even more so, because they go out to a larger mass audience who, more often than not, consume them communally rather than in solitude. I’d hate to derail the thread into yet another Griffith discussion, but the example of The Birth of a Nation is sufficient to show the kind of instantaneous, knee-jerk (in contrast to the Bible) power a successful film can wield.

In a way I’m even more hard-line about this than lubitsch, in that I have a problem with any film that presents human suffering and asks us to take direct enjoyment in it: that means any film where the good guys win and the bad guys lose. Even when I was five, narratives like that made me uncomfortable. Thus I find Farquaad’s fate at the end of Shrek more morally objectionable than the entirety of Audition. The problem I have with things like Saw is that they seem to imply a certain amount of ‘poetic justice’ in the torments inflicted on the victims. A film that showed a completely innocent person undergoing terrible suffering for no reason would be harder to sit through – Aristotle himself would disapprove of it – and less commercially viable. And that would be my concern: that representations of violence in film become more and more ‘distancing’, more geared towards the ‘spectacle’ of violence as something to be enjoyed for its own sake, and altogether less ambiguous, less interested in engaging the spectator’s emotions and intellect. Maybe I am talking about desensitisation, though I think that word has become a cliché. It would worry me to think that this extremely powerful form of mass communication and entertainment was pandering to, and nourishing, the callousness and sadism of a mass audience. I would never suggest banning extreme violence in films – it can be used to tremendous effect – but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to foster a sense of responsibility among film producers, distributors, etc, such as Matt describes. Now I'm starting to sound like Mary Whitehouse, so I'll stop...