Category Archives: Television

In Boozo Veritas #5: Why I love Violence

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Film, In Boozo Veritas, Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

In Boozo Veritas #5 by Teege Braune

Why I Love Violence

If you haven’t read Mark Pursell’s Like a Geek God blog post “Dr. Who, An Unarmed Hero,” please do. The article is an homage to “the anti-gun pacifist alien espousing diplomacy and intellectualism” Dr. Who, an odd-duck amongst geek culture heroes and a respite from the average blood-thirsty warriors of fantasy, sci-fi, and comic books. While Mark never once becomes preachy or suggests that the sword, laser blaster, and machine gun wielding characters that populate the bulk of geek media should or will disappear, he rightfully hails an alternative to the never-ending barrage of carnage that movies, television, graphic novels, and video games throw at us. Why don’t we have more protagonists who, like the good doctor, value beauty, creativity, and peaceful solutions to conflicts, who detest aggression and violence of any kind?

Mark goes out of his way to mention that he doesn’t “personally believe that violent movies, games, and TV shows can be convincingly held accountable when an unstable person takes up arms against a crowded theater or an elementary school.” Nevertheless, it’s hard for any analytical person to see the sheer magnitude of human atrocities in our media, both fictional and non, and not recognize that both phenomenon are the products of a culture absolutely obsessed with violence. Jesus, who wouldn’t welcome a break from all that and embrace a peace-loving hero like Dr. Who?

That being said, I think part of the reason I found Mark’s article so moving was because it forced me to face an unresolved conflict within myself. Truth be told: I love violence. As long as it takes place safely within the context of fiction, I love love love violence. I don’t necessarily love that I love violence, but that fact doesn’t in any way make me love violence less. When given the option, I’ll always take Alien over Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Terminator over Robby the Robot, and yes, Neo over Dr. Who. I love violent movies whether they be shoot-em-up action flicks, spaghetti westerns, neo-noir, and above all else horror. Sometimes violence makes me cringe, sometimes it makes me laugh, and often, when it’s at its best, it does both. I find it exciting, thrilling, and I can’t for the life of me say why.

I need to point out that I also hate violence. I find nothing at all fun about reading news accounts of atrocities in this country and other war-torn parts of the world. These stories fill me with sorrow and disgust, and yet don’t prevent me from popping Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the DVD player when I get home from work. Certainly I’m not alone in this duality. The distinction between fiction and non in this context is everything. Nevertheless, sensitive as I can be, it is not a conflict that’s easy to reconcile. Anthropological explanations for the enduring popularity of horror and violent art in general usually point out that our brains reaction to fear is similar whether we are watching a character in peril or facing real, imminent danger, that witnessing a fictional person overcome or fall victim to physical harm in some way prepares us should we encounter similar circumstances. As accurate and psychologically sound an argument as this may, it fails to strike any kind of personal chord within me.

John_Waters_Hay201_1806618i

In his own 1981 essay “Why I Love Violence,” John Waters solves this dichotomy by simply abandoning it. As Waters explains his lifelong obsession with murder, death, and destruction, an obsession that led to the creation of some the most wonderfully twisted and sick movies in the history of cinema and the endearing title “Prince of Puke,” the reader becomes aware of a disturbing truth: though Waters is quick to mention, “I’ve never initiated physical violence in my life,” it becomes immediately clear that neither does he need violence to be fictional for it to delight him. Unlike myself, Waters lacks any ambivalence about his obsession. He openly admits to fantasies about real, fatal disasters, the 1960 Indianapolis 500 tragedy being a favorite, and is a connoisseur of true crime.

shock-value

Waters never bothers to justify himself to his reader. In the end, you walk away from the essay knowing without a doubt that he loves violence, but no more able to say exactly why. That being said, what follows is admittedly only my own supposition, but I think Waters’ interest in violence may simply be an radical acceptance of an unchanging fact of life. Even an utopic society would face continual hurricanes, volcanoes, and other natural disaster decimating entire populations. Perhaps Waters’ approach to violence is a more honest way of viewing it than my own in the same way that my love of consuming fish would be ruined if I actually had to gut one myself. Furthermore, Waters’ has used his fascination with violence to make positive changes in the lives of others; the work he’s done in maximum security prisons, teaching creative writing to murderers and other violent criminals, is truly inspiring.

This doesn’t mean I think we should all be John Waters, as much as I love him. I also have undying respect for the peaceniks, pacifists, and Dr. Whos of the world. My own visceral response to real-life violence is guaranteed to keep me as far away from it as possible, and lately I have found that even fictional violence, when it becomes too realistic or mean-spirited, can really bother me. The exploitation films I used to love hold less appeal for me now, and there are moments when images from movies like Cannibal Holocaust, Blood Sucking Freaks, and Man Bites Dog haunt me, making wish I could un-see films I genuinely appreciate. Perhaps I am getting soft as I enter my mid-thirties. Maybe all of my favorite violent movies will lose their appeal the closer I get to middle-age. But I kind of doubt it.

