Aestheticization of violence

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The aestheticization of violence in high culture art or mass media is the depiction of violence in a manner that is “stylistically excessive in a significant and sustained way” so that audience members are able to connect references from the "play of images and signs” to artworks, genre conventions, cultural symbols, or concepts.

Contents

[edit] The power of representation

[edit] High culture aestheticization of violence

High culture forms such as painting, literature, and film have aestheticized violence into a form of autonomous art. In 1991, University of Georgia literature professor Joel Black stated that "(if) any human act evokes the aesthetic experience of the sublime, certainly it is the act of murder." Black goes on to note that "...if murder can be experienced aesthetically, the murderer can in turn be regarded as a kind of artist — a performance artist or anti-artist whose specialty is not creation but destruction." (1991: 14). This conception of an aesthetic element of murder has a long history; in 1890, Thomas De Quincey wrote that "Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle… and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it - that is, in relation to good taste." [1]

A number of filmmakers from the 20th century have aestheticized violence. According to James Fox, filmmaker Donald Cammell "...looked upon violence as an artist might look on paint. [He asked:] What are its components? What's its nature? Its glamour?" [2]Thomas Harris created a fictional character called Hannibal Lecter, a cannibal and aesthete portrayed by Anthony Hopkins on screen. In the films Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Hannibal (2000), directors Jonathan Demme and Ridley Scott, respectively intentionally generate excitement and anticipation when Lecter is about to kill (and eat) a victim.

In Xavier Morales' review of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1, entitled "Beauty and violence", he calls the film "a groundbreaking aestheticization of violence." Morales says that the film, which he calls “easily one of the most violent movies ever made" is ”a breathtaking landscape in which art and violence coalesce into one unforgettable aesthetic experience”. Morales argues that "...Tarantino manages to do precisely what Alex de Large was trying to do in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: he presents violence as a form of expressive art...[in which the ]...violence is so physically graceful, visually dazzling and meticulously executed that our instinctual, emotional responses undermine any rational objections we may have. Tarantino is able to transform an object of moral outrage into one of aesthetic beauty [, in which,] like all art forms, the violence serves a communicative purpose apart from its aesthetic value." When the female sword-wielding protaganist "...skillfully slices and dices her way through...88 fighters...we get a sense that she is using them as a kind of canvas for her expression of revenge...[,]...like an artist who expresses herself through brush and paint, [she] expresses herself through sword and blood."[3]

[edit] Analysis of aestheticized violence in film

Film critics discussing the “violent [movie] images” that “encourage us to take pleasure in the spectacular representation of other people's pain” fall into two categories. Critics who see depictions of violence in films as superficial and exploitative argue that it leads audience members to become desensitized to brutality, thereby increases aggressivity.

On the other hand, critics who view violence as a type of content,or as a theme, claim it serves a "cathartic or dissipating effect..., providing acceptable outlets for anti-social impulses."[4] According to Adrian Martin, these "[c]ritics [,] who have regard - love, even - for violent cinema in its diverse forms...have developed a ...response to those who decry everything from Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) to Terminator 2 (James Cameron, 1991) as dehumanising, desensitising cultural influences...” They argue that “...screen violence is not real violence, and should never be confused with it. Movie violence is fun, spectacle, make-believe; it's dramatic metaphor, or a necessary catharsis akin to that provided by Jacobean theatre; it's generic, pure sensation, pure fantasy. It has its own changing history, its codes, its precise aesthetic uses.”[5]

Bruder argues that “aestheticized violence is not merely the excessive use of violence in a film.” Movies such as the popular action film Die Harder are very violent, but they do “...not fall into the category of aestheticized violence because it is not stylistically excessive in a significant and sustained way.” Films that use “...stylized [e.g. aestheticized] violence revel in guns, gore and explosions, exploiting mise-en-scene not so much to provide narrative environment as to create the appearance of a "movie" atmosphere against which specifically cinematic spectacle can unfold.” In movies with aestheticized violence, the “...standard realist modes of editing and cinematography are violated in order to spectacularize the action being played out on the screen”; directors use “quick and awkward editing”, “canted framings,” shock cuts, and slow motion, to emphasize the impacts of bullets or the “spurting of blood.” [6]

