Aestheticized Violence in Film

There is a certain level of utility inherent to violence in film. Past all of the grandeur and brutality is the less glamorous reality: violence is a visually interesting way of presenting conflict to the audience. Blood makes for a striking image, and there are few sounds more uncomfortable than a person screaming in pain. However, there are films that take violence to a level of excess that challenges the idea that violence is just a tool for filmmakers.

Movies today don’t have to contend with the mandates and direct restrictions of the past, but they still have to face the scrutiny of critics and the public. A film can’t simply be extremely violent. There has to be some sort of greater artistic intent, or it won’t resonate with either the critics or the public. People don’t want to believe that they might enjoy violence for the sake of violence, even if it is at some subconscious level. This idea has led to the widespread aestheticization of violence in film. Aestheticization of violence is essentially depicting it in such excess that it becomes an artistic or a stylistic choice. Or at least that it could be justified that way.

I find it somewhat hard to believe that there is no element of personal enjoyment involved in a director’s choice to present extreme violence in their film. After all, violence is exciting. It’s likely something that the average American doesn’t see often. This sense of novelty (which somehow persists despite the ubiquity of graphic violence in film) can often be combined with the sense of escapism inherent in film to provide a potent sort of catharsis. There is something powerful about seeing characters you love exact violent revenge on those who have harmed them. It’s something powerful, but not necessarily right.

I’d like to examine two films, Gareth Edwards’ The Raid (2012) and Macon Blair’s I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017). Both films are (in my opinion) masterpieces in their respective genres that deal with aestheticized violence in very different ways. I think that they can be used as microcosms for what I consider to be the two main varieties of aestheticized violence in all film.

The Raid is a pure action film. It is a movie that relies on keeping the audience’s adrenaline level as high as possible during its brief runtime. There is very little subtlety in the plot. In fact, there is very little plot at all. It really is just 101 minutes of what film critic Roger Ebert described as “brutally cynical” violence. And yet it is this approach that, according to proponents of the film, makes it so good. In many ways, the brutality heightens the sense of fear and disgust that is a constant in the film. This is perhaps best epitomized by the scene in which the main character Rama fights through a hallway full of criminals and kills all of them in a variety of inventive ways (including using a door), only to turn a corner and find even more waiting to kill him. It is the relentlessness of the violence that makes the audience fear for Rama’s life, and thereby fully invest themselves in the film.

This is where the escapism of the movies kicks in. It is very hard to watch The Raid and not think about how much better the characters are handling the situation than you would. The movie, intentionally or not, is endorsing the behavior of the main characters.  Retaliating violently when in difficult situations is not normally what people want to do, or even something that most people consider in the face of adversity, and it is certainly not what society conventionally advocates for. But in films like The Raid, violence is so visceral and commonplace and aestheticized that it loses any shock value it may have had; because of this, the idea of violent response seems less and less unbelievable. I’m not saying that violent movies make people violent, just that they desensitize people to violence. The Raid and other movies like it may or may not have any kind of specific neurological effects. They may truly be just movies, but I think it is important to hold them accountable for how their aestheticization of violence affects their audience.

On the other hand, there are films that definitely aestheticize violence, but don’t desensitize their audience to it or make it seem like a logical action. Macon Blair’s I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore follows an ordinary woman, Ruth, and her search for justice after her house is robbed. She and her accomplice Tony don’t really want to hurt anyone, and the film doesn’t really have any violence until the third act. However, the violence presented then is extreme, and painfully jarring. Ruth is kidnapped and forced into helping a group of criminals. When one of them decides she’s outlived her usefulness, they decide to kill her. Tony arrives and attacks them, starting a shocking sequence of violence that ends with three people shot dead, one poisoned by a snake, and Tony bleeding out from a fatal stab wound.

Blair could have easily made the violence less overtly excessive, or even just less overt, without really compromising the idea behind its presence in the film. What would be compromised is the extreme that violence represents in the story. If the bloody conclusion of I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore were any less bloody and over the top, it wouldn’t be jarring enough. Ruth wouldn’t face the severe consequences that she must in order to complete her character arc. Tony’s death is ambiguous, but whether you think it’s real or not, it teaches Ruth that what she chose to do in the film is dangerous and stupid. Most importantly, the audience wouldn’t get the very clear visual message about the dangers of vigilante action. If the film doesn’t reach its gory conclusion, Ruth doesn’t face the sad reality of her situation, and the audience never sees it either. The characters would think of the ending as an outright victory rather than an extremely pyrrhic one, which would reaffirm Ruth’s (and the audience’s) belief in her vigilantism, rather than deconstructing it as the film was meant to.

Ultimately this is what separates these two depictions of violence. Both are certainly aestheticized, but one is to excite the audience and the other to invoke a tragic reality. All violence in film fits into these two categories and I think that somewhat similarly, human reactions to violence fall into these two categories as well. Some people respond to violence with disgust and sadness, and as difficult as it may be to admit, some people are excited by it.

The greater moral question to be asked here is certainly how society should deal with violence in film. Obviously, there should be some restriction on access to violent film. Young children shouldn’t be watching these movies, even if they are art. The way that violence is aestheticized in modern cinema blurs the line between condonation and condemnation. Is it an “artistic choice” or just an excuse to let the director run wild with some fake blood? Should we try to regulate how violence is portrayed in film? If so, how? I don’t think any of these questions have explicitly correct answers, but it would be foolish to overlook them. Understanding why people are fascinated with violence is key to understanding our larger connection to it.

by ARUNENDRO DUTTA