Bob's Taboo Subjects: Violence in Film

(Again, I am focusing mainly on American film.)
Violence has been present in the arts since the beginning of time. Primitive cave paintings depict the often bloody hardships of their life, including hunting and fighting to survive and protect their territory. Greek tragedy would often depict acts of violence off stage, while Roman theater would execute a prisoner on stage when it came time for a character to die. Shakespeare plays often involved fencing duels and and various forms of murder. So it should not be a surprise that violence has been present in motion picture since the very beginning. Silent cinema productions of Zorro and the 3 Musketeers contained battle scenes that would claim characters’ lives at times. Unlike nudity, which was outright banned, the Hays code was lenient on violent content in films, so there was never an era in American cinema that was violence free. But, over the decades, the violent content of films as a whole has gotten more and more liberal, especially in the genres of science fiction, horror and action. Audiences, like the spectators of Roman theater, wanted more and more realistic death scenes, leading to the use of corn syrup based stage blood and gelatin guts for a touch of “realism.” Nowadays, violence is not even considered much of a taboo subject at all. Gratuitous violence barely seems to incite a reaction from watchdog groups the way it did when I was a young movie watcher. There are still those who will warn parents away from a movie based on its level of violent content, but for the most part, there is no call to completely remove a movie based on violence. The MPAA is also much more lenient on violent content than they are with nudity and sexual content.
So what is my opinion on violence in film? I’ll be honest, the vast majority of films in my personal collection contain some sort of violence. I tend to disregard romantic slaps and Napoleon Dynamite getting shoved against his locker when addressing the subject. But, I have said before that I am a horror maven, which kind of makes me a proponent of movie violence. But, just like nudity, there are some filmmakers who use violence to try to cover up the fact that their movie has no story or other remarkable qualities. I will say that when I critique a film, violence is on my list of considerations, but I’m not expecting to see extreme violence in every movie I critique. Here’s how it works: The story and the tone of the movie dictate the level of violence and gore there should be, and my consideration is based on whether the violent content of the film was right for the overall affect the filmmakers were going for. For example, I thought the movie “Class of 1984” inserted a few disturbingly grotesque scenes for shock value even though the movie’s story and premise were disturbing enough. On the other side of the coin, I thought the final chapter of the Saw franchise, especially being in 3d, was somewhat lacking in gore. Violence doesn’t seem like all that taboo of a subject, but in general, it is a subject which can be a little uncomfortable for some to admit they enjoy. I enjoy all kinds of movies, many of which call for blood and gore, machine guns, explosions, sword fighting, kung fu fighting, good old street brawling, or even Moe physically abusing Larry and Curly. But, I’m not going to say a movie is good just because it is gratuitously violent or devoid of violence altogether.