Can violence in movies be ethically and

aesthetically reconciled with the idea of

popular cinema as ‘only entertainment’?

Matt Migliorini

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 The intention of this essay is to argue that violence in film is not ethically or
aesthetically reconcilable with the notion of popular cinema as ʻonly
entertainmentʼ because a true ethical or ʻrealʼ engagement with popular films is
not necessarily separable from ʻentertainmentʼ. In pursuing this argument this
essay will examine two Hollywood films that both represent violence on screen.
The first to be discussed will be 8mm (Schumacher 1999) and the second The
Dark Knight (Nolan 2008).

Firstly it is important to deal with the notion of entertainment itself and why it
may be ethically problematic for violence to be represented on screen if it is
deemed entertaining. The main problem that arises from the issues of violence
falling under the banner of ʻonly entertainmentʼ appears to be one concerning
pleasure. In his consideration of entertainment Richard Dyer has stated,

It is not possible here to provide the detailed historical and

anthropological argument to back this up, but I hope the differences
will suggest themselves when I say that entertainment is a type of
performance produced for profit, performed before a generalised
audience (the ʻpublicʼ), by a trained, paid group who do nothing else
but produce performances which have the sole (conscious) aim of
providing pleasure (1992: 17).

If entertainment is, as Dyer suggests, a kind of performance geared towards

delivering pleasure as part of a financial commodity, perhaps it can then be said
that if violence is represented in popular film, that it situates a viewer in a
position in which they can enjoyably receive it. However, as will be argued, this
is not entirely the case.

In identifying ʻassumedʼ ideas around cinematic spectatorship, it is useful here

to draw upon Mary Whitehouse. Although not a film theorist or critic, as a
campaigner against permissive society that lead to her becoming a public figure
in Britain, Whitehouse with her many concerns of violence in the media make
her relevant to this discussion. Her inclusion here also demonstrates that unlike
many other theoretical discourses held in film studies, issues of screen violence
and censorship exist well outside of academia in the public sphere. In her
proclamation that screen violence is morally deplorable, Whitehouse has stated,

We sensed it then [the 1970s] and believe strongly now, that the
screening of violence . . . and obscenity into the home, where the
viewer sits comfortably, detached, . . . where he can switch off
mentally or physically whenever he wishes, can have nothing but
destructive effects upon our sensitivities and our society. So do the
real horrors of war, death, and poverty become no more than
conversation pieces, fantasy worlds, increasingly accepted as no
more than entertainment (Mary Whitehouse 1996: 57).

Whitehouseʼs issue then is that the viewer is passive in their reception of

violence and that this is wrongfully accepted as being no more than a means to
an end in obtaining pleasure through film. From which the obvious question
arises: can we ethically reconcile the idea of receiving pleasure through
violence on screen? This essay will now move on to argue that a pleasurable

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 response towards violence in popular cinema, does not reduce or remove the
viewerʼs capacity to engage with the film at a moral level.

The narrative of 8mm deals inherently with this very issue of receiving pleasure
through filmed violence. The film sees private surveillance detective Tom Welles
(Nicholas Cage) investigate the authenticity of a snuff film - a snuff film being a
film in which a person is killed for the pleasure of the viewer - eventually leading
him to discover that the film was not the construction of special effects, and that
a girl really was killed on film. Outraged at this, Tom then kills the snuff film
producers.

In Schumacherʼs film the violence on screen takes on two notable points of

engagement. One position is that the screen violence of the snuff film is
authentic and therefore disturbing to 8mmʼs protagonist. The second is that the
violence then enacted by the protagonist in later scenes subsequently registers
as comparatively inauthentic regardless of the filmʼs efforts towards realism or
naturalism. The audience is constantly aware that any violence we witness is
not real due to the filmʼs extra-textual considerations of ʻrealʼ violence being
recorded. Does the fact that these two contextualisations of screen violence
present in the film - one the fictional-authentic snuff film, and the other the
overtly fictional violence of the feature film itself - mean that the latter can be
enjoyed more as it is harmless by comparison? A figure such as Whitehouse
would surely argue it does not. However this essay argues that the violence in
both instances is aesthetically reconcilable due to their fundamental function
within a narrative. Indeed, without some kind of representation of violence this
film would be unrealisable as an investigation of violence. Further to this it
should be noted that conflict has been a key constituent of storytelling since the
dawn of stories, this conflict often taking the form of physical violence. Indeed,
screening writing instructor Robert McKee has stated that a major event in a
story ʻcreates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is
expressed and experienced on terms of value and is ACHIEVED THROUGH
CONFLICT (1999: 34).ʼ His choice to type these last three words in uppercase,
highlight the paramount importance of conflict for screenwriters in producing
adequate drama.

