Cinematic Violence: Can Anything Be Justified?

[knives]

I was with you for most of your post until you reminded me of something Sloper, appropriate name for this topic. I understand the viewpoint of basing the moral placement of an art by it's contents rather than some supposed political message. If you are right about The Passenger than it is a perverse work. As, following that logic at least, is most any Bay movie or any sort of Black hat/ white hat junk (Honestly though I think the worst is CSI and all of it's knockoffs which are the more disgusting things I've ever seen). But the clink I find in this argument's armour is Hellraiser (and by extension all of Clive Barkers work). That film is explicitly about the relations of sex and violence and rather intentionally makes the later act titillating through the former. Is Hellraiser, for lack of a better term, morally wrong because of it's plain goals or (going back to my original post) is that self awareness enough to pass it by as being outside of the same moral realm as CSI, Cannibal Holocaust, and this Serbian film? I first fell in love with films through what our 'beloved' Whitehouse termed as video nasties and I've still got a soft spot for them so this is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart.

Edit: Damn this is the second page I've started up.

[knives]

Thinking even more about this, which is truly frustrating me to the point of insomnia, I have to take back my The Passenger is perverse statement. After all isn't the footage of the bodies in Night and Fog just as, if not worse, than real life execution footage. Even if you were to hide behind the documentary cloak of that example Come and See, to my memory, features footage of holocaust victims in its finale and is that any less morally questionable than an execution. Going back to Night and Fog, a film which disturbed to the point I will never see it again, can that footage ever be considered morally acceptable?I suppose for this board that question is even more hanging with the release of Kapo which has been brought up recently for its controversies. While I prefer my existence ambiguous, the ambiguities of what horrors are morally acceptable to consume is one I wish didn't exist.

[Brian C]

The idea that films are more powerful than books is an interesting one, because my experience is rather different. I think it's pretty obvious that movies have a bigger impact, by way of their privileged place in pop culture vis a vis literature, but I typically find myself disappointed by filmed adaptations of books because they make something literal that previously existed in my imagination. For a long time, I thought I was simply disappointed that the filmmakers' vision of the material was different than mine, but I've since come around to believing that it was the very act of literalization that was a letdown for me. It's inherently limiting simply because it robs the viewer of the chance to envision things for themselves, and inevitably the movie doesn't have the power over me that the novel held.

Oddly enough, though, I still prefer film, to the point where I rarely read fiction these days. This is a stupid way to go about things, I realize.

[Mikos Stenopolis]

Any sort of violence in movies is justified because of one simple reason: it's not real. Because it's a movie I believe you have the right to put in and get away with anything you want. I'm not saying I like everything I see

[knives]

What about cases like in documentaries where the violence is real?

[Murdoch]

Something I've come to discover that has increasingly bothered me is how violence has been deemed much more acceptable than sex, in the US and from my experience at least. I've found people to be much more comfortable watching graphic violence than sex and I've never understood it. Perhaps in the US it's the Hays code effect where, because of past censorship, the public is struggling to catch up with the filmmakers, in that when these codes were lifted filmmakers were eager to exercise their creative freedom and audiences were reluctant to watch it. The Hays code was a bit more lenient toward depictions of violence, whereas depictions of actual sex were strictly forbidden and could only be hinted at. So I wonder if American culture's - and it may be other cultures as well, but I can only speak from my experience - discomfort with something gratuitously(?) sexual and relative ease watching something like torture porn is a vestige of its former censorship codes? I'm just putting forward the question, maybe others have found this disconnect between violence and sex not as apparent in their own lives.

[mfunk9786]

I was watching Hostel yesterday (which I consider our era's Peeping Tom or Straw Dogs (not in terms of quality, but in terms of being unfairly maligned because of its violent content)) and I thought to myself, "Wow, because of the gore and the horrifying circumstances, I'm a lot further down the edge of my seat than usual!" If one can tolerate that sort of thing, why should it bother those who can't? It (along with, from what I've read, the violence in A Serbian Film) fits into the plot of the film and is a necessary element for what the filmmaker is trying to do. To me, that's a lot more legitimate than The Human Centipede, the August Underground films or the Guinea Pig films. I'm not sure why Hostel now has to be the movie that's name-dropped whenever unnecessary film violence is discussed.

