Violence and (Geek) Entertainment

[MGibster]

This thread is inspired by Stephen King's recent comment regarding the violence of Marvel movies being almost "pornographic." In a nutshell, King's criticism is the movies show all sorts of destruction to a city but very little on how that impacts the people there. i.e. No blood. It's a similar argument I heard Larry Hama make when he said the 80s GI Joe cartoon was "morally bankrupt" for depicting violence without anyone suffering from the natural consequences. For those who might not know, Hama wrote the 1980s GI Joe comic and most of the bios for the figures sold by Hasbro. The comic book was quite different from the cartoon and when the Joes or Cobra shot at someone they might actually injure or kill them.

I'm not here to say fictional violence is necessarily bad. Like many of you, I play table top RPGs and most of those revolve around violence. Except for Cyberpunk 2020 where gameplay revolves around creating a bakery where you treat your employees with respect and pay them a living wage. But I've had a similar thought to King that one of the problems with violence in the media is that we don't very often see the negative consequences.

I think more media, even media aimed at children, should better show the consequences of violence. Don't go thinking I'm a monster, I'm a reasonable person after all, at least I think I am, so it's not like I want to expose a six year old to an episode of GI Joe where Duke holds Scarlet as she attempts to hold in her intestines after Stormshadow guts her with a katana. While that's a reasonable consequences to having someone slash your belly with a razor sharp sword, I'm inclined to keep things age appropriate. And I do think injuries and even character deaths can be age appropriate for children.

 

[Reynard]

I think the degree to which you show the consequences of violence in entertainment is a function of genre and expectations as opposed to morality. When we are talking about violence in other contexts: sure, it's really important. But human storytelling has always moderated the impact of violence relative to other aspects of storytelling and TTRPGs are any different.

 

[TiQuinn]

I agree to a certain extent but not probably for the same reason. I’ve noticed just a trend towards action movies feeling like they’re filmed in completely sterile environments where nothing else is actually happening besides the action. It occurred to me when watch Spectre recently when Bond and Dave Batista’s character have a car chase throughout the streets of Rome. And the streets are just barren. No cars, no people, nothing to distract from the Aston Martin and the Jaguar racing through empty streets except for one scene with a small car that happens to get it Bond’s way as a joke. I found it kind of distracting, and I was reminded to some of the great car chase scenes of the past like The French Connection (famously filmed recklessly on busy New York streets), or To Live and Die in L.A.’s highway chase. The people reacting to the action help establish it as a real thing, and the world as being real. It feels like that’s being forgotten in many cases.

 

[jian]

Both King and Hama have good points, and not just about Marvel and GI Joe. There is something dishonest about showing violence without consequences.

That was something I liked about Thunderbolts - in the final conflict scene there is a certain amount of almost accidental physical violence (debris falling on people, requiring our heroes to protect them) but the main violence is psychological, and it’s clear since we see the PCs go through it that it’s quite harrowing but survivable. OTOH the MCU will probably never revisit the consequences and talk about Void-induced trauma in future films.

Our table has become much more aware of this over time and so in any game violence tends to be the last resort - nobody wants to even shoot a stormtrooper unless it’s required (the last time it came up, the Jedi just kneecapped them). It depends on the genre and characters, of course, but none of us like inhabiting people who murder and maim as a matter of course and sleep well afterwards.

 

[TheSword]

It isn’t enough to just show the gore either. It’s why I’m a big fan of shows and books like the Witcher which show the full range and the consequences without glorifying it (like Game of Thrones). Generally when someone dies in the Witcher it is in some way sad, because protagonists and antagonists are properly fleshed out.

 

[TheSword]

I agree to a certain extent but not probably for the same reason. I’ve noticed just a trend towards action movies feeling like they’re filmed in completely sterile environments where nothing else is actually happening besides the action. It occurred to me when watch Spectre recently when Bond and Dave Batista’s character have a car chase throughout the streets of Rome. And the streets are just barren. No cars, no people, nothing to distract from the Aston Martin and the Jaguar racing through empty streets except for one scene with a small car that happens to get it Bond’s way as a joke. I found it kind of distracting, and I was reminded to some of the great car chase scenes of the past like The French Connection (famously filmed recklessly on busy New York streets), or To Live and Die in L.A.’s highway chase. The people reacting to the action help establish it as a real thing, and the world as being real. It feels like that’s being forgotten in many cases.

You say this but many European cities - particularly tourist heavy ones can become extremely quiet on back streets in the late evening as everyone is either at dinner, in a bar, or home. Obviously varies. I remember walking around Venice at 9pm and being amazed that we saw 3 people in about 30 minutes of walking, obviously Paris is busier but it’s not beyond the realms of possible. My gut feeling was that street chase was much later than 9pm!

 

[Benjamin Olson]

So I just rewatched the recent Superman movie, and this time around noticed even more how consistently they follow up nearly every bit of violence with little verbal or visual asides establishing that everyone is okay.

It was clearly a move to differentiate themselves from Man of Steel, and also to get back to the innocent spirit of old comic book and cartoon depictions, and given that they played it for laughs a bit with Superman diving to rescue a squirrel mid-Kaiju battle (also obviously meant to reinforce the naive do-gooder aspect of his character) it didn't bother me, but it was definitely an extreme choice.

In any case, I didn't mind the "Saturday morning cartoon" approach to the consequence of violence for that specific film, but I think it's possibly a very different equation when applied to more mundane violence by more ordinary characters. That said, it seems like media aimed more squarely at adults is full of plenty of works that show more realistic consequences of violence, and really most people will see plenty of media of plenty of types in their lives.