Red in Tooth and Claw: An Archaeology of Screen Violence

R. Indulal
Associate Professor of English
S.D. College, Alappuzha

Violence has been the most fascinating art experience from the beginning of human
history. We have a long history of expressing and cherishing the most violent
experiences in epics and tragedies. The whole question of the fascination of violence
has been confronted and explained by literary theory from the time of Aristotle using
concepts of pleasure and catharsis. One of the implications of representing violence
has been the arousal of pity and fear for a proper purgation of these emotions. Apart
from this cathartic effect of represented violence, there has probably been a thread of
the fascination we spoke about for sheer violence, though it was not always visibly
represented in Greek theatre. Where the visuals remained hermetically cleaned, the
verbal took over and became gruesomely violent. It may also be true that suffering is
the most enduring of human emotions, with an appeal that is universal and eternal.
Artistic expression of violence entails a reliving of the violence human race
lived through in the hunter-gatherer stage in which humans shared a jungle space that
is red in tooth and claw. Fighting for survival involved violent interventions that were
made unnecessary by a more settled life in a more civilized surrounding. One of the
dilemmas of artistic representation of violence is that it prompts the reliving of an
entirely uprooted emotion, an emotion rendered pointless by culture. But, this
aestheticizing of violence allows us to return to this violence in a risk free

environment and thus satisfy some very primal instinct that we have kept hidden and
repressed. Onscreen violence is gratifying and harmless as it is without any immediate
danger of retaliation. Nobody has yet been killed or maimed by a screen hatchet.
Violence has become a game that teaches skills that are incongruous in cultured life.
Screen violence also has a history as long as the history of narrative cinema:
many consider the 1903 movie The Great Train Robbery as the movie that initiated
cinema into the dynamics of violence as a gratifying as well as saleable proposition.
Early movies like D.W. Griffiths Intolerance depicted gruesome scenes like
decapitations with a kind of relish that suggested this kind of graphic violence was
close to the inherent character of cinema, which depicted movement and made chases,
shootings and maiming visually pleasurable. But this kind of unfettered depiction of
violence led to large scale public protests and prompted the Hollywood film industry
to protect itself by establishing a production code that restricted movie violence and
kept it to a minimum from the 1930s onwards. But many directors tried to stretch
these rules to incorporate more and more violent scenes until it almost broke down
ushering in an age of ultra violence characterized by graphic murders, shooting, and
blood chilling horror. The new trend was institutionalized by scrapping the 1930s
Production Code for a more liberal, tolerant set of rules that permitted more sex and
violence through the G-M-R-X rating which helped producers to bypass restrictions
imposed by the presence of young audiences by making R or X rated movies that only
adults watch. The new code was vehemently defended by the Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA) which now advocated a revolution in taste and
expression. The 1960s in America saw an upsurge of youth culture which was more

liberal and undeterred, and therefore hardly could relish the constraints imposed by
the Production Code and around 45 percent of the ticket sales for movies comprised
this young audience.
To capture this young audience, the MPAA believed that films would
have to become more attuned to contemporary mores, which adherence
to a thirty-six-year-old Production Code prevented. The periods
general social turmoil, its climate of political violence, and, most
especially, the war in Vietnam convinced many film makers and the
MPAA that movie violence paled next to the real-life bloodshed in the
nations cities and the jungles of South-East Asia. (Prince 8)
Many filmmakers thought the real-life violence called for and justified the depiction
of ultra violence on screen. Thus the 1960s saw the deluge of movies like The Dirty
Dozen, Bonnie and Clyde, A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Apart from their cultural baggage they were also aided by the new techniques
of cinema that Hollywood had either invented or copied from other film makers.
Multi-camera shooting, slow motion and montage editing that Akira Kurosawa used in
movies like The Seven Samurai added pace and variety and hence graphic detail to the
violent scenes in Hollywood movies. Arthur Penn, director of Bonnie and Clyde added
what are called squibs to give greater reality effect to bullet strikes with spurting blood
and bursting skin. Prince writes:
Squibs were condoms filled with fake blood, concealed within an actors
clothing, and wired to detonate so as to simulate bullet strikes and blood