For viewers of films with aestheticized, such as John Woo’s movies, “One of the many pleasures" from watching Woo’s films, such as Hard Target is that it gets viewers to recognize how Woo plays with conventions “from other Woo films” and how it “connects up with films...which include imitations of or homages to Woo.” Bruder argues that films with aestheticized violence such as “...Hard Target, True Romance and Tombstone are [filled] with ...signs” and indicators, so that “... the stylized violence they contain ultimately serves as...another interruption in the narrative drive” of the film. [7]

[edit] Mass media aestheticization of violence

In addition to high culture aestheticizations of violence, mass media forms such as newspaper and television news reporting have also aestheticized violence with their sensationalized reports on crime and warfare. Maria Tatar’s book Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany analyzes murders in pre-Hitler Germany and their artistic representations, investigating “... the chilling motives behind representations that aestheticize violence, and that turn the mutilated female body into an object of fascination.” [8]. Reviewer Patrice Petro calls Tatar’s book "a study of German avant-garde and modernist art and a sustained reflection on the relationships between gender, crime, violence and representation. . ."[9] Leslie Kitchen called the book “...a profound and provocative contribution to our understanding of sexual combat and the aestheticization of violence in modern culture."[10]

Lilie Chouliaraki's article The aestheticization of suffering on television (2006) analyzes “...an example of war footage in order to trace the ways in which the tension between presenting airwar as an ‘objective’ piece of news and as an instance of intense human suffering is resolved in television’s strategies of mediation.” For example, Chouliaraki argues that the “... bombardment of Baghdad in 2003 during the Iraq war was filmed in long-shot and presented in a quasiliterary narrative that capitalized on an aesthetics of horror, on sublime spectacle (Boltanski). The aestheticization of suffering on television is thus produced by a visual and linguistic complex that eliminates the human pain aspect of suffering, whilst retaining the phantasmagoric effects of a tableau vivant”, producing an “...aestheticization of suffering [that] manages simultaneously to preserve an aura of objectivity and impartiality, and to take a pro-war side in the war footage.”[11]

[edit] History of aestheticization through art

[edit] Antiquity

Plato proposed to ban poets from his ideal republic because he feared that their aesthetic ability to construct attractive narratives about immoral behaviour would corrupt young minds. Plato’s writings refer to poetry as a kind of rhetoric’, whose “...influence is pervasive and often harmful.” Plato believed that poetry that was “...unregulated by philosophy is a danger to soul and community.” He warned that tragic poetry can produce “...a disordered psychic regime or constitution” by inducing “...a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in ...sorrow, grief, anger, [and] resentment. As such, Plato was in effect arguing that “What goes on in the theater, in your home, in your fantasy life, are connected" to what you do in real life. [12]

Aristotle, though, advocated a useful role for music, drama, and tragedy: a way for people to purge their negative emotions. Aristotle mentions catharsis at the end of his Politics , where he notes that after people listen to music that elicits pity and fear, they “are liable to become possessed” by these negative emotions. However, afterwards, Aristotle points out that these people they return to “a normal condition as if they had been medically treated and undergone a purge [catharsis]...All experience a certain purge [catharsis] and pleasant relief. In the same manner cathartic melodies give innocent joy to men” (from Politics VIII:7; 1341b 35-1342a 8). [13]

[edit] 1400s-1600s

The artist Hieronymus Bosch, from the fifteenth and sixteenth century, used images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man. The sixteenth-century artist Bruegel provided depicted “...the nightmarish imagery that reflect, if in an extreme fashion, popular dread of the Apocalypse and Hell.”[14] Mathis Gothart-Neithart, a German artist known as "Grnewald" (1480-1528) depicted “intense emotion, especially painful emotion.” His painting of the Crucifixion “...does not spare the beholder. Grnewald relentlessly brings out all the marks of terrible suffering and agony, induced by the cruelty and torture of the executioners...[vividly conveying] a sense of horror and pain.” [15] Grnewald’s ‘Isenheim Altarpiece’ also shows a violent image of Jesus on the cross, “with his body covered in wounds”, with the focus on “...Jesus’ suffering and his death.” [16]