[LQ]

I may be wrong, but I interpreted that Roth's intent with Hostel was to give us a splashy, 'enjoyable' thriller in the mode of the grindhouse pictures that he himself enjoys. I have much less of a problem with movies that are sincere and up-front in their usage of violence; more of a problem with movies like A Serbian Film because the filmmakers are insisting that their usage of such extreme violence is politically motivated. The Spielberg anecdote that TomReagan brought up illustrates this point: A confident artist with a profound point can usually accomplish more with less, and knows it. As much as the screenwriter would like to stuff his filth in the ill-fitting suit of "social commentary", I see it as having no merit save incredibly cheap shock-value.

[Brian C]

I'm just putting forward the question, maybe others have found this disconnect between violence and sex not as apparent in their own lives.

No, I think you're right about this. In fact, I would argue the proposition that we're dealing with "former" censorship codes; still today the ratings board will "punish" graphic sex much more so than violence. Obviously you can get away with much more of both than you could under the Production Code but still the greater discomfort with sex than violence is palpable here in the US.

Perhaps the more disturbing question to ponder is whether sex is more acceptable when paired with violence than it is on its own. As a thought experiment, let's imagine two films:

Film A includes a protracted and brutal rape scene. While the gentials are strategically covered, the woman is shown more-or-less full frontal, while being cruelly beaten. Afterwards, in a separate scene, the rapist boasts to a buddy about the incident, using extremely graphic language about the physical damage he caused.

Film B includes a lengthy scene in which a blissful couple is enjoying the afternoon in bed. Both persons are shown fully nude, although again genital exposure is kept to a minimum. Let's say both persons go down on the other, and then we get a standard-issue montage where the actors writhe and thrust and then enjoy an implied (but tasteful!) climax. But the montage is longer than normal, and the action is more vigorous.

Honestly now, based on these two hypothetical scenes, which film seems more likely to get an 'R' versus an 'NC-17'? And which seems more likely to be marketed to the mainstream and pull in a huge opening weekend?

[mfunk9786]

Brian, you hit the nail on the head re: my disdain for the MPAA ratings board. It's disgusting.

[domino harvey]

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, violence functions as sex in a lot of these gory films, and the allure and interest they produce in fans is synonymous with arousal, which to me makes them more objectionable but to the masses somehow more acceptable? Society's fucked, &c

[Brian C]

Society's fucked, &c

Hard to say. As I've said, I share your concerns, but I don't immediately see how society in general is any worse off than it ever was. In fact, it seems to me that a lot of real-life violence, especially that directed at women and children, is tolerated far less than it was a generation or two ago (not that things are totally awesome yet in that regard or anything).

[knives]

I may be wrong, but I interpreted that Roth's intent with Hostel was to give us a splashy, 'enjoyable' thriller in the mode of the grindhouse pictures that he himself enjoys. I have much less of a problem with movies that are sincere and up-front in their usage of violence; more of a problem with movies like A Serbian Film because the filmmakers are insisting that their usage of such extreme violence is politically motivated. The Spielberg anecdote that TomReagan brought up illustrates this point: A confident artist with a profound point can usually accomplish more with less, and knows it. As much as the screenwriter would like to stuff his filth in the ill-fitting suit of "social commentary", I see it as having no merit save incredibly cheap shock-value.

This has always been my point of view also, basically the only way I allow myself to get away with Texas Chain Saw Massacre ect, even though more recent critical readings are attempting to tarnish that view. Also the arousal factor that Domino and others cite is indeed a problem. personally I don't think a film should get the blame of its audience so it should entirely depend on how the violence is depicted. For example the old Chain Saw depicted violence at its most disgusting and presented it in a horrifying way (even though the people acting in the violence obviously got their kicks). While in the new Chainsaw movie the violence was cleaned up in a more palatable way. In fact part of why I'm fine with Hostel is the violence is very ugly and not clean. Roth even mentions going out of his way to make the hand thing at the end not clean and comfortable. Of course I do have troubles with that film's possible homophobia, but that is for an entirely different thread.

[Mr Sausage]

Well, sadism by its very etymology implies a violence and cruelty that is sexual. To say that either modern society or cinema are responsible for the fetishization of violence is not historically accurate. Instead of sitting in a closet looking over a ragged, dog-eared penny-dreadful with pictures of women in corsets being whipped, people sit in a dark theater and watch Saw. Fetishized violence is more out in the open now, but that also means discourse on the subject is also out in the open, which might be more healthy.

