Greetings fellow Scream Writers! Way back in June, Kelly Warner wrote about “The Expectations of Blood and Gore” and looked at the different approaches – suggestive, built up, bloodbath – that writers can use for the gore in their films and stories. Today, I’m going to build off Kelly’s wonderful piece and discuss the ways in which films gloss over the trauma of violent confrontation and how realistic portrayals of violence can deepen the emotional gut punch of your writing.
The Sanitization of Violence
During the era of the Motion Picture Production Code (roughly 1930 – 1968), one of the elements that was deemed worthy of notice was “brutality and possible gruesomeness” (as stated in the “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls” that would later crystallize into the Code). This immediately creates a problem when it comes to, oh I don’t know – horror movies, gangster films, westerns, war movies, action flicks, etc. The problem being that violence itself is gruesome.
Unable to show gruesomeness, filmmakers instead had to rely on a sanitized version of violence. Think of a classic western: the gunslinger shoots his way out of the situation (maybe they’re being attacked by Native Americans or ambushed in a frontier town); the body of a baddie slumps in the reigns of his horse and he falls off the side; oh no, he’s about to gunned down from above – whew, just in the nick of time he aimed high and his attacker falls to the ground behind the building…never to be seen or heard of again. There is a cleanliness to the violence in these old films – it’s no surprise that children play cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians, the children’s play is realistic as the films had been.
Confronting the Illusion (An Example from The Troop)
Kelly’s article spoke briefly about Nick Cutter’s The Troop, a novel he called “one of goriest pieces of fiction I’ve ever read.” The Troop is a novel that focuses on “monstrous tapeworms attacking a troop of boy scouts.” However, the most powerful scene within this gruesome novel features two of the boys attempting to kill a turtle for food. This scene holds a power to disgust and terrify that is leaps and bounds above the rest of the (already fantastically disgusting) novel. Our two boys learn the true, horrifying, nature of violence through their act of desperation; the living don’t die so easily, the fight back to cling onto life with every fibre of their being.
Dying Easily
Turning back to our western example, think about when the last time you saw a character gut shot, bleeding out, afraid of their death, in one of those gun fights. Unforgiven (1992) ends in an explosion of violence, and the characters do show fear of death, but its explosion of violence is over as quickly as it began – it would seem that every shot Clint Eastwood takes is a quick kill.
Contrast that with the opening (after the diner prelude) of Reservoir Dogs. Tim Roth’s Mr. Orange lays bleeding out in the back of a getaway car, a gut shot soaking his shirt, hands, the back seat, window, all in blood. His cries of agony mix with his fears of dying, he’s more wounded animal in this moment than human. And what a way to start the movie. People look at Pulp Fiction’s win of the Palme d’Or as the moment that cemented Tarantino’s career. But from the moment the credits stop rolling in Reservoir Dogs, the screams of Tim Roth announced a cinematic genius.
Recently I watched Jean Rollin’s Les Démoniaques (Demoniacs, 1974) and found myself disappointed at the banality of the violence, not because I suffer from any kind of bloodlust but rather it was the effectiveness of every attack. Late in the film there is a scene when our crazed mad woman kills someone by stabbing them in the back (literally). There is all of half an inch of blade stuck in the victim’s back and yet she dies immediately – despite the fact that no major organs were struck. There is a tendency in film (low budget, especially) to make killing look easy – but we know it’s not. Just think of the Slender Man stabbing that happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin; two twelve year old girls took their friend (also 12) into the woods and stabbed her nineteen times. Nineteen times! Yet, thankfully, the victim lived. If a twelve year old girl can survive nineteen stab wounds, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate the resilience of your characters.
In Conclusion…
When approaching the violence of your film, it is important to keep in mind the emotional impact that you want it to have. If it’s a horror film, then the violence should be horrific. How that violence is captured on the screen is up to the filmmakers and special effects team involved; but as Scream Writers we have the power to lay the foundation that those filmmakers will be working from and that means we have a chance to build it strong. Examine the difference in your emotional reaction to the violence in an action movie or an 80s slasher; then, examine how it is handled in the films that horrify you – there is a realism to violence in films like The Killer Inside Me (2010) and Funny Games (1997 & 2007) that shakes me to my core. How about you? But don’t forget what Kelly said in his wonderful article: “the violence and gore have to support the story.”
 to die quick and painless to senitize violence.){kind=link}