JohnCalvinYoung.com

Yes, I have a con­fes­sion to make. I close my eyes in movies–a lot. I can come out of a film not hav­ing seen three or four piv­otal scenes. And I’m not sorry a bit. I don’t need to watch every detail of a bru­tal rape attempt to under­stand one character’s rela­tion­ship with another. I don’t need to see a man’s arms get cut off with a saw to know that the crime boss really has no con­science. I don’t need to med­i­tate on a shred­ded corpse to under­stand that this man was cru­elly mur­dered. Even when the event is key to the plot, these sear­ing images are not.

Last night I drove to Roanoke to see the new movie Watchmen, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I expected the film to be vio­lent, con­sid­er­ing the tone set by the graphic novel, but the fin­ished work was far more vio­lent than I had fore­seen. Each of the scenes I men­tioned above was in the movie, and many worse. At my count, there were at least 4 sex scenes, 4–8 extra­or­di­nar­ily vio­lent mur­ders, and a near-innumerable count of other gory and hor­ri­fy­ing deaths, includ­ing dozens vapor­ized, oblit­er­ated, or sim­ply exploded by Dr. Manhattan.

Now don’t get me wrong–not all vio­lence is wrong, and often times it is nec­es­sary, even in a fic­tional story. I had no prob­lem with Night Owl and Miss Jupiter’s fight scene in the prison riot–it was superbly chore­o­graphed and not unduly vio­lent. I’ve watched a num­ber of films with very vio­lent wartime scenes, such as Gods and Generals, The Last Samurai, and the Lord of the Rings. These films largely did not bother me. What offends me though is the macabre fas­ci­na­tion with death that would have us watch as a char­ac­ter takes a cleaver to another man’s head or a par­a­lyzed man is made to fall on a sword, as in Serenity.

Sometimes vio­lence is sim­ply nec­es­sary for the plot, as in Ben Hur or Passion of the Christ. But in many cases under­stated or sug­gested action can be even more pow­er­ful that directly show­ing it. In Watchmen, three organized-crime types try to break into Rorschach’s prison cell to extract ret­ri­bu­tion for his vig­i­lante work. The first two are grue­somely killed–the first dis­mem­bered with a cir­cu­lar saw and the sec­ond elec­tro­cuted, all in the midst of a prison riot–but the third’s death is not shown. Rorschach chases him into a bath­room, from which we only hear a flush­ing sound after a long moment. All the teens in the the­ater looked at each in hor­ri­fied fascination–“WHAT did he DO to him?” This scene was far more pow­er­ful than the bloody deaths grue­somely depicted all around the char­ac­ters, we recoil in dis­gust even though the only visual image we are left with is blood-tinged water flow­ing under­neath the door. We were sim­ply left in shock from the pre­vi­ous killings, but this one was left to our imag­i­na­tion, and it was far more effec­tive than the others.

While I was think­ing over this topic this morn­ing, the thought-provoking song “Junkyard” by Celtic Christian band Ceili Rain came on the radio.

Saw a movie where a guy
Kills another guy, twice
Don’t know if I can for­get about it

Saw a guy fin­ish a fight
With a butcher knife, slice
Pretty sure I won’t for­get about it

Is it OK If I say?:

My heart is not a junk­yard
My mind is not a dump for all the gunk around
My spirit’s not a junk­yard
No, it’s Holy Ground

Saw a photo on the net
Can’t believe that I’ve seen
Don’t know if I can for­get about it

Two kids were play­ing in some dirt
That will never come clean
Wish to God I could for­get about it

No one’s safe till we all say:

Wanna keep, keep the tem­ple clean
Gotta keep, keep the tem­ple clean
Tryin’ to keep, keep the tem­ple clean
How do I keep the tem­ple clean?

Vicious rumor went around
Wrecked my Uncle John’s life
Guess he never could for­get about it

The song is right–our hearts and minds are not places to fill with this kind of gra­tu­itous filth. Some vio­lence is nec­es­sary to a plot or unavoidable–crime is evil, war is vio­lent, it would be point­less to try to deny it–but to voyeuris­ti­cally dwell on these sorts of ele­ments is not healthy or desir­able. The Apostle Paul states in Philippians 4:8,

“Finally, brethren, what­ever things are true, what­ever things are noble, what­ever things are just, what­ever things are pure, what­ever things are lovely, what­ever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is any­thing praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” (NKJV)

Gruesome death, rape, for­ni­ca­tion, and mur­der are not true, noble, just, pure, lovely, or of good report. Let us not med­i­tate on these things.

In His Service,
John Calvin Young