The trend I notice is that people are willing to accept fetishistic violence so long as it's deliberately trashy, for example with Dario Argento's films, which are some of the more extreme examples of fetishized violence; or with Hostel, which LQ admitted had a lighter effect on her because of its deliberate echoes of old trashy films. Sado-sexual violence seems acceptable so long as the movie is announcing its lack of seriousness. To know something is trashy is, I think, a way to distance oneself from the material, and it is that very distance between spectator and stage/screen that Aristotle thought necessary for catharsis, the purged feeling that allowed audiences to witness horror on stage without being totally repulsed by it. Spectator pleasure, in this case, is not based on experiencing an awful act directly, but from experiencing an awful act on behalf of the creative circumstances surrounding it. In cinema particularly, I don't think it is the fetish itself which causes the pleasure but the mode in which fetishization is created or accomplished by the filmmaker. (I might post more on the idea of catharsis and creative exhuberance later).

[TMDaines]

It's funny though. Over in the UK you can't show a woman being held by the throat in porn. I presume it is fine in non-hardcore material if she is held by the throat but it has to be cut in R18 material. Never understood that one at all.

[colinr0380]

I have not yet seen The Passenger yet Sloper, but I suppose the same question could be applied to Bergman using the burning monk footage in Persona. I guess I'm a bit hypocritical about this and would probably accept its use if it were bought in news footage or something like that, where the director wasn't just orchestrating the carnage for the purpose of putting such material in their film. But just the use of such material can be troubling, and risks undermining the films which use it.

Again this relates back to a number of debates we've had on the forum over the years, such as whether Tarkovsky in Andrei Rublev was justified in filming the scene where the horse is tripped backwards off a ledge and then filming its pained broken-limbed thrasing around until it is eventually speared to death. It is an extremely powerful scene, underlining the senseless horror of the conflict taking place at that point, and is totally tied in with Tarkovsky's grand theme and use of horse imagery throughout the film. But is actually killing an animal, and in such a distressing way, justifiable in the service of a powerful statement in a film? I'd have much rather that it had been faked in some other way, even if would obviously have lessened the impact of that sequence. In that sense I guess I consider that the life of an animal is worth more than making a film, however great it may be. I personally feel that filmmakers should be able to explore any material that they wish to but to find a way of faking it - after all isn't that what films do? In addition to the cruelty and callousness (as well as opportunism) of using 'real' material in a fictional film, there is also the ironic way that the use of such material often undercuts the rest of the film by its sheer power of verisimilitude.

One of the reasons why Cannibal Holocaust and Jacopetti and Prospero's Africa Addio are extremely reprehensible but at the same time very powerfully instructive films is that they foreground this idea of the dangerously seductive power of capturing 'reality' on film. Where do you cross the line of simply objectively capturing events from a distance and move to restaging events that you missed, or manipulating events to get the result you desire? And how much does your presence with a camera crew affect the 'truth' you are trying to capture, even if you do try to minimise your presence?

And if you do capture everything from a respectful distance without interfering at all with the events you have filmed, the tone of the film might still end up being disastrously skewed with the addition of a particularly deluded, partisan, flippant or sneering voiceover, or by any number of decisions made in the editing room.

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.

I would agree with this. I find there to be very little more morally objectionable in cinema than my own personal 'Axis of Evil': Oklahoma!, Fiddler On The Roof and Air Force One. But they're by no means alone in their pernicious foulness!

[knives]

Fiddler on the Roof? I'm obviously missing something so could you please explain.

[colinr0380]

I briefly posted my issues with that film and Oklahoma! here!

[tenia]

Funny thing is that, when death is dealt in a cool way (James Bond, action movie for "family"), it's OK, but it's the worst : death as an unrealistic end. "Oh, he just grabbed a machine gun and shot 230 people with no blood, no awful death, that's OK, my kid can watch it".

But Little Miss Sunshine is rated R.

I always remember of Silent Hill 2. It's a wonderful game. Probably my best experience ever as a player. Yet, it's a very harsh game.
But death is what it is. Violence is what it is.

When you show it the real way, as an hard thing to take and to deal with, censorship and family associations start bashing you. Because it involves the viewer, the player, to deal with what really is violence.

But show it in a cool way, like it's done today, even with movies like saw (whose motto may be "Gruesome is awesome") and it's OK.
It's rated R too, like Little Miss Sunshine.