sprays. Squibs enabled film makers to graphically visualize the impact

of bullets on the human body, a detailing that is absent in films prior to
1967 and which helped give violence in these earlier periods an unreal
and sanitized appearance. (10-11)
Together, these techniques made movies gorier and more palpably violent, satisfying
the age that was constantly asking for more.
Closely following the trend in Hollywood, the India film world also turned to
more violence in the 1970s. Triggered by the Indo-Pak war and a general mood of
political dissatisfaction, the Indian polity also appears to have been ready for the
picturesque violence that appeared on Indian screens through movies like Zanjeer
(1973), Sholay (1975), Deewar (1975), and Insaaf Ka Tarasu (1980). The Seventees
created the myth of the angry young man using the tall figure and bass voice of
Amitabh Bacchan whose rise to stardom is almost synonymous with this rise of
violence. He personified the avenger hero.
This avenger-hero who evolves into a human personification of violence
has some common characteristic features: he generally comes from
common working stock he is not highly educated if he has had good
filial roots, he alienates himself from them, at least physically, if not
emotionally he is essentially a loner and thrives on his loneliness thus,
it hardly occurs to him to question the use of violent means for a violent
end, often, his own. (Chatterji 12)

This violence is often accepted as the only possible means of achieving the just
retribution the avenger hero is seeking. The ultra violence of the seventies has been
followed by sex, and, more recently, sexual violence as represented in movies such as
the Bandit Queen. The rise of crime and violence in Indian films have been blamed for
the rising violence against women in India, and the comparatively low security India
gives to its women (Mahapatra).
As Chatterji rightly notes, the whole question of screen violence and its impact
on society is a vexed one:
This debate between those who believe that films inspire violence in real
life and those who believe that it is the other way round that it is real
life violence that reflects itself through films, goes on endlessly, more
often for its own sake than for finding reasonable answers. The main
question that arises out of this dilemma is is violence necessary? (6)
The group of critics, psychologists, educators and sociologists who hold that screen
violence can beget real life violence is still very vehemently strong, though the
number of detractors who believe that movies do not have such power is equally fierce
in their arguments. They even go to the extent of arguing that art never have had that
kind of impact. According to them, there is even evidence that crime rate has
significantly fallen on the day of the wide release of an ultraviolent movie. Dahl and
Della Vigna analyze the crime rate on days of release and are surprised to find that
crime rate dropped by 1.1 to 1.2 percent on days of such release. The night time effect
was more dramatic.

For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie,

respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9 and 2.1 percent. Non-violent
movies have no statistically significant impact. Unlike in the psychology
experiments, therefore, media violence appears to decrease violent
behavior in the immediate aftermath of exposure, with large aggregate
effects. (Dahl and Della Vigna 2)
They find the reason for this in most of the criminals being busy watching the movies
since, being criminal minded, they are naturally and compulsively drawn to these
movies. That means, the reason for this drop in crime has nothing to do with the
criminals turning less violent due to some benign influence of screen violence. Even
Dahl and Della Vigna do not sound very convinced or conclusive when they suggest
such a possibility, though of course their overall conclusion is that watching violent
movies has no short term impact on real life violence. But then, the arguments of the
opposite camp are also equally compelling. Irving Kristol writes:
If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also
to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play, or a
movie). You have to believe, in other words, that all art is morally trivial
and that, consequently, all education is morally irrelevant.
(Qtd in Westmore)
The psychological impact of screen violence may not be measurable by the shockingly
efficient methodology used by Dahl and Della Vigna, but laboratory experiments have
tried to prove such an impact. James B, Weaver of Virginia Tech and Dolf Zillmann
of the University of Alabama conducted two studies that provided unquestionable

evidence that subjects become more violent after exposure to gratuitous screen
violence (Harris). In a study conducted by the two researchers, they
found that men who perceived themselves as socially deviant and
egocentric (Eysencks version of psychotic) were more likely to accept
violence as a means of resolving societal conflicts after watching four
movies with gratuitous violence. Watching old-style violence or horror
movies did not have that effect. The psychotic men also more strongly
endorsed the death penalty after watching such movies. (Harris)
Though we are not talking about murders or large scale violence, the effect of long
term exposure to violence is definitely not insignificant.
When it comes to the impact of screen violence, there are two types of
violence: strong violence and weak violence. The representation of violence without a
show of the victims suffering is weak and without any detrimental impact on the
viewer. When the suffering of the victim is shown, it becomes strong violence, which
causes what psychologists call counter empathy. Spectators suffer with the victims
and are exhilarated when the villain gets punished. Having felt joy at the sight of the
screen villains gruesome punishment, the spectators are likely to resort to violent
punishment of ones real life villains. Thus the violence of Bonnie and Clyde and
Scarface are of strong violence whereas the violence of the Bond movies, however
copious their point of origin, is weak since the sufferer usually omitted.
After arguing that the effect of perceived aggression can either be physical or
in the form of aggressive thought, Anderson et al make it clear that small statistical
data on direct causal connection between screen violence and actual violence need not