An issue that may potentially result in violence on screen being ethically

irreconcilable, perhaps more than violence represented in any other medium
due to its life-like immediacy, would be its glorification. However, it should be
asserted that violence in 8mm is not glorified or deemed pleasurable by the
protagonist or even by the film itself at any point. In the scene in which Tom
watches the snuff film for the first time, the camera focuses in close-up on his
reaction to the film rather than showing the audience the film itself. His
expression is one of anguish and disgust (see Appendix fig 1). Tomʼs
expression here is far beyond a position of non-caring that is perhaps too
purportedly linked to notions of entertainment. Considering David Bordwellʼs
observation that in classical narration, ʻthe protagonist becomes . . . the chief
object of audience identificationʼ (1990: 15) Whitehouseʼs proclamation here
that a spectator passively accepts violence on screen as entertainment, can be
somewhat dismissed through our narrative alignment and with Tom and his
reactiont. What is more, Sylvia Chong has stated that, ʻOur enjoyment of film
narratives relies upon our identification with and vicarious enjoyment of the
experiences of film charactersʼ (2004: 258). To link these assertions made by
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 Bordwell and Chong, not only does an identification with the protagonist go
someway to relinquishing the notion of the ʻpassiveʼ spectator, but also
demonstrates that spectator enjoyment, and therefore entertainment too, are
reliant upon this identification.

Continuing his discussion, Dyer pronounces that two taken-for-granted

interpretations of entertainment are implications of, ʻescapeʼ and as ʻwish-
fulfilmentʼ, point[ing] to its central thrust, namely, utopianism. Entertainment
offers the image of ʻsomething betterʼ to escape into, or something we want
deeply that our day-to-day lives donʼt provide (1992: 18). Following that
entertainment is designed to deliver pleasure and wish-fulfilment, and that
violence is a stable and successful element of inclusion in numerous narratives
in popular cinema, is it simply that humanity suffers from an unquenchable thirst
for seeing violence on screen as it provides a catharsis not accessible
elsewhere?; and that this then becomes ʻonly entertainingʼ?; simply as a means
of receiving pleasure?

If this were the case, how can, as Whitehouse declares, a viewer be passive?
Surely the reception of pleasure requires some kind of active engagement with
the source of the pleasure from which it may be derived? At a basic level, a
spectator at the very least has to be continually paying attention to the screen. If
one is not focusing on the screen, it is arguable that this is due to the absence
of entertainment. While as Dyer asserts, entertainment can be described as a
form of escape, it also perhaps more significantly assumes an engagement with
the location of that escape; in the case of popular cinema this being a fictional
else-where and else-when. Moreover, the notion of entertainment denotes that
this engagement be agreeable and pleasurable.

In 8mm Tom forces himself to watch various pieces of hardcore pornography in

an attempt to locate the girl from the snuff film. In these scenes it is apparent
that he takes no pleasure in watching them and that he would never chose to
watch them otherwise. Unlike Tom however, the audience of 8mm may delight
in the experience of voyeuristically witnessing his discomfort at the violence.
Not because one can take pleasure from the violence, but because it affords an
audience a mode of engagement with such obscene violence that is situated
heavily outside of the mainstream as the film displays through Tomʼs struggle to
find such material, therefore allowing the audience to consider their own
feelings towards such obscenity without having to delve into the kind of
dangerous environments, Tom does. Cinema offering audiences a safe space in
which to explore dangerous issues like those explored in 8mm may provide a
means through which we can ethically justify violence on screen.

Much like the aggressors of 8mm the key antagonist in The Dark Knight is an
entertainer driven only by a desire to produce chaos and violence. The Dark
Knight is a super-hero film in which Batman (Christian Bale) must stop the
anarchic Joker (Heath Ledger). However, Nolanʼs film is not a proto-typical
super-hero film in that it carries many political and ideological pretensions. In
one scene the Joker declares that he likes to kill his victims with knives apposed
to guns as it produces a slower death in which he can savour the emotional
response of his victim towards their death. The main aggressor in 8mm delivers
a similar speech in which he says he takes pleasure in the look of realisation his
victims have that they are actually going to die. Both of these charactersʼ
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 convulsive assaults upon other characters provide the audience with an
example of the kind of monster that actually derives pleasure from violence. We
are then positioned against them as they solicit a true approximation of what it
means to truly take pleasure in pain and violence. If audiences are delighted by
the violence of the Joker, it is not necessarily because they are supportive of it,
but simply because it serves a narrative function to produce conflict, and
notably, spectacle.

Geoff King has argued that, ʻSpectacle offers a range of pleasures associated
with the enjoyment of ʻlarger than lifeʼ representations, more luminous or
intense than daily reality (King 2000: 4). As such, contrary to what Whitehouse
believes, we can discern these images not to be like reality due to their
overbearing relation to spectacle and not realism. Although both films contain
clear efforts at a kind of naturalism or verisimilitude, neither are overtly realistic,
especially The Dark knight. What spectacle therefore permits of violence is a
kind of manipulated account of reality through which we may delight in such
violent images.

Of pain and death, eighteenth century philosopher Edward Burke stated that
ʻ. . . When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any
delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain
modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day
experienceʼ (1990: 36-37). Considering this, it is applicable that spectacle in film
may constitute what Burke refers to as producing a certain distance as a
modification away from realism, that allows for such imagery of violence to be
pleasurable, and thus entertaining. This is why a scene in The Dark Knight in
which the Joker performs a magic trick of making a pencil disappear by driving it
into the skull of man, may register as comically delightful, because it plays upon
feelings of terror that are distanced by absurdity. The idea of having a pencil
driven into oneʼs skull maybe terrifying, but performed by a clown on screen is
also delightfully absurd. This in itself however does not allow us to ethically
reconcile with cinematic representations of violence, but it does provide grounds
for a justification of these filmsʼ choices of aesthetics in that their
representations of violence are exploiting ideas of pain and death, of which
Burke suggested that,

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and

danger . . . or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a
manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is
productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of
feeling (1990: 36).