[edit] 1700s-present

In the mid-1700s, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an Italian etcher, archaeologist and architect active from 1740, did imaginary etchings of prisons that depicted poeople “stretched on racks or trapped like rats in maze-like dungeons”, an “aestheticization of violence and suffering.” [17] In 1849, as revolutions raged in European streets and authorities were putting down protests and consolidating state powers, composer Richard Wagner wrote that “I have an enormous desire to practice a little artistic terrorism.” [18] Laurent Tailhade is reputed to have stated, after Auguste Vaillant bombed the Chamber of Deputies in 1893: “Qu'importent les victimes, si le geste est beau? [What do the victims matter, so long as the gesture is beautiful].” In 1929 André Breton's Second Manifesto on surrealist art stated that “L’acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu’on peut, dans la foule” [The simplest Surrealist act consists of running down into the street, pistols in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd].”[19]

[edit] Theories of Aestheticization and Semiotic Analysis

[edit] Baudrillard

French postmodernist theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that whereas modern societies were “...organized around the production and consumption of commodities”, “postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs.” As such, in “...the postmodern media and consumer society, everything becomes an image, a sign, [or] a spectacle.” For Baudrillard, the West's “commercialization of the whole world...will turn out rather to have been the aestheticization of the whole world — its cosmopolitan spectacularization, its transformation into images, its semiological organization.” As a result, the “previously separate domains of the economy, art, politics, and sexuality” become “collapsed into each other”, and art penetrates “all spheres of existence.” Thus, Baudrillard argues that “[o]ur society has given rise to a general aestheticization: all forms of culture — not excluding anti-cultural ones — are promoted and all models of representation and anti-representation are taken on board.”[20]

[edit] Semiotic analysis

[edit] Still Images

When a person views a painting, photograph or cartoon, they are viewing a static image. Although each person's interpretation may change through analysis and reflection, there is a certain dispassionate quality about the experience, a sense of distance between the artist/audience and the content. If a photographer takes a still photo of a police officer's struggle to arrest a young man, the denotative meaning might be "law enforcement in action." On the other hand, the connotative meanings might range from, "a heroic fight to subdue a dangerous terrorist about to release sarin gas", to "police use excessive force to arrest non-violent protesters". The attribution of the subtext is left to the caption writer, the commentators and the audience.

[edit] Film and Video

[edit] News Reporting

However, filmmakers and videographers can fragment a scene into its components and depict the scene from different vantage points, and then reassemble these components. A film editor can produce a non-realistic sequence of intercut, edited images, which forces the audience to interpret those images according to a different set of semiotic rules. Thus, if the police officer's struggle to arrest a young man is captured on a video camera, the mise en scène and non-verbal signs become much more explicit and enable the audience to make a better-informed attribution of meaning (assuming that the recording has not been modified or edited).

The value of this video as a signifier will be determined by its relations to the other signifiers in the system. Thus, if the video is included in a reputable television news programme, it will acquire a greater claim to be indexical and its status is more likely to be considered reliable "evidence" of real world events. In semiotic terms, the words spoken by the television presenter will be symbolic, and the images will have both iconic and indexical qualities.

The "semiotic value" of the video will change if it is transposed into a polemical or satirical programme, presented by a commentator, or screened with on-screen captions(e.g.,"Crime Wave in the Streets"). These substitute contexts form modality indicators that may help the viewer to assess the plausibility, credibility, or truthfulness of the content. The violence shown on-screen can be aestheticized by the values of the symbolical signs used by the news presenter, by captions placed on-screen, or by the relations with other signifiers in the same programme (e.g., if the arrest video is preceeded by a report about "antisocial and criminal behaviour").

[edit] Fictional Film or Video

If a film or television director staged a similar scene, the audience will be predisposed to consider it less "real" because the scenario is being filtered through the film-maker's sensibilities and the outcome will reflect the director's motives. Hence, the lighting, make-up, costumes, acting methods, cutting, and soundtrack music selection will combine to inform the audience about the film maker's intentions.

