WHY, WHO, WHEN, WHAT, WHO, WHY

So, as promised in my last piece, I start this one again with “The Dark Knight”. Though, this time it will be brief, very brief. The movie is a superhero movie with one of the most popular supervillains – Joker. Just like the hero, the villain doesn’t has a superpower either. Though, what he has is an ingenious and totally demented mind. He is ruthless, fearless and without emotions. Perhaps the exact words that may describe Batman too. But the difference is abysmal.

So, the movie begins. Goes on for some time and then you see the joker again. Making an entry at a congregation of mafia. You expect the expected. But the joker has a tad bid different idea of meeting expectations. And soon enough, you flinch, or rather I should say I flinched. The scene didn’t depict in-the-face violence. But what it depicts is an effect without showing the actual face of violence. A lot is said without showing.

And then there are couple of another scenes where Heath Ledger (Joker) explains, to his victims putting razor inside their mouth, how he got his scarred smile. This time, a fear is within your heart. This is a slow depiction and this time you are sure what is coming. Only that when it actually comes, you still flinch, even though the camera doesn’t capture the act.

The above were just an example of violence. Though, it’s a total understated violence. For the start, let’s keep it simple. And what we have is an act of violence in an otherwise normal conditions. A violence which is a bit gory but which still lies within the domain that perhaps a lot of us have fun watching.

Whether we accept it or not, violence is a part of our life. The channel may be us or just a stranger on roadside; an actual scenario we witness or just a mental image we imagine; a bout of few unwarranted harsh words or an actual physical blow to disrupt the physics and chemistry of the other. In one way or the other we all witness violence everyday. And to a large extent we enjoy it too. We often imagine taking revenge or sympathize with people who have been wronged and taking revenge. But what is the point when violence becomes totally unwarranted? When is it that we say that “enough is enough”?

The above two questions are largely subjective in its true form because we all have very different appetite for taking violence. Whereas a person may puke out on seeing a spurt of fake blood on screen, the other may actually have his eyes glued on the screen when a slow act of cutting through a human body is being depicted(and I am not talking about surgical operation here). We all consume violence and we also dare ourselves to see how much we can consume. More on this dare that we try, in later posts. For now, let me just note down the essentials in the supply and demand of this consumption:

WHY: Why are the producers and directors keen on making movies depicting ultra-violence, perhaps even unrealistic and too gory to consume in-the-face violence?

WHO: Is there a specific group of directors/producers who give us these kind of movies? What is the trend in these movies and what exactly is the nature of this violence that differentiates it from that shown in otherwise acceptable movies?

WHEN: Do people consume the gore all the time or is some specific state of mind that makes this violence more acceptable to them?

WHAT: What exactly is our appetite for this kind of torturous violence? What has been depicted until now on celluloid? Does the unreal scene increase our acceptance level of this kind of violence?

WHO: Who are the consumers of these movies? Does it has a universal acceptance or does it has a selective yet profitable consumer base?

WHY: Why do we consume the extreme torture sequence? What kind of thrill or pleasure do we get? Or is it just that we actually do want to be afraid?

There are many other dimensions to the above questions and even more questions. In the coming posts I will try to discuss each of these questions and more. The sequences might start to get very gory now and I hope I am able to get a direction towards the answer by the time I conclude this series of posts. At conclusion, let me ask something. Whenever I have watched such movies or wondered about them, I have thought that if Devil and hell actually exist, would they be having an appetite for committing an act of such violence as the characters in such movies do? Have we surpassed the mythical devil and hell by our own imagination of the acts that can be carried?