Good Violence, Bad Violence

After watching the second Hobbit movie, I felt defiled somehow. I know not everybody has the same sensitivities to violence and I don’t know if we should, but there was something about what I experienced in that theater that disturbed me somewhere deep inside. What I could put into words at the time was that the violence was gratuitous and meant for a laugh (“how many ways can you decapitate an orc or goblin?”)… and that the people around me were laughing.

A few weeks later, I recommended a book to a friend called, “The Arena.” I cautioned her to check into it before letting her teens read it, because it has mature material in it. “What’s different about the violence in this book than in the movie you were complaining about last week?” she asked. It was a good question and it’s been simmering on the back of my mind and popping up now and then into my thoughts.

This morning as I drifted off into a Dayquil padded sleep, I realized a few things:

1. Death is never, ever funny. Death, even death of evil creatures should be sobering. Death IS a symptom of evil and dispensing death through our hands should be cause to pause. Sometimes dispensing justice is appropriate and in war, killing is a fact of life. Orcs and goblins represent all that is nasty and evil, but doing away with vermin is something done with disgust, much like cleaning a toilet. It may have to be done, but we are also tainted by the process.
2. In a story, violence can be portrayed different ways. In The Hobbit, the continual, cold and deliberate killing and maiming was primarily for sport and a laugh. I don’t ever want to witness suffering or death and laugh. Although I want to be strong enough to dispense justice, I don’t want to become like the evil ones I am killing, delighting in death or suffering. Across the globe, there is intentional murder, deprivation and suffering caused by people like you and me… to other people like you and me. It’s foolishness to think that we are immune to the internal dialogue that turns a good person to bad just because what we immerse ourselves in is “not real, just a movie.”
3. In The Arena, the violence and yucky stuff that happens is portrayed as perversion, ugly, and abhorrent. Though it is a graphic book, it is written as a challenge to be a better person, to exercise self control, to abhor that which is evil and cling to that which is good. The Bible itself is full of violence – stories of justice and retribution. None of it is less than serious and somber.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you. I think I fell asleep at about that point. I’m no saint over here, just another person striving towards understanding what God’s trying to knock through my thick skull.

Edited to add: And don’t even get me started about Hunger Games!