[custom_frame_center shadow=”on”]
[/custom_frame_center]
“That is no country for old men.” – First line of “Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats
In an age where violence is an everyday occurrence, what does it take to really shock? Violence has been around since the beginning; animals killing animals to fulfill the food chain, with few exceptional breeds killing out of anger, but for all intents and purposes, not until man arrived on the Earth did violence take on a more murderous meaning.
Quick television updates, quick video and fast-paced live reporting defines our pace of accepting visual violence. Are you more shocked or motivated by seeing disturbing images or is violence easier to take in the written word?
Television news utilizes the power of a visual to use violence to a titillating effect. Social media users now fulfill the duties of newsrooms: camera operators, anchors, editors. The most recent or most shocking video is often featured on television newscasts.
The video of on-the-scene Smartphone users is raw reporting – shot and posted online, in record time. It’s like live TV or radio, but sometimes more dangerous. Untrained in journalistic rule, anyone can post at any time and because it is raw, sometimes it is more believable.
Television news reports (not live broadcasts) are edited, narrated and packaged. A “complete” story can be told in 30 to 45 seconds, from the reporter’s point of view. Like the raw footage seen on social media, it can be taken out of context, but for decades, TV news was seen as reputable. In our current day of pursuing shock for ratings grabs, TV news is not as trusted, and more and more people look to “on-the-scene” Twitter friends to report current events. Social media can also be a powerful mix of words and visuals to convey a story.
Books optioned to movies are a good comparison of visual versus written violence. Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, “No Country for Old Men” is a devastatingly rapid punch to the gut courtesy of a psychopath rampaging a small Texas town. The book reads like a movie, is heavy on articles (McCarthy is a genius with polysyndeton) and very light on punctuation. You are looking through both the eyes of the stalker and those being stalked. It is unnerving from start to finish. It is an incredibly violent book that is heavy on detail and very light on a happy ending (READ: no closure AND no happy ending.) The book and the movie are very similar in pace and attention to detail, which was exactly what directors Ethan and Joel Coen wanted. If you’ve read the book, could you watch the movie? Some depictions of violence stay with you, either in visual or written form.
By: Melissa Hardin Baysinger
