Feel free to argue with me on this point, but I would like to postulate that the characteristic of a film’s violence-content that determines whether people will accept it or scream about it is how redemptive it is. As a rule, I don’t think most people enjoy watching good (or even morally neutral) men and women in pain, but we will -- we will pay a lot of money -- to see it. But only if something positive comes from the experience. There has to be a point, and the point has to be redemptive.
I (yes, I am going to be pompous and use the universal I here) want to see Maximus triumph over pain and impending death to avenge his family. I will cry for Jack dying in Titanic, but I know that Rose will redeem his sacrifice. I know that Christ suffered for our sins and so sitting through the torture-porn that is Passion of the Christ is, itself, a redemptive experience.
Braveheart is a fantastic example of this phenomenon. The end of this movie is brutal -- the torture is relatively explicit and the pain endured by Wallace is palpable -- maybe it’s not Audition-explicit, but it’s definitely hard to watch. And yet, at the same time, packaged in those same minutes, is the catch-phrase of the year: “FREEDOM!” This is what it seems is most memorable about the film: not that the audience was squinching up in their seats while our staunch hero was being eviscerated, but the defiant battlecry that redeemed the pain. The message is that “this is worth it”. As audiences, we are able to watch a much higher caliber of violence when there is, for lack of a better term, a redemptive point to it.
There is nothing that really connects the audience to the unfortunate victims who fall prey to horrific fates in, say Hostel or Turistas. Perhaps they do not deserve their bloody ends, but there’s nothing really there to make the audience believe that this suffering is for any purpose besides that of entertainment -- in essence, we don’t care if they live, so they might as well die. There is no redemption, but given that these are merely stock figures, there really is no need for any emotional response whatsoever toward them. Thus, with the human element taken out of the equation, the violence itself becomes the focal point, and this, as anyone who has read entertainment news in the past few years knows, causes problems. I could natter on about this, but it’s been a bit dead-horsed in the popular media and while I love taking my own flog to it, I shall refrain for the moment.
A more interesting case, however, is what happens when there is no redemption. When we want there to be, but there isn’t? When the wrong person is redeemed? When life sucks and you really do just die? What kind of entertainment is that?
Leaving Las Vegas is a train-wreck and yet we watch. Seven lets the bad guy get the last horrific laugh. The Mist (2007) ends on a horrific mis-calculation. Gallipoli whumps you with the tragic weakness of man.
This violence is perhaps not the goriest, but it’s damn hard to watch. More importantly, the aftershocks aren’t uplifting (i.e. “FREEDOM!” or “SPARTA!” or “I’ll never let go, Jack”), but are instead sickening.
We don’t like to see people we like, or at least people we’ve gotten to know over the course of the 2 hour film, NOT be redeemed. And yet, the experience of being thus frustrated is ever so much more resonant and shocking than any amount of good-wins-out-in-the-end violence.
Thus, It’s not so much, I would argue, that it’s a happy ending that we desire, but a redemptive one. One that reminds us that people are worthwhile, that even if circumstances suck we can still rise (or inspire others to do that for which you blazed a trail), that making something good of your life, of your situation is possible, even if it pains, tortures, or kills you in the pursuit.
When these expectations are flouted, it hurts. I give props to directors who have the balls to bring down that lash, but still: OW! I won’t forget that one.
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