The culture industry's mass-produced texts and images about crime, violence, and war have been consolidated into genres. Filmmakers typically choose from a predictable range of predictable narrative conventions and use stereotyped characters, and clichéd symbols and metaphors. Over time, certain styles and conventions of shooting and editing are standardised within a medium or a genre. Some conventions tend to naturalise the content and make it seem more real. Other methods deliberately breach convention to create an effect, such as the canted angles, rapid edits, and slow-motion shots used in films with aestheticized violence.

[edit] Analysis of Selected Films

In The Accused (1988), filmmaker Jonathan Kaplan stages a detailed rape scene to consider the moral and legal quality of the spectators who, while not engaging in sexual intercourse, nevertheless shouted encouragement to those that were. Viewers were offended by the brutality of the scenes of the assault, which would have constituted hardcore pornography in a different context. Nonetheless, viewers accepted that the violence was contextualised and necessary to reinforce the social and political subtext of the script.

A film such as The Accused could be considered an example of sensitisation, a form of reverse modelling in which the audience is invited to react strongly against some extreme example of realistic violence so that they are less likely to imitate it. There may also be a catharsis. Seymour Feshbach (1955; see also Feshbach & Singer 1971) has argued that fantasy violence can have a cathartic effect on the audience, defusing latent aggression, and reducing the possibility of aggressive behaviour. Such outcomes would suggest that the depiction of realistic violence can be a public good and that its display should not be limited.

In contrast, Leonard Berkowitz's (1977, 1986) "Theory of Disinhibition" proposes that while some people are naturally aggressive, they are usually able to repress this tendency. An obsessive interest in violent imagery in the cinema or on television may weaken their inhibitions and lead to a feeling that the release of their aggression is acceptable. This is allied to the "Theory of Desensitisation" which proposes that the consistent viewing of violent imagery gradually conditions viewers to accept violence as normal, i.e. it dulls their sensitivity to aggressive behaviour in everyday life.[21]

Matthew Crowder analyzes the aestheticization of violence in Strange Days, a film by director Kathryn Bigelow (1995), particularly for a scene depicting the rape of a woman that is "...filmed in real-time using a first-person subjective camera." Strange Days tells the story of Lenny Nero, who sells an illegal, futuristic technology that allows people to record their sensory experiences onto a minidisc, so that other people can “play back” these sensory experiences and have them “wired” directly into their brain. In the film, Max, a rapist, records his rape of a woman, Iris, and gives the recording to the unsuspecting Lenny. When Max, the “... perpetrator of violence is given control of the cinematic apparatus,” this is “... referencing films such as Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1959) and Halloween (Carpenter, 1978).” Like “...Peeping Tom’s psychopathic killer, Max does seem to see himself as some kind of artist, recording the rape and sending it to Lenny.”

The “...first person perspective the filming of the rape scene is unrelenting, the camera never turns away from the fear and panic of Iris whose body is not only slung about by the unknown killer but also subjected to an unflinching gaze that the audience is punished with too, made complicit in the rape by their passivity.” Crowder argues that “[t]he entire notion of the subjective camera - an aesthetic element of the film -, its scopophilic, voyeuristic and sadistic nature, is revealed in all its depravity.” As such, “[t]he aesthetic experience of the [rape] scene is one of shock, horror, dislocation and passivity at the way the camera represents the helpless body of Iris as no more than an object.” The film’s use of “playback” clips, as in the rape scene, causes a “...stylistic disruption of Hollywood codes and an even more important aesthetic effect: the disruption of the normal codes of identification with character and narrative.” [22]

