Let’s Talk About Violence

Sometimes, I have the strangest conversations with my son, and last week, we talked about violence. We’d been discussing street safety and what he should do in the event of being approached by a stranger.

A Hard Conversation

I’m very honest with him about child safety and about the horrible things of human beings do to each other, sometimes uncomfortably so. But these are the discussions that we need to have with our children, ourselves, and each other.

Torran’s initial response was highly imaginative, involving pieces of roller coaster, a magic wand that respawns the dead, and a closet. Completely ineffectual in the real world. I liked it just the same.

I told him that if someone was trying to take him away he had my permission to do everything he possibly could to defend himself. He wanted to know why I was saying it was okay to hit someone, when previously, I’d said not to. To most people, the answer is obvious.

On the weekend, I went to my friends’ place, and super-hero movies came up. Namely, children watching super-hero movies and the level of gun-violence and combat in the movies. While we parents agreed that Deadpool isn’t for kids, we were less sure of ourselves when it came to the Avengers series. (As a side note, I really liked Captain Marvel. Didn’t love it as much as Wonder Woman, but Marvel’s “getting up” scene is gold.)

These conversations got me wondering: if I don’t approve of acts of violence towards other people, then why do I write stories with violent characters? Why is the heroine of my first fantasy series a killer?

And why am I okay with that?

Violence at Home

I’m not a violent person. I was hit as a child as punishment, sometimes with an object. I believe that hitting a child for discipline speaks to a lack of control on the parent’s part. Children don’t deserve to be hit.

But I’m not a pacifist in the true sense of the word. One couple I know (who are pacifists) allowed their children to watch documentaries where animals might tear each other apart because that’s nature. However, they wouldn’t let their young children consume violence between people in popular culture until they were teens. I understood this, to a point.

Humans have a violent nature, but we can choose to engage or control it. I applaud my friends for their dedications to their principles, and generally feel that they’d make better humans than me in the post-zombie apocalypse.

If my son grew up neurotypical, I probably would have had a harder time deterring him from taking in violence as a child. The exposure to violence for children is everywhere. I didn’t want him to play with guns and weapons, but I let him have a water pistol. Maybe that made me a hypocrite.

Violence in the Community

We can’t deny that anger and aggression are difficult emotions to control. IMHO it’s easier to fall in love at first sight than stay chilled during a confrontation. When we read stories that have despicable characters, we want them to have their comeuppance. That might be in the form of justice or a decent punch in the nose.

Many sports permit a healthy channeling of that innate, darker nature. I would argue that fiction serves the same purpose: stories allow us to experience the Corolla re emotions that accompany violence without having to be violent people.

We also don’t have to be abnormal to enjoy reading or writing dark or violent stories. People wondered why author Shirley Jackson wrote her 1959 gothic horror The Haunting of Hill House when she lived a typical suburban life. Perhaps it was from the safety of that “normality” that she was able to explore the theme of evil chaos that lies beneath the serenity of “normality.”

Violence in Pop Culture

Given that my son is very much a concrete thinker, I found it difficult to explain why it’s okay to cheer when a villain gets hit, but why I don’t think we should just go around punching each other to solve our problems. Aren’t I setting a double standard?

Humans compartmentalize the fantasy of violence without being violent. That’s not easy to explain to a kid.

I may be one of 2 people that I know who thought The Dark Knight was an onslaught fest of chaotic violence. Other people really enjoy the film and the representation of The Joker. How much violence is too much?

There’s been research that suggests exposure to violence desensitizes us, and makes children more likely to commit crime when they’re older. However, other psychologists like Christopher J. Ferguson, have challenged this position. Not all abused children become abusers or criminals. Not all sheltered children avoid criminality and violence. We still don’t have all the answers.

Not All Violence Is Created Equal

I struggle with the use of violence in popular culture when it stereotypes any kind of person, minority group, or culture as that which we should feared, loathe, or subjugate. For some reason, we have a hard time looking beyond what pop culture asks us to see. We also paint everyone with the same brush.

This kind of misinformation isn’t limited to who we are told should be the antagonist in popular culture. Victims often can’t break out of the proverbial corners stories have painted them into.

If audiences only see one type of person in the role of hero, what encourages them to envision anyone else in that role? And isn’t it our responsibility as creators to offer diversity? For example, I propose that the near-invisibility of differently-abled people in popular culture, despite being a noteworthy percentage of the population, contributes to an audience’s ambivalence about their representation as victims instead of heroes.

Not all representations of violence are healthy, even ones with non-human characters. One might suppose that rape or violence towards a robot is a victim-less crime. Lynne Sargent at Moral Guillotines eloquently explores the fantasy of sex-violence and robots and the societal implications.

“We should continue to monitor the impacts of sexbots on individuals that use them, and collect more empirical data so that we can make informed choices as individuals and members of society.” -Lynne Sargent

Imaginary or not, human or not, authors and creators need to challenge long-held stereotypes and tell a different story about violence.

As for me, I look for a sense of balance in the violence I write. If my characters use violence to achieve an objective, I don’t want to glorfy it. In fact, in The Wrath of Atticus, Viper has a profound reaction to the trauma she causes.

Let’s open the dialogue about violence in a story, and let’s get comfortable with the uncomfortable. What motivates our use of violence in entertainment, and how can we de-throne stereotypes about the perpetrators of violence which influence our cultural decision-making?