So, the question is not "violence ?".
It's "Representation of violence".

Take a game like Modern Warfare 2.

We can deal with dealing with unrealistic terrorist we have to kill. Thousands of them.
But put the player in killing ONE civilian, and everybody starts to say "It's awful ! How could they ?!"
I've played it, and I chose to play this part, and yes it was oppressing. But it's the best part of the game : it involves you, psychologically, to deal with killing, with torture, civilian casualties.

It shows the real consequences of violence.

And that's what seems to me to be the most dangerous thing : that, at one point, we start not to make difference anymore between violence and its representation.

Anything can be justified. But I really think it shouldn't be stylized anymore.

I prefer much more Salo than any video-game-like action movies, where the hero can kill 230 bad guys, but guys anyway, and nobody cares. Be cause "Hey ! H'es the good guy, they're the bad guys, I hope he will kill them all, motha'ucka !"

[knives]

I briefly posted my issues with that film and Oklahoma! here!

Oh, I never really thought of that, but now I see how someone could have problems with Fiddler's ending. At least you've given me an excuse to watch it again.

[swo17]

I'm not sure I completely understand the point of this debate. It's not as though the members of an internet forum have the power to eradicate snuff films from the face of the earth if that's the option that were to win in a poll. Evil exists, both in real life and in film, and like Sex and the City or Alvin and the Chipmunks sequels, it's not going away any time soon. All one can do is practice a kind of self-censorship, not even reading about films that you just know will be of no redeeming value to you (however you happen to define value). Consider me, living my life just peachily without a care in the world until I clicked that link at the start of this thread. Now, unless I read several sources of compelling evidence that convince me that A Serbian Film may have some sort of redeeming artistic value, I have no interest in ever seeing it, but in a sense I already have seen the worst parts now, because as you read the descriptions, you can't help but envision these scenes in your mind, and in all likelihood they play out much more horrifyingly there than they do on the screen. I can respond to this stimuli with disgust, shouting from the hills that "It's just not right!" but at best I'm only shouting into a void; at worst, I'm giving the film free publicity.

Now granted, if I refuse to see this or any other film, I automatically relinquish the right to engage in any sort of intellectual debate about the merits of the film (not least because my only argument would be "But I heard this about it!") but from another way of viewing it, I am freeing myself from the burden of having to devote any more hours of my life mired in the muck of something that disgusts me (with the obvious caveat that one man's muck may be another's nectar). Which is why I never judge anyone who refuses to watch certain kinds of films, as long as they don’t spend all of their time whinging about people who do watch them or the fact that they exist at all. In some senses, those who avoid certain kinds of films might be more simple or less cultured, but they may also be a little bit happier. Who am I to say?

I am admittedly not very good though at practicing what I preach, as I feel an almost debilitating urge to see and have an opinion about nearly everything. Though I am fairly proud of my discipline when it comes to music. To wit, I haven’t listened to a radio station of my own accord in at least ten years (though I still listen to loads of music). I’m sure if I did, I would vehemently hate, for example, the Black-Eyed Peas, though to be honest, I couldn’t even tell you one song they've released. People are constantly telling me about songs that they can't stand that they have to hear over and over again on the radio, and I just have to respond that I have no idea what they're talking about and I'm sorry for them, but it will be all right, there there, everything comes out right in the end. Meanwhile, ignorance sweeps over me like a calming ocean breeze.

Or consider my parents, who scarcely watch any films at all. While they surely have their share of problems to deal with in life, one of them does not involve coming to grips with a world in which this Serbian film exists. Perhaps there's a lesson there.

In any case, a more interesting question to me is not "Can the depiction of certain acts of violence in film be justified (i.e. should it be allowed to persist)?" but rather: Can any act of violence be justified on artistic grounds? In other words, is there a line that you can cross beyond which you can no longer get out of it by calling it art? If Greenaway or Pasolini had filmed scenes in some of their films depicting the acts showcased in A Serbian Film, is there a way that they could do this (other than having the scenes occur offscreen) that would have some members of this forum rallying to their defense? Discuss!

