Sean, Mike Frank talks about violence in terms of "enactment." Like you, Mike
raises moral and ethical questions about violence. In terms of film, whether the
violence is actual or staged is beside the point in terms of drama, but not
beside the point in terms of spectacle and its related dynamic.

Mike, you raise a point with the question of "repugnant" violence. However, I am
deliberately avoiding a discussion of such sensibilities.

Imagine a scene where a car wreck victim is brought into an emergency room. The
patient's heart has stopped. The emergency room workers go to work, first making
the necessary incisions, then sawing the septum in half, next pulling the
ribcage apart to expose the chest cavity
. . .   .  A doctor's hand reaches in to massage the heart.

Now we could have a good documentary here or a totally charged emergency-room
drama. What we also have is a bloody mess, but how are we to condition the
violence as repugnant? That depends on our own moral and ethical sensibilities
as it does the moral and ethical context the film sets up.

But what happens next? Does the doctor suddenly rip the beating heart out of the
chest cavity, hand it to a nurse who sprinkles it with salt and hands it to an
alien, who greedily devours it and belches out a loud "Yum"?

So, we have repugnance on at least two different levels: one, the visceral
response, where we have a sympathetic physical reaction (like sympathy
vomiting), and two, the moral/ethical response, where we object to something
because it's not right.

An aesthetic response can also be a way of saying that something's not right--in
the Aristotelian sense, action as related to plot as opposed to action as
spectacle . . .  .

Sean, violence is totally categorized as well, but usually in relationship to
plot rather than the type of violence itself:

Horror, mystery, suspense, thriller, crime, detective, . . .

War, . . .

Low comedy, slapstick, burlesque, grotesque, satire, pornography, . . .

With the plot as objective, the conditions for effective use have, in the
Aristotelian sense,  been met, i.e. you have produced something more than a
spectacle if you have produced a tragedy.

Then there are films that celebrate spectacle such as  _Faces of Death_ . . .
.

But even spectacle has a dynamic.

JMC




----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean Delgado" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 8:12 PM
Subject: Re: About violence


>why would we want o limit violence to "the graphic re-presentation via
>enactment [in images OR in sounds] of physical harm to living >beings . .
>." ?
I like that idea, it wouldn't be limiting as much as defining, it's a step
towards organizing movie violence.  But with the `enactment' part you leave
out all the real violence that exists in movies, from Raoul Walsh really
breaking his leg in `birth of a nation' to Vic Morrow getting hit with a
helicopter in twilight zone, and all the other numerous times when people
really were injured shooting violent scenes and the producers leaving that
actual injury in the final product.

People are mentioning porn in relation to violence, but realize porn is
totally categorized, and viewers actually select these movies along those
lines.  Go to the adult section in any video store and you'll see its
completely broken down into categories: DP, group, couples, gay, gonzo etc,
etc.

Movie violence is not organized at all, other than maybe, slasher movies.
One look at any of the many `top 100' lists and you'll see 95% of the movies
have violence of one kind or another, I'm not thinking about some volcano
blowing up, but people shooting, beating and hurting each other in graphic
ways.  And if you count vicious psychological violence, then one could
comfortably say 100% of those lists involve at least some form of violence.

I don't think any other art form depicts nearly as much physical injury as
the cinema, and subsequently all the other media that follows, TV etc.
Maybe it has to do with its simple appeal to the masses, maybe because its
so easy to do and its an easy way out.  The filmmakers know the movie is
dragging at such and such a place so they throw in a cannon ball death, or
some nonsense to keep people hooked.

If movie violence were organized and categorized I'm sure some threads and
patterns would emerge, and from that a greater understanding and
self-censorship, because the filmmaker, when faced with a lull in his
project wouldn't be so fast to dump in any sort of violence, but would
instead consider the types of violence that can be used to bring about the
desired reaction and would also know that certain types of violence will not
be appropriate for certain types of movies.

The same applies to nudity right now.  Cinematic sexuality has been
organized and categorized to the point that if you ask an actress to take
off her shirt in a scene she would ask why, and as director, you (hopefully)
would have considered the type of sexuality needed for the scene and use
that accordingly.





"Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the
winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is
perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial
guardian of the rule of law."
-US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens


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