Bigelow was criticized for the rape scene by University of Maryland professor Carla Peterson, in Peterson’s article ‘Director joins boys' club -- and it only costs her compassion’ (1995). Crowder claims that Peterson attacked Strange Days “... as misogynist and offensive because she [Peterson] feels that it tries to create an unproblematic, if slightly uncomfortable, spectacle out of rape.” As such, Crowder argues that Peterson “... fails to see that the film concerns more than a logical narrative (which if anything grows increasingly incoherent)” and claims that Peterson has “...misread the scene out of context” and dismissed “...textual elements that clearly signal criticism of both Hollywood and the cinematic apparatus as a tool of masculinist domination.” Crowder “challenge[s] whether Peterson’s response is actually aesthetic, as she makes little reference to communication between work and audience.” In contrast, Crowder interprets Strange Days in a feminist context, which he argues is “...perhaps its most persuasive aesthetic effect.” Crowder holds that “...Strange Days can be seen as a self-conscious discourse on cinema and that part of this discourse concerns the act of aesthetic judgement.” Furthermore, he states that the film’s “narrative can be seen to allegorise the problem of aesthetics and value.”[23]

A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess. The plot, which is set in a futuristic England (circa 1995, as imagined in 1965), follows the life of a teenage gang leader of named Alex. In Alexander Cohen’s analysis of Kubrick’s film, he argues that the “ultra-violence” of the young protaganist, Alex, “...represents the breakdown of culture itself.” In the film, gang members are “...[s]eeking idle de-contextualized violence as entertainment” as an escape from the emptiness of their dystopian society.

Cohen claims that in the film, “...the violence of modern technology sees its reflection in Ultraviolence, beyond violence." When the protaganist murders a woman in her home, Cohen states that Kubrick presents a “[s]cene of aestheticized death” by setting the murder in a room filled with “...modern art which depict scenes of sexual intensity and bondage”; as such, the scene depicts a “...struggle between high-culture which has aestheticized violence and sex into a form of autonomous art, and the very image of post-modern mastery.” [24]