These films therefore offer and exploit audiences capacities to feel fear and
appropriate a position of sublimity towards images that evoke this feeling.
However, this essay does not argue that either of the films in question fulfill this
notion; merely that cinema is able to capitalize on it through representations of
violence. Indeed, a popular childrenʼs film such as Bambi (Algar and Armstrong
1942) includes the violent death of its eponymous protagonistʼs mother. Where
then is the line drawn between violence in Bambi and the exceptional body-
count stacked in a more violently explicit film like Rambo (Stallone 2008)? Do
both films not portray violence? Are both not seeking to solicit an entertained
response? It appears then that the problem with ethically reconciling violence
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 on screen is as much to do with its narrative functioning and purpose within the
text than it has its representation; the violence in Bambi being part of a story,
not the reason for the existence of the story as one might argue the to be the
case with Rambo.

In 8mm and The Dark Knight, however, violence is both capitalized on for
entertainment purposes and is unequivocally integral to their narratives. These
films would not work or exist without their being afforded the possibility of
representing strong violence. Herein lies the distinction that Poppy Z. Brite
makes in writing that, ʻThe media capitalizes on violence just as it capitalizes on
whatever else it thinks it can sell, but capitalization and glorification are not
necessarily the same thingʼ (1996: 64). Rambo however is harder to defend with
the filmʼs protagonist senselessly killing hundreds of people in the guise of a
narrative purpose that is comparatively tenuous. However, there is still a value
to be found in Rambo in that it provides an opportunity for a spectator to
consider their enjoyment of such violence on screen. Where one my revel in it
due to a kind of response to what Burke describes as the greatest of human
emotion (one in which we consider death), another viewer may assume a
similar position to Tom watching the snuff film in 8mm.

Regardless of how a spectator may react to violence in the four films mentioned
this essay falls into agreement with Brite in her argument that,

. . . the ultimate value of seeking . . . violence . . . [is that] it forces the

viewer to arrive at his own conclusions about death, pain, and the
visceral soup inside us. It forces him to understand his own feelings
about these highly personal matters, rather than reinforcing what
society says he should feel (fear, disgust) (1996: 70).

Here Brite suggests that the value of experiencing violence in cinema is that it
forces the spectator into a position in which they have to consider its very
nature for themselves; a notion through which screen violence maybe ethically
reconcilable due to its inherent appeal to freedom of thought and experience.

To summarize, having examined the proclamation made by Whitehouse that

violence on screen is passively accepted by the cinema spectator due to its
being entertaining, this essay, having drawn upon theories of entertainment put
forward by Dyer, has argued that a true engagement with screen violence is not
inhibited by notions of entertainment. Furthermore it has, through its discussion
of The Dark Knight and 8mm, fallen to agreement with Brite that violence in
cinema - like any other exchange of ideas between filmmaker and audience -
holds value in its ability to challenge a spectators understanding of both
themselves and the issues the film presents. In concluding, we can identify that
representations of violence in popular cinema are ethically and aesthetically
reconcilable through certain necessities of narration and stylistic choices,
namely conflict, narrative alignment with protagonists and notions of spectacle
supported by Burkeʼs considerations of the sublime, with their happening to be
ʻentertainingʼ, and not with the notion of their being ʻonly entertainmentʼ. As has
been argued, films, including popular ones that function as business
commodities of Hollywood studios, can never be ʻjust entertainmentʼ.

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 Bibliography

Bordwell, David (1990) Narration in the Fiction Film London: Routledge

Brite, Poppy. Z (1996) ʻThe Poetry of Violenceʼ in Screen Violence [ed] Karl
French London: Bloomsbury

Burke, Edmund (1990) A Philosophical Enquiry: into the Origin of our Ideas of
the Sublime and Beautiful Oxford: Oxford University Press

Chong, Sylvia (2004) ʻFrom “blood auteurism” to the violence of pornography:

Sam Peckinpah and Oliver Stoneʼ in New Hollywood Violence: Inside Popular
FIlm [ed] Steven Jay Scheider Manchester: Manchester University Press

Dyer, Richard (1992) Only Entertainment London: Routledge

King, Geoff (2000) Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the age of the

Blockbuster London: I.B. Tauris

McKee, Robert (1999) Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the principles of
screenwriting London Methuen

Whitehouse, Mary (1996) ʻTime to Face Responsibilityʼ in Screen Violence [ed]

Karl French London: Bloomsbury

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 Filmography

8mm Joel Schumacher (1999) USA

Bambi James Algar and Samuel Armstrong (1942) USA

The Dark Knight Christopher Nolan (2008) USA

Rambo Sylvester Stallone (2008) USA

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 Appendix

Fig 1