be interpreted as an indication of actual impact: There are many circumstances in

which statistically small effects have large practical consequences. Perhaps the most
relevant circumstances are when small effects accumulate over time and over large
proportions of the relevant population (Anderson et al 83). The authors also point
out that the impact of media violence works out when other contributing factors
converge at the right time. They write:
The large number of contributing factors points to the complexities of
understanding social and psychological causation in a context of human
development. The extant research literature clearly reveals that exposure
to violent media plays an important causal role in violence in modern
society. (105)
Anderson et al strongly recommend immediate measures to reduce the risk of children
and young people watching too many violent movies or cartoons and other media.
Violence has been presented as the solution for most of lifes problems. This
kind of solution had direct reference to life in the early stages of human life when, in
the jungle, humans had to fight it out with much superior predators and violence was
the tool used by humans for survival. But by the time movies began, such violence
had become gratuitous as a solution since society had already been reestablished on
the basis of culture. Culture as a mode of living is opposed to violent solutions though,
as an ideology, it is itself an internalization of violence. Violence in art, therefore,
works not because it is validated as an overt problem solver, but since, as expression,
it gives free vent to the violence culture has deliberately repressed. Screen violence
thus provides a vicarious surrogate satisfaction in achieving what is otherwise

suppressed and contraindicated by culture. Those who empathize with a violent hero
in demolition mode usually get pleasure from this imaginative and virtual
consummation of a desire that even a moderately common civic sense has taught them
to avoid. In Kerala, a state where children are taught to fear police men from early
childhood, a superhero, in khaki or outside it, bashing policemen up is the fulfillment
of one of the most fundamental fantasies. Instead of inspiring an attitude against
violence, this kind of violence only increases an appetite for it. The subtle
psychological justification that is granted by tacit consensus acts as a pretext for spurs
identification with the heros predilection for violence. Thus in most cases, and
especially in cases of people with slightly weak minds, screen violence engenders real
life violence.
Thus, children are the most susceptible to the negative impact of screen
violence since they are not able to distinguish between real life and a fantasy of real
life. They are quite likely to take violence and its screen representation as real. Having
been long exposed to screen violence, they are prone to grow up considering violence
as a real and valid option for resolving real life conflicts. Children are also more
empathetic, and more naturally drawn to the imitation of heroes, violent or otherwise.
Thus violent screen heroes act as bad role models. The case becomes more dangerous
when it comes to other media. A study conducted over 15 years by Huesmann and
others has proved that the long term effect of watching violence on TV is substantial
(Anderson et al 87). Anderson et al also make it clear that violent video games are
more dangerous even than violent TV. They continue:

There are several reasons for this. First, children are spending an
increasingly large amount of time playing video games. Second, a large
portion of these games contain violence. Third, because the children
playing these games are active participants rather than observers, they
may be at in-creased risk of becoming aggressive themselves. (90)
Exposure to violence in any of the media can be hazardous in the long run. The
solution is simple: even if you think it facetious to control representation of violence,
it is better to remember that, out of the many variants that engender violence,
representation of violence for entertainment is the easiest to avoid.

Works Cited
Anderson, Craig A., et al. The Influence of Media Violence on Youth.
Psychological Science in the Public Interest 4:3 (2003), 81-110. Print.
Chatterji, Shoma A. An Analysis of Violence in Hindi Cinema. E Book.
IdeaIndia.Com. 2008. Web.
Dahl, Gordon and Stefano Della Vigna. Does Movie Violence Increase Crime?
NBER Working Paper. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research,
2008. 2 Jan. 2013. <http://www.nber.org/papers/w13718> Web.
Harris, Sally. Violent Movies Can Increase Violent Responses in Real Life.
Science From Virginia Tech 1999. 3 Jan 2013.
<http://www.research.vt.edu/resmag/
sciencecol/media_violence.html> Web.

Mahapatra, Basudev. Rape, Violence and Movies: India Needs More Responsible
Cinema. HotnHit News. 2 Jan 2013. <http://hotnhitnews.com/RapeViolence-and-Movies-India-needs-more-responsible-cinema-HotnHitNews275029122012.htm> Web.
Prince, Stephen. Graphic Violence in the Cinema: Origins, Aesthetic Design and
Social Effects. Screening Violence. Ed. Stephen Prince. Depth of Field.
New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 2000. Print.
Westmore, Peter. Film: Hannibal Raises Issues of Film Violence. News Weekly
24 Feb. 2001, 2 Jan 2013. <http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=474>
Web.