On writing violence

how much is too much?

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I started thinking about this because I have been watching HBO’s The Last of Us. But also, I’m a lifelong horror fan, and someone who writes mysteries, and mysteries are almost always murder mysteries, which means that I think about violence a lot.

The human capacity, or incapacity, to watch fictionalized violence is fascinating. I know a lot of people who absolutely can’t tolerate it, and I don’t find that position unreasonable. I myself, and probably because I grew up on horror, am completely desensitized to violence. Stabbings, beheadings, eyes popping out, etc, mean nothing to me. However there’s two things I can’t tolerate watching on my screen: violence against animals (typically cats and dogs), and graphic rape. This doesn’t mean that I’m super psyched to see a child get murdered, but that when I’m watching it I have a separation where I fully understand that this is a child actor who, after the take, is going to eat a cheese sandwich over at craft services. Maybe for the animals, it hooks into the anxiety I’ve always had that something horrible will happen to my pet—the spectacular car accidents I imagine. And as a woman, rape is an ever present fear. Even if I know it isn’t real on screen, it’s more probable that that could happen to me than a man in a hockey mask breaking down my front door.

I was resistant to The Last Of Us because I’ve seen what feels like millions of zombie things in my life and don’t particularly find them scary or interesting, mainly because the subgenre doesn’t innovate that often. If you watched Walking Dead, the show circled repeatedly back to its underarching theme: ~actually it’s the humans who are the real monsters!!~ The problem with this is that this theme appeared in the very first modern zombie movie—at the invention of the zombie genre by George Romero—in Night of the Living Dead. (If you’ve never seen this movie SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER it ends with an uninfected Black man being shot by the police.) The Walking Dead had a horde of problems associated with it (get it??) but among them was the increasing cheapening of violence over time. In one of the later seasons—in a moment where many former fans cite they stopped watching—one of the beloved characters, Glen (one of the remaining original cast members and one of the very few Asian men on a hit show)—is actually “killed” in a fake out moment at the end of an episode. A massive zombie horde descends upon him at the very end of the episode with no apparent way out. Then, GOTCHA, you find out that actually he hid underneath another body and somehow escape unscathed… only to be brutally killed episodes later by the new Big Bad, Negin, to be beaten to death by a baseball bat with nails hammered into it. It pissed a lot of people off. It’s not that we can’t tolerate characters we love being killed. It’s that you did a fake out for ratings—you manipulated us, only to have him die a violent, senseless death for the sole reason of showing just how bad the new bad guy is. The Last of Us, in contrast, is literally about the psychological cost of violence. There’s no Negin here. You understand why Abby does what she does, and why Ellie does what she does and actually positions are not unreasonable.

If you think about it, violence runs on a scale from hyperrealistic on one end, to over the top ridiculous on the other, and the costs of violence differ depending on where on that scale you are.

On the over the top side of things: we have the bloodless but mass scale violence of Marvel movies. The stakes keep getting higher (we have the save the city! We have the save America! We have to save the world! We have to save the Universe! We have to save the multiverse!) and by proxy the body count. But the violence despite being large is sort of bland because it’s violence without being really graphic. I mean, a building will be crushed, but we don’t see the people inside being crushed. Where we do see all the blood is in campy horror, graphic horror, and some action films, and here the violence is played for humor or ridiculousness at some level. It’s violence but it’s not real. In Kill Bill, a circle of enemies waits its turn to fight Uma Thurman and peoples limbs are cut off, spurting too-red blood all over the soaked floor. It’s very intentionally over the top. In Evil Dead 1 and 2 there’s beheadings, pencil stabbings, eyes popping out and those movies are really funny. (Greatly added to by the incredible physical comedy put on by Bruce Cambpell, who at one point has to act as if his own hand is possessed and beating the shit out of him).

Contrast this to the Evil Dead remake of 2013. This movie is dead serious—there is not a single joke in it. This makes the movie feel sort of unrelenting, which is I think why a lot of people liked it. In its sequel, they push these even farther—basically like, Hey you know how in a lot of horror movies they won’t kill kids?? well, guess what…?????!!

Horror is a natural sister to comedy. If you see a horror movie in a theater (as they are meant to be experienced!) you will hear a lot of nervous laughter. The makers of the genre seem to understand that people need that tension release. And other makers of the genre seem to understand that denying people that tension release is one way of manipulating the genre.

What you need to think about as a creator is, “What cost does violence have in my story?” The answer to your question may alienate some, but that’s okay, but you need to be internally consistent.

In a cozy mystery violence is kind of low cost: someone is dead at the beginning, but it isn’t violent, and the details won’t be dwelled on, and the adorable chihuahua sidekick definitely will not die. If you violated these rules, the chihuahua dies, the MC spends 3 books in the series not being able to get over the PTSD of the last murder she solved, your readers will be alienated.

Graphic rape will be a deal breaker for many. So will violence against children. (Though someone recently at a conference said that actually violence against animals was more of a deal breaker for readers than violence against children!)

But for me, a thoughtful interrogation of violence is one that considers its cost. The violence should have weight. It should have meaning. It should justify its existence. I actually don’t mind super campy, over the top violence in horror movies. But I don’t actually find it scary, or often all that interesting.

