Reality in fantastic worlds
A couple days ago, I watched a rather scathing review of the last Indiana Jones movie... not that there's that many positive things about it... the reviewer made a terrific point when remarking that every act of violence was made "kid-friendly." There were bullet holes, sure, but the victims of random and directed violence were all rather bloodless.
Same thing with Star Wars, even though in A New Hope the arm sliced off by Ben Kenobi does lie there in a bloody puddle. To be fair, I would have expected the wound to be cauterized, but still. A New Hope and Raiders of the Lost Ark do have a lot in common, same as Crystal Skull and the Star Wars prequels. The former, while not skimping on violence, do show the consequences, be it blood or holes in storm trooper armor, while the latter make it all seem like a big video game.
The same could be said about certain aspects of fantasy, more so than science fiction, but overall the level of violence displayed in certain volumes of the respective genre is made cartoonish by the lack of blood.
This ain't D&D or World of Warcraft! We expect a reader to suspend their disbelief about dragons, magic and whatever else, we invite them into the realms of our imagination, expect them to live and suffer with our characters, let them participate in the battles and skirmishes the protagonists may face, yet at the end we hold back...?
Why?
No, seriously... why? Sure, we provide an escape from the harshness of our world, but if you are like me, you will marvel at the daring of Paul Verhoeven who did not shy away from showing the very real consequences of equipping a prototype robot with large caliber guns and then have said robot go berserk on a manager.
Is the scene in the original Robocop nice? Fuck no! It's not meant to be nice, it is meant to be sickening! Most people will never get the irony of that scene. People will complain about the level of violence, yet support legislation that allows everyone access to guns that while not inflicting wounds as gaping as those in the film will still kill people. The irony is right there.
The glorious warrior cutting his way through waves and waves of orcs, yet in the end his clothes show only some sweat stains, if that. And then we expect our readers to buy into the pathos of said warrior elaborating on the grimness of war and the suffering and hardship... in his pristine, maybe sweat-stained, clothes.
Who's laughing at the stupidity? I am!
I have never swung a sword at a live opponent. Thankfully. But I have held a sword, hacked away at vegetation with it, and used an ax on wood. So I do have a vague idea how much force one brings to bear with such a weapon. Aside from cutting myself shaving, the tip of my thumb had a rather messy encounter with the revolving blade of a bread-cutting-machine, I caught a falling knife, received my fair share of blows to both body and head, and while none of that even comes close to being on the business end of a sword blow (thank fuck for that!) it does show how easy it is to draw blood, and not in the ouch-paper-cut variety either. So a cut -- not a swing, mind you -- by any kind of blade will leave you slightly bloodied, if not downright gushing, depending on the location. A full swing, unhindered by armor, will kill, and not in a PG-13 way, either.
And that is exactly the point, we tell stories, stories have meaning, or should have, and in the end we want to point to our tales and say "Here, this is the point I wanted to make, him looking out over the field, on which so many of his friends have died, where he lost his leg trying to save his brother, here is where he realized that wars fought over religion are shit. Here is where he realized there was no god, or if there was, he did not care one bit."
Sure, such a scene could've been written PG-13, with lots of bloodless death, and maybe the message would still have come across, but chances are that message will sound preachy because the reader has not suffered through the fighting, because the protagonist has only observed caricatures, bloodless avatars from his favorite video game go down, not his friends and neighbors.
I prefer blood and tears and pain and joy and regret over the scrubbed cleanliness of PG-13 any day of the week.
Same thing with Star Wars, even though in A New Hope the arm sliced off by Ben Kenobi does lie there in a bloody puddle. To be fair, I would have expected the wound to be cauterized, but still. A New Hope and Raiders of the Lost Ark do have a lot in common, same as Crystal Skull and the Star Wars prequels. The former, while not skimping on violence, do show the consequences, be it blood or holes in storm trooper armor, while the latter make it all seem like a big video game.
The same could be said about certain aspects of fantasy, more so than science fiction, but overall the level of violence displayed in certain volumes of the respective genre is made cartoonish by the lack of blood.
