Violence in the Abstract

Like it or not, most human beings have a fascination with violence.  This is clearly manifest when considering our entertainment over the millennium, ranging from the Roman Gladiatorial matches to modern television and movies.  Violence sells.  There is a great deal of academic debate over the role of modern entertainment, both movies and video games, and its role on de-sensitizing the general public to violence.  Many argue that a steady diet of such gruesome visuals, observed from a young age, surely has an effect. 

However, for most people in the contemporary United States, violence remains abstract.  It is something that happens to others.  Sure, if you are unfortunate enough to be raised in urban Baltimore or South Central Los Angeles you grow up knowing violence, but If you grow up in all but the worst environments, you don’t see much violence.  Thus, the notion remains abstract to most Americans.  In many ways, modern entertainment has adopted to keeping violence abstract for the average viewer. 

Violent movies of our contemporary era focus on over-the-top gang activity, bank robberies, or military action.  All of this remains quite removed from the daily life of the average person.  And, the average viewer prefers it that way.  On the rare occasion that a movie will show a realistic robbery of a typical person in public, or show a realistic home invasion of the common suburban house, that tends to have an effect.  People will claim to find such sequences “truly scary,” as it hits too close to home.  By far, most people prefer to see abstract violence.

A perfect example of this is any given slasher horror movie.  Just look at the best-known fictional villains in this realm of cinema: Freddy Kruger, Jason, Michael Myers, etc…, all complete fantasy and nonsense.  The reason for such characters?  It gives the public the violence they want but keeps it fanciful and abstract, not too real, thus safe to watch.  Afterall, watching such a fictional character commit mass murder does not call one to face the true nature of the violent world, because there are no super-natural slashers who wear hocky masks.  While entertaining, that monster does not actually exist.

The latest craze in this world of abstract violence is a series of movies called Terrifier.  I read somewhere that the third movie, that came out in the past year, caused people in the audience to feel nausea, vomit, or leave the theater.  I am not into slasher movies, though I have seen the classics, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and that kind of stuff.  I don’t like this kind of crap as I do think it is harmful for people to watch and does de-sensitize to violence.  Still, curiosity got the best of me, and having a penchant for being lazy on weekend nights, when I tend to stay up well past everyone else in my household, I will sometimes watch mindless junk.  So, I watched the first Terrifier movie. 

Well, that was 90 minutes of my life I will never get back.  No, I won’t be watching the second or third movie, even though word has it that they are even “more bloody.”  Apparently, the first movie was made on only a 35,000$ budget.  The second two movies had larger budgets and expectedly better production.  So, I will give the movie one bit of praise; the director and everyone involved is extremely talented, because how anyone could film and orchestrate a movie that looks like this on such a low budget is beyond me.  Otherwise, not a fan.

The villain in the movie is Art, the Clown.  So, we have yet another manifestation of society finding clowns utterly sinister and suspect, even though every circus, and many children’s birthdays, employ them.  While Stephen King’s IT may have been the ultimate proclamation of culture’s mistrust of clowns, I am sure the sentiment pre-dates that novel, probably by centuries.  When I was a kid, I remember a grade B 80s movie called Killer Clowns from Outer Space.  Joker, from Batman, is a clown.  And the list goes on.  Well, Art the Clown makes the guy in IT look like a Chucky Cheese mascot.  He is much more frightening in appearance, he actually looks more like a mime, and like a mime, never speaks.  His level of violence is beyond the pale. 

Thus, we have violence that is, once again, in the abstract.  As disturbing as it may be watching Art dismember people, or saw them in half, everyone knows there are no super-natural clowns, so such violence never feels compelling.  It never makes the viewer say, “I should wear my gun, all the time, and be serious about my training, in case I meet Art the Clown.”  Such violence, as gratuitous as it is, feels “safe” to watch.  Thus, Terrifier, and things like it, are so popular. 

Now, there are some brutally violent horror movies that have played on themes that are much more realistic, although even here they usually remain abstract.  A movie such as Hostel, for example, is extremely disturbing and gory, and focuses on the all-to-real villain, the human being.  Still, though, even such movies are set in an environment that remains abstract to the average viewer.  Through-hiking in Eastern Europe and being unfortunate enough to land in such a situation is one-in-a-billion, it remains abstract. 

But, while there are no Art the Clowns in the real world, there are people who do things on a level of violence that is unimaginable for a well-adjusted human being, and those things should be acknowledged and prepared for.  When analyzing a crime like the Dryden Massacre of 1989, in which a single intruder tortured, dismembered, executed, and then burned, a family of four, it should become clear that we do not need to create fantasies of killer clowns to find mass-murdering sadists. 

But, most people prefer their violence in the abstract, so as not to feel compelled to prepare.