Violence and (Geek) Entertainment

[payn]

To be glib, I grew up in the 80s, which I still think takes the crown for the most desensitized violence put onscreen whether it’s the jingoistic Rambo movies, or the “as long as the bad guy get his in the end” genre of cop/vigilante/military movies like Lethal Weapon, Death Wish, Dirty Harry, Commando, etc.

When someone stands in the middle of an open space, and fires an automatic weapon and all the bad guys fall down but the good guy doesn’t get a scratch, I kind of feel that we’ve already peaked as far as the gratuitous violence goes. So from that standpoint, I’m a bit wary of concerns that the violence in movies today is somehow too much. We’ve gone from military violence, to cop violence, to sci fi violence to super hero violence - a steady stream of 50 years or more of this. Anecdotally, I can’t say that somehow it’s gotten “worse”. I don’t know what studies or outcomes there have been. I feel this is a subject that just comes up from time to time when someone feels like they’ve been rubbed the wrong way by usually a particular movie or trend, but there seems to be little evidence of actual impact.

All I can say is…I’m totally normal despite a steady stream of Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies blowing stuff up.

Totally. Normal.

Its because you didnt watch Troma films.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I kind of agree with Reynard. King should know better than to expect a superhero movie to show realistic impact of violence. Its very much a genre which bends over backwards usually not to do that (ignoring deconstructions and the odd case of Invincible).

On the other hand I kind of agree about the car chase thing; that's common in otherwise quasi-realistic genres, and it seems like it should more reliably have collateral damage than most firefights.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

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.

Since switching from D&D to Cyberpunk Red, I've found how I describe the violence in the game has changed. I find myself less comfortable describing gun violence. Certainly, critical injuries require a certain degree of narrative gore, but for your average attacks I find myself more likely to leave it at "you take 12 points of damage."

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.

The death of Roy Fokker seared itself into my childhood brain.

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.

I was also struck by how Thunderbolts didn't really end with a big fight. That it was a fight not against something physical, but against depression and trauma.

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.

In the first Christopher Reeve Superman film, the climax of the movie isn't Superman punching people in a big fight, but racing against time to save people. Granted, you get that in spades with the second movie.

 

[billd91]

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.

The Marvel movies (or any superhero movies) don't deal with the consequences of violence... except when they do. Plenty of examples have abounded here about the impact of the violence on Tony Stark and his PTSD, Hawkeye and his PTSD and hearing loss. Though, of course, heroes are also unnaturally resilient to stuff like this except when dramatically useful.

But if King is really referring to the collateral damage of the people not directly affected... the same is basically true. In fact, it drives both the motives of a villain in a follow-up movie (Captain America: Civil War) and semi-villains in a TV show (Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as well as setting background in Avengers: Endgame. In fact, they make considerable use of consequences of some of the violence... when dramatically useful.

So it's really hard to tell exactly what King is getting at. Are they not navel-gazing over their destructiveness enough for him? Is he expecting too much from the genre since this usually doesn't go on too much in the comics either... unless dramatically useful for certain stories (I keep thinking of Chief Inspector Dai Thomas and his vendetta against supers after his wife was killed in a Hulk-Thor fight as a relatively rare example)? I get that the MCU hasn't really been very consistent in how it handles the fallout of superhero mayhem - on either the heroes, the bystanders, or the world at large (post snap). But I'm not sure I'd expect a great deal of coverage considering the genre is more about larger-than-life heroics taken on by people who do it because 1) they can and 2) they usually feel obligated to do so (with great power etc) and not the people cleaning up afterwards.

 

[bloodtide]

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.

To be fair, just about all fiction does not show any negative consequences. Or really any consequences.

Fiction focuses on a telling a story. There simply is no time to show consequences. And really, you would need a whole other book/movie/TV show just to cover the consequences.

Wonder if Mr. King feels the same way about Horror?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Some really great movies play with reality and expectations.

Ok.

 

[TiQuinn]

Wonder if Mr. King feels the same way about Horror?

In fairness, just about everything I’ve read from King is about the lead up to something horrific or its aftereffects on people.

 

[MGibster]

Since switching from D&D to Cyberpunk Red, I've found how I describe the violence in the game has changed. I find myself less comfortable describing gun violence. Certainly, critical injuries require a certain degree of narrative gore, but for your average attacks I find myself more likely to leave it at "you take 12 points of damage."

Descriptions of violence for me varies on what I'm running. For D&D, which I don't take at all seriously, I go for over-the-top descriptions of violence and gore that nobody could possibly take seriously. During my last session, a creature was killed by a Cloud of Daggers spell. I described it as what happens when you put something in a food processor, except there are no barriers to keep everything contained, so the paladin is covered the blood and little chunks of viscera of the mind flayer.

In my last Vampire chronicle, I shamelessly ripped off Jason Carl in LA Vampire by Night by starting each session with a little vignette of what various people in San Francisco had been up to during the day while the PCs slept. Like little Bobby Joe started kindergarten, Susan Swanson lost her husband of 45 years to cancer, George Gilson finally got that permit to construct some multipurpose buildings in the Tenderloin, etc., etc. Halfway through the chronicle, my vignette focused on the victims of the PCs. Jane Bodmann didn't know where she and her daughter would go after they were evicted. Her husband was an abusive jerk, but at least he kept a roof over their heads when he was alive. The parents of Eugene Thomas have grown increasingly distant from one another as they continue to process the death of their only son, who was violently attacked while on a night on the town with his friends.

The death of Roy Fokker seared itself into my childhood brain.

For some reason the death of Ben Dixon is seared into my brain.

 

[MGibster]

Wonder if Mr. King feels the same way about Horror?

Given that his books don't shy away from horrible things being done to people, I'm guessing he does.