Aka an
examination of the escalation of violence in modern media exemplified by Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead
Warning: extensive
discussion of violence, including torture, sexual abuse and gore
A good
friend of mine has written her Bachelor’s thesis on “Violence in Game of
Thrones” and thus inspired me to write my own short analysis of violence in
modern media. Since this is just a blog post and not a paper, I can’t hope to
be anywhere near as extensive and academic as she was in her thesis. I’ll try
to keep this comprehensible and still feature most if not all of my thoughts on
the matter. Have fun!
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People tend
to enjoy watching violence from a safe distance. This seems to be a fact that
has been true for many centuries. Public executions from ages past were made
into a spectacle for cheering crowds and nowadays the TV and movie screens are
awash with it. The reasons for this are varied. Medieval crowds as well as
modern movie audiences both relish in the feeling of seeing people punished that
seemingly deserved it (note how a number of horror movie characters are
assholes just so seeing them die will be rewarding). There’s also a distinct
feeling of ‘thankfully it’s them and not me’. Violence when it happens to other
people in a safe distance instills a sense of relief that one is safe at home
(or in the crowd), which also is rewarding. And maybe watching violence speaks
to sadistic and aggressive tendencies in each of us that we are too civilized
to let bleed into our everyday life.
I’m not exempt from this, far from it. I enjoy Tarantino’s
movies, which are famously violent and bloody. Seeing the brutal R-rated Logan was more fun than any Logan
appearance before had been (the fact that Logan
was allowed to be brutal is often cited as one of the reasons for the movie’s
success). And we all know that Deadpool
would’ve sucked so bad had it not been filled with hilarious and gruesome fight
scenes. Hannibal is teeming with gore
and extreme – if creative – violence in such a way that you’d have to edit out
whole episodes if you’d attempt to censor it (which you shouldn’t, of course, Hannibal is a brilliant show and every
scene is a work of art). Daredevil’s
fight scenes feel so real, because they are violent.
But what I
want to talk about is not the presence of violence in movies or TV shows in
general, but the escalation of it. I’m also not here to talk about torture porn
in horror movies, because A) I never watch those movies and thus can’t really
talk about them and B) it’s a completely different topic.
The
escalation of violence is best observed in shows like The Walking Dead and Game of
Thrones that both got famous for their excessive depiction of violence. I’m
sure a lot of people have written essays or articles about it already, this is
just me adding my two cents. TWD und GoT differ from similar shows in terms of
their rating, which allows them to show violence to a degree that other shows
cannot. Another thing they have in common is that due to fact that they got
popular in part because of their violent nature (at least this is often
emphasized in articles), violence is expected by the audience. Additionally
both shows have not shied away from (permanently) killing beloved main
characters and have both been praised for it. The producers and screenwriters
therefore strive to meet the audience-expectations. The problem is that people
by now have become largely desensitized to violence (that’s another post I’d
like to write: “how the shocking became mainstream”) and it’s very difficult to
truly shock a modern day audience. So if you have a reputation of being a
shocking show, what are you to do?
The answer,
in both cases, apparently is to up the ante. An audience that was shocked at
the sudden death of what they assumed to be the main character at the end of
season 1 in GoT, will be used to main characters dying by season 3. To make
such a death shocking it needs to be much more dramatic than the relatively
tame execution of Ned Stark. The so-called Red Wedding is undoubtly shocking.
Even for book readers already familiar with what to come. The camera at this
point doesn’t pan away from the violence anymore but shows the murders that are
happening in detail. Those that suffer are innocent and do not deserve to die
in such a gruesome way. They are betrayed by people that swore their allegiance
and killed by their hosts (a feat which in the GoT verse is an egregious
blasphemy). A pregnant woman is stabbed multiple times in the stomach and her
pain as well as the pain of her husband and his mother are shown extensively. The
scene’s purpose – apart from its main purpose of being this season’s shocking
show-defining scene – is to properly hammer home the fact that no one is safe,
nowhere is safe and you shouldn’t trust anyone.
The theme
of ‘nowhere is safe’ is so prevalent in TWD that it has been ridiculed.
Seemingly every season the little band of survivors finds a new place to stay
only to have that temporary safety taken away from them again, be it by zombies
or ruthless antagonists. It is a zombie apocalypse after all, so the constant
danger isn’t unbelievable. What makes it ridiculous is the repetition of very
similar story arcs. Search for new haven – brief happiness in the new haven –
violent destruction – repeat. To keep things interesting and not lose viewers
to boredom the producers need to include some form of variety or – as they
apparently prefer – escalation. Their first camp is destroyed by a brutal
zombie attack that costs a part of the group their lives. In contrast to GoT,
TWD already started out with an in depth depiction of violence. The audience is
from episode one onwards privy to close-ups of rotting corpses, zombies eating
people alive and other types of violence. This, of course, makes it even harder
for the producers to keep their content shocking for the viewer. The second
season, which is spent mostly on a farm in relative safety, is consequently
regarded as the most boring one by many fans (even though it features the death
of a child, and further people being eaten alive). Season 3 again manages to
intensify the violence by adding torture, mutilation and similar to the
repertoire.
But
naturally the audience gets used to that, too. If you believe that the shock
value is the only thing keeping your show going, you have to dig deeper. The
keyword here is ‘believe’. Both GoT and TWD have other things going for them
(interesting characters for example) and as a person somewhere else has pointed
out in a fitting analysis, bad things happening is only interesting if it
constitutes a deviation from the norm (https://i-am-of-the-stars.tumblr.com/post/155633738523/ifitwerentforthatmeddlingkid-bethanyactually).
Screen-writers often don’t seem to share this opinion. In addition to that most
TV shows that don’t rely on case-of-the-week episodes typically tend to feature
some form of escalation (that very often unfortunately has the show spiraling
widely out of control and quality). So, I get where TWD’s and GoT’s
screen-writers are coming from.
(Another
justification for the violence is the simple fact that a lot of the violent things
happening in the shows are happening in the source material, a comic and book
series respectively, too. The important difference hereby is in how the violence is portrayed – also
keep in mind that seeing a violent act on screen is different from reading
about it in a book. Additionally both shows did diverge from the source material more or less drastically and added even more violent scenes.)
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This post has gotten so long that I decided to split it in two. So, this is only part one. If you're interested in more keep on the look-out for the second part.