Recently, inspired by Mark’s thought-provoking article, I decided to give Dr. Who another shot. I got bored within the first five minutes and put on John Carpenter’s The Thing for the umpteenth time. As the shape-shifting alien menace ripped apart MacReady’s unfortunate crew, I stopped worrying why I took such joy in their demise and simply enjoyed the ride, never forgetting how glad I was that it was only fiction.

I shall return next week with more drinking stories and musings on the sauce.

___________

gods

Teege Braune (figured right) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

Like a Geek God #3: Doctor Who, An Unarmed Hero

25 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by in Doctor Who, Like a Geek God, Science Fiction, Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

 Like a Geek God #3 by Mark Purcell

Doctor Who: An Unarmed Hero for a World That Won’t Put Down Its Guns

Doctor Who

Illustration by Joshua Goldstein.

Whenever an incident of mass shooting violence strikes flint to the tinder of our national consciousness, many people—both the media and the laity—are quick to scapegoat pop culture as the primary contributing factor.  As a result, a lot of our pop culture objects from the last twenty-five years, from Mortal Kombat to The Matrix to The Dark Knight, have become irrevocably entwined with our history of violence.  And while I don’t personally believe that violent movies, games, and TV shows can be convincingly held accountable when an unstable person takes up arms against a crowded theater or an elementary school, it is impossible to ignore the fact that geek culture is, by and large, a culture that worships the warrior, and frequently a gun-toting one, at that.  Sure, a few of our great geek heroes (Batman, for example) make a point of using non-lethal force, but they tend to be the exception.  Even some heroes and heroines who may be intially averse to holding a gun, much less firing one, find themselves thumbing off the safety when push comes to shove.  You can argue whether or not the prevalence of gun violence in pop culture objects—particularly geek pop culture—has anything to do with incidents of domestic shooting violence or not, but the prevalence itself is something that can be objectively stated to exist.

Is it any wonder, really, that geek pop culture gravitates towards the warrior archetype in many ways, be it with guns blazing or sword swinging?  It is only a small percentage of the population who have any idea what war or battle are truly like.  For the rest of us, the warrior archetype in our movies and TV shows and games and books give us a feeling of agency, using an imaginative link to satisfy our desire to stand tall against the forces of evil and cast them back into the shadows.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  And it is perhaps not our fault that our default view of the best, most direct method of combatting evil is, well, combat.  It’s certainly the default view of a lot of pop culture objects, a lot of the population, and a lot of politicians.  There is something atavistic about it, as if hearkening back to our prehistoric infancy as a race, using force to defend our food, our territories, and our families.  This kind of martial existence is no longer a reality for most of us in the developed world and hasn’t been for a very long time, but the instinct remains, bolstered by the gun battles and kung fu throwdowns in our pop culture.  Or maybe those things exist because of the instinct and not the other way around. Who knows?

When you consider all this together, it makes the question of Doctor Who—the eponymous hero from the famous and long-running British science-fiction TV serial, in which the Doctor and a chosen companion travel both time and space like a kind of two-person United Nations, facing down injustice and genocide wherever they find it—a bit perplexing.  Because Doctor Who is, largely, a pacifist. He rarely takes physical action against an enemy, instead relying on diplomacy, negotiation, trickery, and his intelligence to find a way through or around whatever stands in his way.  The only tool he employs is something called a “sonic screwdriver”, a nifty gadget that allows him to disable locks and fiddle with computers and machinery but which can’t be used directly as any kind of weapon.  It is part of the Doctor’s philosophical standpoint and main argument against any race relying on the use of weapons that he manages to survive danger and accomplish his goals without ever pointing a gun at someone.  There is a long-running thematic strand of the show’s mythology that deals with the Doctor’s conflicted attitude towards the human race: he favors humans above most other races, finding them fascinating and capable of great beauty and achievement, but he detests the willingness with which humans turn towards violence and weaponry.

Despite this lack of martial prowess—and, indeed, an outspoken anti-gun point-of-view that would make conservative firearm apologists froth with misguided Second Amendment fervor—Doctor Who has, in recent years, become a highly popular, highly visible pop culture figure in the United States.  The show’s popularity isn’t difficult to explain—its Joss Whedon-esque mix of humor and heartbreak, its vivid characters, its labyrinthine mythology—but the Doctor himself as a popular figure with the American audience, an audience in a country that worships the gun and the military-industrial complex more zealously than God, is a curiosity.  And, perhaps, a sign of something.  If an anti-gun, pacifist alien espousing diplomacy and intellectualism as the chief tools in a hero’s utility belt can rise to prominence in the national pop culture consciousness, there’s a possibility that there’s a generational shift occurring in the way we view guns and violence.  The warrior is a necessary archetype that’s never going to go away, but a pop culture landscape stocked with as many sage, peacemaking heroes as it is with fighters might, I think, be something worth aspiring to.

___________

Mark Pursell in Orange

Mark Pursell is a lifelong geek and lover of words.  His publishing credits include Nimrod International Journal, The New Orleans Review, and The Florida Review, where he also served as poetry editor.  His work can most recently be seen in the first volume of the 15 Views of Orlando anthology from Burrow Press.  He currently teaches storytelling and narrative design for video games at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.