There is a scene in the movie Hereditary. If you are talking to anyone who has seen this movie, all you have to do is say “that scene” and they will know what scene you are talking about. I’m scared of virtually nothing in horror movies, but I thought about that scene for weeks and lost sleep over it. Part of it was that the violence in that scene was totally natural—no monsters or ghoulies, in fact it was quite possible to imagine yourself getting into that situation. What is brilliant about this scene is that horror movies often do not depict the emotional cost of violence. Some girl will discover her best friend butchered by hockey mask guy, she will scream, and then she will run away. But if you think about it, your best friend dying is something that would emotionally traumatize you. Often by the end of the movie the final girl is walking away with her love interest dusting off her hands, saying, and that’s the end of that. Girl, your best friend and 5 other people just died. Anyway, back to Hereditary. One of the images I will never get out of my head is Toni Collette discovering what had happened. You don’t actually see her looking at it. I think you see her walking to the car. Then there’s a scene of her on her hands and knees inside the house, almost like a woman in a birthing position. She does this scream, this absolute primal scream like someone whose soul is being ripped out of her body. I literally do not know what she had to do to go to that place, but most people agree she should have gotten acting nominations for this movie. It was seeing a person suffer the worst possible violence that could have happened to her. It was, here is the cost of this violence in a genre that often doesn’t address this issue. It’s meaningful in a movie about family.

Here is a bit taken from my old blog about the Darron Aronofsky 2017 movie Mother! which I despised with the heat of a thousand suns: (some present day commentary included)

Here's where I differed from other people's reaction to this movie. Hollywood continues to be so white that the casting of minorities feels really intentional. When the uninvited guests start showing up [at Jennifer Lawrence’s house, because her husband wrote a book of poetry that everyone is excited about], I couldn't help but notice that a lot of them were minorities- maybe it was only thirty percent, maybe it was twenty percent. But the guests start destroying the house essentially, literally tearing down the walls and breaking things, while Jennifer Lawrence is screaming, "What are you doing, this is my house!" I started to feel uncomfortable that the movie was making an awkward point about immigration [the movie came out during the many waves of the refugee crisis that occurred around the time]. Because the "uninvited" guests are certainly terrible and entitled, making themselves at home while a white Aryan woman is disturbed by their presence. But because she is the protagonist, and the guests are absurd, the viewer has to side with her.

I kept getting pulled out of the movie with scenes like this. There are scenes where riot police and these uninvited guests (many of whom were minorities) are clashing-- I cannot watch that and not think about the current sociopolitical context of both protestors and Black Lives Matter. There are scenes where people in the house who are desperately trying to escape the war that has broken out are locked behind barbed wire gates. I can't see that and not think about the current refugee crisis. The most disturbing scene from me wasn't the baby supper (yes that is actually what you think it is), but a scene where people lying on the ground with their bags over their heads are shot point blank one by one. I was completely pulled out of the movie because I thought about how I have seen real videos like that (referring to ISIL here). All for what? The closest thing this movie comes to being about something is about how the male artist can take and take and the woman keeps on giving even though it is her undoing. I am okay with the depiction of violence, but when it touches close to reality, it's only worth it if it brings something to the table about that issue, or if it doesn't, at least that it treats it with respect. Sexual assault survivors have been making the same argument about the depiction of rape in TV and movies--that it not be for the sake of shock value, or shoddy storytelling, but that it actually respect the people who have been through this trauma. I don't take depictions of war lightly. I think you can make silly movies that you're not supposed to take seriously that involve "war" (eg, any superhero movie), and you can make serious movies that are making points about war and its costs (eg, Born on the 4th of July). But to use all these extreme acts of violence as a metaphor about how male artists are self-absorbed struck me as a mismatch between very real geopolitical conflicts and the stupidity that is the idea of a poet who writes with an inkwell and somehow has an income that supports a wife who doesn't work.

If you’re going to touch on violence that is real, how could you treat it respectfully? When is too soon too soon? Are you bringing anything of interest to the table, or are you just gaping?

In my second book, at the center of the mystery is this mass murder the kids see in 1995. But, and I talked about this at the book’s launch, this isn’t actually the most violent thing that happens in the book. Sure, a bunch of people getting murdered at the same time is inherently violent, but there is no blood and guts on the page due to the nature of how they are killed. But there is another part of the book that I think is the most violent thing I’ve ever written. And, pointedly, it is not tied to the overall mystery of the book, it is not super natural, it’s just a thing that happens and I very deliberately made that choice. It’s an act of domestic violence. You know that one of the characters is occasionally dealing with violence in the home because it’s mentioned—the character treats it with casualness. It’s just accepted as an inconvenient norm. But this is a boiling point. You see it, blow by blow. You more fully understand the impact that it has on the person who suffers it. Does this, from a plot perspective, serve to draw the gang of kids closer to each other? It does. It absolutely functions this way as a fulcrum. At least IMHO, I did this without cheapening it because the full cost of that violence is spread out across the book. It was not, oh, this part will be to make them closer. It was: this is this persons lived experience, it is part of who they are and who they will become, and is a reality for many people—additionally, the other characters are shook by seeing the true reality of this person’s home life. Contrast this to say, Dr. Melfi’s rape in The Sopranos. This absolutely enraged me, because it was a graphic rape that literally served no purpose other than offering the potentially tantalizing plot point of, “will she tell Tony in order to get extrajudicial revenge??” It felt cheap to me, and not respectful to the character.

So, the next time you consider violence in your own work, think about the level of violence, think about who will come along with you and who won’t and if you’re fine with that, if it is cheap and campy, or if there is as real human cost, and about what point you are making.

Serious, unrelated question I like to ask periodically

Thinking about the last book that you purchased, did you buy it because:

a) a friend or family member recommended it

b) you had read press coverage about it (article in a newspaper, magazine, or large bookblog)

c) the author’s newsletter, or someone else’s newsletter talked about it

d) you saw posts on social media about it

e) you were just browsing and the cover and back copy looked good