[edit] References and further reading

Footnoted references

  1. ^ cited in Steven Jay Schneider’s article Killing in Style: The Aestheticization of Violence in Donald Cammell's White of the Eye. , Harvard University / New York University, USA. Available at: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:pj4mofTxCX8J:www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/articles/killing-in-style.htm
  2. ^ cited in Steven Jay Schneider’s article Killing in Style: The Aestheticization of Violence in Donald Cammell's White of the Eye. , Harvard University / New York University, USA. Available at: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:pj4mofTxCX8J:www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/articles/killing-in-style.htm
  3. ^ Xavier Morales. "Beauty and violence", 10/16/03. Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:rmwUF2G3YGkJ:www.hlrecord.org/news/2003/10/16/Etc/Kill-Bill.Beauty.And.Violence-530854.shtml+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=50&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  4. ^ Margaret Ervin Bruder. Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style. Film Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:TF8oNGx0C_YJ:www.gradnet.de/papers/pomo2.archives/pomo98.papers/mtbruder98.htm+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=73&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  5. ^ Adrian Martin. The Offended Critic: Film Reviewing and Social Commentary. This is an expanded version of an essay that appeared in Australian Quarterly, Vol 72 Issue 2, April-May 2000. It is available at: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/8/offended.html
  6. ^ Margaret Ervin Bruder. Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style. Film Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:TF8oNGx0C_YJ:www.gradnet.de/papers/pomo2.archives/pomo98.papers/mtbruder98.htm+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=73&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  7. ^ Margaret Ervin Bruder. Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style. Film Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:TF8oNGx0C_YJ:www.gradnet.de/papers/pomo2.archives/pomo98.papers/mtbruder98.htm+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=73&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  8. ^ Barbara Kosta, The Women's Review of Books - cited at: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:mCkhK1iS5_EJ:www.pupress.princeton.edu/quotes/q5641.html+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=13&lr=lang_en|lang_frs
  9. ^ Patrice Petro, Art in America - cited at: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:mCkhK1iS5_EJ:www.pupress.princeton.edu/quotes/q5641.html+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=13&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  10. ^ Leslie Kitchen, The Bloomsbury Review - cited at: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:mCkhK1iS5_EJ:www.pupress.princeton.edu/quotes/q5641.html+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=13&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  11. ^ Lilie Chouliaraki, The aestheticization of suffering on television. Available at: vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/5/3/261.pdf
  12. ^ Charles Griswold. Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2003. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/
  13. ^ Catharsis, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas. http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:byVw6MB3wG8J:etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi%3Fid%3Ddv1-36+catharsis+aristotle&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=3&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  14. ^ Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:0vayJlNEfr8J:www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/florilegium/lcdth_i.html+bruegel+depictions+suffering&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=81&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  15. ^ CHAPTER 22: RENAISSANCE ART IN NORTHERN EUROPE Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:302eBjeYosEJ:vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/22.html+bruegel+depictions+suffering&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=9&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  16. ^ Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:RSau4SzCptQJ:www.chass.utoronto.ca/~jeharris/smc200_minutes+bruegel+depictions+suffering&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=58&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  17. ^ http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:COTitdxSiHsJ:www.deutsche-bank-art.com/art/2005/3/e/2/333-2.php+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=51&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  18. ^ Craig Dworkin. "Trotsky's Hammer". Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:I2eUXCtxwHYJ:english.utah.edu/eclipse/Editor/DworkinTrotsky.pdf+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=25&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  19. ^ Craig Dworkin. "Trotsky's Hammer". Available at: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:I2eUXCtxwHYJ:english.utah.edu/eclipse/Editor/DworkinTrotsky.pdf+%22aestheticization+of+violence%22&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=25&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  20. ^ Kellner, Douglas, "Jean Baudrillard", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/baudrillard/.
  21. ^ Social learning theorists propose that some individuals learn aggressive behaviour by observing a role model. Charismatic film and TV characters are, by definition, role models and suggestible people may imitate observed behaviour if they identify and empathise with the characters, and if the characters' behaviour is presented as justified. Hence, for example, explicit warnings of the danger of imitation are given before World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestling shows because the narrative context for the action emphasises the good guys and provides vicarious reinforcement; i.e. the acceptability of the violence is reinforced by being shown as benefitting the good guy as the aggressor. Such reinforcement is less likely in shows where the violence is shown as punished or unproductive. This confusion as to whether there are potential justifications for depicting violence aesthetically should lead us to the conclusion that it would be difficult to compose any set of criteria for judging acceptability in a censorship system. If censorship is nevertheless introduced, its operation would be uncertain and arbitrary, and subject to politicisation and manipulation by interest groups.
  22. ^ Matthew Crowder. Aesthetics and Politics: Strange Days: The importance of a work’s politics to an aesthetic evaluation. 2006. Available at: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:2CBT4VJS7bMJ:www.savingtheworld.co.uk/showPage.php%3Fpage%3D22+violence+film+aesthetic+code&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=9&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  23. ^ Matthew Crowder. Aesthetics and Politics: Strange Days: The importance of a work’s politics to an aesthetic evaluation. 2006. Available at: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:2CBT4VJS7bMJ:www.savingtheworld.co.uk/showPage.php%3Fpage%3D22+violence+film+aesthetic+code&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=9&lr=lang_en|lang_fr
  24. ^ Alexander J. Cohen, Clockwork Orange and the Aestheticization of Violence. Cohen teaches at the UC Berkeley Program in Film Studies. The article is available at: http://cinemaspace.berkeley.edu/Cinema_Beyond/C_B.lectures/ClockworkOrange/Benj_CultIndustr_Clckwrk.html

Other

  • Berkowitz, L. (ed) (1977; 1986): Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vols 10 & 19. New York: Academic Press
  • Bersani, Leo and Ulysse Dutoit, The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art andModern Culture (NY: Schocken Books, 1985)
  • Black, Joel (1991) The Aesthetics of Murder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Feshbach, S. (1955): The Drive-Reducing Function of Fantasy Behaviour, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 50: 3-11
  • Feshbach, S & Singer, R. D. (1971): Television and Aggression: An Experimental Field Study. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  • Kelly, George. (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Vol. I, II. Norton, New York. (2nd printing: 1991, Routledge, London, New York)
  • Peirce, Charles Sanders (1931-58): Collected Writings. (Edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, & Arthur W Burks). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[edit] See also

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