This ain't D&D or World of Warcraft! We expect a reader to suspend their disbelief about dragons, magic and whatever else, we invite them into the realms of our imagination, expect them to live and suffer with our characters, let them participate in the battles and skirmishes the protagonists may face, yet at the end we hold back...?
Why?
No, seriously... why? Sure, we provide an escape from the harshness of our world, but if you are like me, you will marvel at the daring of Paul Verhoeven who did not shy away from showing the very real consequences of equipping a prototype robot with large caliber guns and then have said robot go berserk on a manager.
Is the scene in the original Robocop nice? Fuck no! It's not meant to be nice, it is meant to be sickening! Most people will never get the irony of that scene. People will complain about the level of violence, yet support legislation that allows everyone access to guns that while not inflicting wounds as gaping as those in the film will still kill people. The irony is right there.
The glorious warrior cutting his way through waves and waves of orcs, yet in the end his clothes show only some sweat stains, if that. And then we expect our readers to buy into the pathos of said warrior elaborating on the grimness of war and the suffering and hardship... in his pristine, maybe sweat-stained, clothes.
Who's laughing at the stupidity? I am!
I have never swung a sword at a live opponent. Thankfully. But I have held a sword, hacked away at vegetation with it, and used an ax on wood. So I do have a vague idea how much force one brings to bear with such a weapon. Aside from cutting myself shaving, the tip of my thumb had a rather messy encounter with the revolving blade of a bread-cutting-machine, I caught a falling knife, received my fair share of blows to both body and head, and while none of that even comes close to being on the business end of a sword blow (thank fuck for that!) it does show how easy it is to draw blood, and not in the ouch-paper-cut variety either. So a cut -- not a swing, mind you -- by any kind of blade will leave you slightly bloodied, if not downright gushing, depending on the location. A full swing, unhindered by armor, will kill, and not in a PG-13 way, either.
And that is exactly the point, we tell stories, stories have meaning, or should have, and in the end we want to point to our tales and say "Here, this is the point I wanted to make, him looking out over the field, on which so many of his friends have died, where he lost his leg trying to save his brother, here is where he realized that wars fought over religion are shit. Here is where he realized there was no god, or if there was, he did not care one bit."
Sure, such a scene could've been written PG-13, with lots of bloodless death, and maybe the message would still have come across, but chances are that message will sound preachy because the reader has not suffered through the fighting, because the protagonist has only observed caricatures, bloodless avatars from his favorite video game go down, not his friends and neighbors.
I prefer blood and tears and pain and joy and regret over the scrubbed cleanliness of PG-13 any day of the week.
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It is meant to be horrifying, yes. War, violence of any kind really, needs to be shown as is. There must not be any glory to it. Be it bloodless humans or bloodless orcs, the result is the same, a sort of neutering of violence, turning it into a caricature is the wrong sort of message. Taking the humanity out of a victim, a la orc or goblin, is the same sort of propaganda bullshit that has been going on for millennia: they are infidels can easily be replaced with they are terrorists or they are orcs.As long as the dehumanization of foes (they don't bleed, they don't feel pain) continues, as long as violence is treated as acceptable, we writers of the fantastic rob ourselves of a great narrative tool.
Yes, it is an oxymoron, realistic fantasy, but even the Brothers Grimm with their fairy tales maimed, blinded, poisoned people, and while there was a happy ending, it usually came with a price somebody had to pay.
Knowledge, dare I say wisdom, comes at a price. And even the orc should be regarded as a person. Sure, in war the enemy becomes faceless, and everybody is kind of busy saving their own skin which usually results in killing or maiming whoever the attacker is, but it should never be without consequence, and even if that consequence is the dying of a loved one... nobody is left unscathed by war...
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I agree with you about having realistic expectations of the carnage wielded by a sword, or a mace or dagger in bloody scenes in general. It is a horrific thing, and not to be shied away from. I was describing a horrifying torture scene in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series to a friend and she was appalled. She didn't understand how I could be enjoying reading it. I didn't enjoy the torture, I was in tears for the protagonist. And I have heard from others that was the very reason they could not continue reading that story. It was truly horrifying and that's what we remember in particular. Realistic consequences, well written, are what make readers experience crushing empathy. I find if it's done right, I'm always more invested emotionally as a result. And we like our grim dark very dark indeed.