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Why Violent Films Are Bad for Us

Personal Perspective: Shocking violence in film may be the new normal.

Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay
Source: Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay

A lot has been written about the possible reasons why some people appear to enjoy violent movies. First of all, though, it needs to be said that not everyone enjoys them. Not surprisingly perhaps, it is men with aggressive tendencies and those who are low in empathy that have been found to like watching violence on screen more than those with more mellow personalities.

Shocking violence is the new normal

Violent movies, often classified simply as "action" films, are a constant evening fixture on certain TV channels and are widely available on many streaming services, as well as in movie theaters, and what used to be regarded as shocking violence has now become standard. We may get a warning at the beginning of a film about its violent content, but these warnings are quite meaningless: A recent movie I watched on the Holocaust (not violent, but very disturbing) had only two warnings: "smoking" and "drinking of alcohol."

Hollywood has traditionally been far more tolerant of violence than sex. However, this violence used to have a detached, impersonal quality. People died in droves in old Westerns and war films, but their deaths were distant and unreal, whereas a modern Quentin Tarantino movie celebrates violence and strives to make it personal, shocking, and immediate. And when violence and sex are mixed together, it is the explicitness of the sex that is perceived as problematic, as if there was little difference between a loving sex scene and one that depicts a sexual assault.

Catharsis

In some instances violence may be necessary to move a story forward, or to induce an emotional response that is relevant to that story. In many other instances, however, it seems that the violence itself is the whole point of a scene. It has been suggested that we enjoy such scenes because they are a sublimation of the violence against wrongdoers that we are not allowed to enact in real life. Watching the highly problematic character played by Robert de Niro in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver shoot the odious pimp played by Harvey Keitel, or Liam Neeson's character shooting lots of baddies in Taken, has an undeniably cathartic quality, but a lot of cinematic violence is inflicted on innocent victims, so the catharsis theory remains unconvincing.

Are they bad for us?

It is relevant to know why some people enjoy watching violence, but it is even more important to find out whether exposure to violence in films and TV may actually promote violence in real life. There is some empirical evidence that this is the case. In view of this, it seems strange that ever-increasing levels of violence in mainstream entertainment, sometimes grotesque, are not only tolerated by censors, but enthusiastically praised by critics. Curiously, there is also evidence that the general public (other than those with aggressive tendencies) doesn't actually enjoy violent scenes very much. It seems possible, therefore, that we may be enduring something that is bad for society that we don't even like watching, contrary to what producers, directors, and critics may think.

We would be better off if we were spared the coarsening and brutalizing effects of gratuitous violence in our daily entertainment.

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