[Tommaso]

In any case, a more interesting question to me is not "Can the depiction of certain acts of violence in film be justified (i.e. should it be allowed to persist)?" but rather: Can any act of violence be justified on artistic grounds? In other words, is there a line that you can cross beyond which you can no longer get out of it by calling it art? If Greenaway or Pasolini had filmed scenes in some of their films depicting the acts showcased in A Serbian Film, is there a way that they could do this (other than having the scenes occur offscreen) that would have some members of this forum rallying to their defense? Discuss!

As you expressedly mention two of my favourite directors whose work I think I know really well: I'd be certainly rallying to Pasolini's defense, probably also to Greenaway's, purely based on how I expect such a hypothetical film to be like. Quite apart from the fact that both of them came pretty close occasionally to what those infamous scenes in "A Serbian Film" and the others mentioned here seem to be like: remember the 'book-stuffing' scene in "Cook"? Not to speak of "Salo", of course.

The difference is in attitude: re-watching "Salo" after almost twenty years was a revelation for me, because I was now able to perceive all the distancing techniques that Pasolini uses (the strong formalisation, the almost entire absence of close-ups in the most gruesome scenes and so on) in order to avoid the effect of 'torture porn'. The film may be shocking, but it is never titillating in its use of violence. Greenaway seems to revel in gore much more, of course, but this revelling is so aestheticized and over-artsy that any idea of engaging with his art on any other level than pure intellectualism and/or aesthetic pleasure seems absurd to me. That's why I've always considered the mentioned scene in "Cook" and some others in the film as unnecessary graphic, although this film is a little bit of an exception in his work as he at least seems to try to engage viewers on a somewhat more emotional level (or perhaps this happens accidentally because of Michael Gambon's truly intense performance as Spica). While Greenaway's over-playful attitude can be problematic occasionally and I'm not sure whether he has anything to say apart from giving us illustrated lectures on art history (which can be great in itself, so why not), Pasolini's approach has always been dead serious, especially in the most 'shocking' parts of his films. "Salo" had to be the way it is in order to bring across the social and political points that the director wanted to make in my view. I see the same underlying seriousness in approach (though with completely different underlying ideas, of course) even in the gore-fest that Jodorowsky's "El Topo" occasionally is.

And that is the main reason why I do watch and even admire these films, while I absolutely refuse to see many other films mentioned in this thread, and for the same reasons that you gave in your post. I have better things to do than to be violated by images only for the sake of 'knowing these films', when everything I see and hear about them convinces me that they're trash that only serves for the director's wish for provocation or making easy money. I may be wrong with some films, of course. If I had been a 'conservative' viewer in Great Britain 1960, I would surely have believed the critics about "Peeping Tom", and would of course have missed a masterpiece. But in these much faster days of 2010, critical opinions about "A Serbian Film" would probably be more divergent than they are, with some well-respected people finding the worth of it if it possessed any. The "Antichrist"-debate is a good example for what I have in mind.

[Mr Sausage]

That's why I've always considered the mentioned scene in "Cook" and some others in the film as unnecessary graphic, although this film is a little bit of an exception in his work as he at least seems to try to engage viewers on a somewhat more emotional level (or perhaps this happens accidentally because of Michael Gambon's truly intense performance as Spica). While Greenaway's over-playful attitude can be problematic occasionally and I'm not sure whether he has anything to say apart from giving us illustrated lectures on art history (which can be great in itself, so why not),

It's worth noting that, as far as I can tell, Greenaway is doing his own version of 17th century Jacobin revenge tragedy. Consider for example a scene from Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, in which a character is tricked into kissing a skull--he's told it's a beautiful lady behind a veil--layered with a corrosive poison which burns away his lips. Then his tongue is nailed to the table with a daggar and his eyelids held open so he can watch his wife cuckold him with a servant boy until he finally dies of his injuries. This all takes place on-stage. Jacobin revenge tragedies were always deliberately distasteful and over-the-top, and as a consequence, highly artificial in a grandiose manner. They consider human behaviour and psychology at its most extreme and most alienating. Greenaway, I take it, was attempting a similar kind of atmosphere (with shades of ancient tragedies, ie. Atreus feeding his twin brother his own children), and I think extreme acts are necessary to a play or film or whatever interested in the extremes of human emotion.

[zedz]

And Elizabethan tragedy had its own strand of gory one-upmanship too. Look no further than the several on-stage atrocities of Titus Andronicus for one fledgling playwright's attempt to get the attention of a jaded audience.

[domino harvey]

Only fitting that it's his worst play! (Well, behind Troilus and Cressida anyways)