Dear film-philosophers,
I know I am coming into this debate a little belatedly, but I thought
I'd like to add a few thoughts, at first by way of an anecdote.
A friend's father, a rather conservative well educated man in his late
50s, complains about the violence of the recent film version of
Shakespeare's play "Titus Andronicus", "TITUS". He and his wife tell of
their desire to walk out of the cinema during the screening. Several
weeks earlier, he had told me how much they had enjoyed Ridley Scott's
"Gladiator" without mentioning the violence at all.
To my mind these films pivot around very similar themes of family, power
and revenge. Indeed, they even intersect historically by taking up
particular moments in the histroy/story of the Roman Empire.
As cinema, however, these films stand almost at diametrically opposite
points of the circle. "Titus" is highly stylised, and almost theatrical
in its use of sets. It appropriately engages with the written material
of Shakespeare's play wherein, I believe, lies much of the violence,
rather than on the screen itself--where compared to "Gladiator" there is
very little 'graphic' violence. "Titus" does not present violence as
such, but rather violence as an 'idea'. Perhaps this violence takes
place too close to the viewer for comfort because it takes place within
their mind, they are forced by the film to 'think' the violence.
Gladiator, while also very stylised in a different way, presents
violence as spectacle. If you look closely, however, you will notice
that the 'on screen' violence is somewhat tempered by the editing
process. Moments of utter gore, such as an opponent being sliced in half
with a sword is effected by way of a cut so that the actual 'cutting' of
the body is never actually seen, all we see is the before and
after...the highest moment of violence takes place in the gap between
shots, we never see the blade go all the way through. My question is,
does the editing in Gladiator somehow disperse some of the violence by
keeping us separated from it (separated in the sense that Colin McCabe
used it in "The Politics of Separation"), but shows us enough to get the
point across, to appeal to the desire for spectacle in (target)
audiences without involving us/them in the production of the violence itself?
Regards,
Michelle Langford
P.S. For those of you who know me...My Ph.D. has been successfully
examined and I will graduate in April.
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