making sense of violence: a study of narrative meaning · pdf filemaking sense of violence: a...

Making sense of violence: a study ofnarrative meaningRachel Louise Shaw

Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, 22 /28 Princess Road West, Leicester LE1 6TP,UK

Dramatized violence has been a feature of entertainment in westerncivilization throughout history. The function of �lm violence is exploredand compared to violence encountered in real life. The role of narrative inindividuals’ meaning-making processes is also investigated. Six adultswere individually interviewed using a semi-structured schedule andnarrative analysis was implemented. The �ndings revealed that real lifeviolence is experientially distinct from �lm violence but narrative wasfound to be central to participants’ quest for the meaning of violence inboth contexts. The narrative framework of violence and whether it isjusti�able were fundamental to participants’ understanding. The functionof violent �lm was found to be multifaceted: it can teach viewers about theconsequences of violence; it allows them to speculate about their own andothers’ reactions to violence; and it provides an opportunity to experiencesomething which is ordinarily outside of our experience in order to satisfyour human existential needs. Qualitative Research in Psychology 2004; 1:131 /151

Key words: film violence; meaning-making; narrative; phenomenology;real life violence

Introduction

Encountering violence in real life can be adevastating event which leaves victims withlasting emotional and physical scars. Para-doxically, watching violence via the med-ium of film has become an established

pastime in modern western civilization.Evidence that violence has been a part ofentertainment throughout history confirmsthat this is not a post nineteenth centuryphenomenon (Bloch, 1998; Bok, 1998; War-ner, 1998). The overwhelming historicalpresence of violence in folklore, mythical

Correspondence: Rachel Louise Shaw, Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, 22 /28 PrincessRoad West, Leicester LE1 6TP, UK.E-mail: [email protected]

# Arnold 2004 10.1191/1478088704qp009oa

Qualitative Research in Psychology 2004; 1: 131 /151www.QualResearchPsych.com

legends, nursery rhymes, lullabies, litera-ture, theatre and film suggests that violencewhich is experienced receptively through adramatized medium has some kind ofallure. One common feature of these formsof popular culture stands out; each portraysrepresentations of violence within the con-text of a narrative. Telling stories is also afavourite human pursuit. More than that,‘the narrative is present at all times, in allplaces, in all societies; the history of narra-tive begins with the history of mankind;there does not exist, and never has existed,a people without narratives’ (Barthes, 1966,cited in Polkinghorne, 1988: 14).

Since its introduction into mainstreampsychology by figures like Theodore Sarbin(1986) and Jerome Bruner (1990), narrativehas had a limited impact in specialist areas,such as personality and human develop-ment (McAdams, 1985), psychotherapy(e.g., Mair, 1989) and health psychology(e.g., Atkinson, 1997; Crossley, 1999). Con-ventional psychology has not previouslyapplied the philosophy of narrative to thestudy of media violence. Previous researchin the discipline of mass communicationshas come close by attempting to explainaudience interpretations and behaviourswhen watching violent film in terms ofgenre, realism, film conventions and bound-ary testing (e.g., Barker and Brooks, 1998;Buckingham, 1996; Hill, 1997; Morrisonet al ., 1999). The bulk of psychologicalliterature though has overlooked the signif-icance of why we are attracted to violentfilm and how we make sense of the imagesportrayed, instead focusing upon the effectsof being exposed to media violence (e.g.,Cumberbatch and Howitt, 1989; Paik andComstock, 1994). The research described inthis paper is therefore attempting somethingnew by approaching the subject of filmviolence from a narrative analytic stance.

Film was chosen as the medium of dra-matized violence that this research focusedon because it is one of the most pervasiveentertainment media in contemporary cul-ture. Individuals were invited to reflectupon their experiences of violent film aswell as their experiences as victims ofviolence in real life or witnesses of violentevents. The apparent diversity of these twoexperiential phenomena was explored. Sec-ondly, this research asked what is the role ofnarrative in individuals’ meaning-makingprocess, and finally, it aimed to answerthe question what is the function of filmviolence?

Methodology

This is an inquiry into the meaningsof violent experiences. Husserl (1936)drew our attention to the significance ofmeaning-making by stating that humanbehaviour, experience, and scientificachievements are all grounded in the mak-ing of meaning. As such, any study ofhuman experience must be concerned withmeanings and how they are attributed toeveryday life by adopting a phenomenolo-gically sensitive approach as proposed byGiorgi (1970). Donald Polkinghorne’s (1988)study of narrative meaning is employed inthis research. Polkinghorne states thatmeanings are not concrete because we arecontinuously reconstructing them. Further-more each of us is aware only of our ownunique realm of meaning. This makesthe study of meaning dependent upon self-reflection. Self-reflection, however, canonly reveal the outcomes of meaning-mak-ing processes and not the processes them-selves. In order to begin to grasp thecomplex meanings communicated byhuman actors we must turn to language

132 RL Shaw

because ‘language is commensurate withmeaning’ (Polkinghorne, 1988: 7). Weuse language every day to negotiate andrenegotiate meanings and the most naturalway to achieve this is through ‘the media-tion of narrative interpretation’ (Bruner,1990: 67). Hence to effectively study the‘lived experience’ (Heidegger, 1962) ofindividuals’ encounters with violence inreal life and via film we must analyse theiruse of narrative, both in the ways theyattribute meanings to their experiencesand in the ways they tell their ‘stories’ ofexperiencing violence. To achieve this aim astudy of narrative meaning was conducted.

ParticipantsSix individuals were interviewed. Smith(2003) recommends that for a study whichaims to explore subjective experience, asmall sample size made up of five or sixinterviews with one or more individuals isused. Such a project is concerned withrevealing the nuances of idiosyncratic ex-periences in participants’ accounts ratherthan making representative claims. Six par-ticipants were interviewed once in thisstudy and were asked to tell their storiesof violent experiences. As described below,the analysis was concerned not only withindividuals’ experiential accounts, it wasalso involved in revealing the meanings,structure and function of the narrativesused by participants. A single interviewwith each participant was therefore suffi-cient for the focus of this study. Interviewswere conducted using a semi-structuredinterview schedule with open-ended ques-tions and participants were encouraged tospeak freely about their experiences (Mish-ler, 1986). Recruitment was through eitherthe Victims of Crime Support Scheme or thelocal cinema. The project was designed toinvestigate experiences of violent film fromthe perspective of individuals who enjoy

watching popular film. At the same time, itaimed to explore the experience of being avictim or witness of violence in real life.The choice of agencies through which torecruit participants directly reflected thisdual objective. Each participant involved inthe study described experiencing violentfilm in a meaningful way and also re-counted a real life event which they feltwas violent. Whether their interview fo-cused on film or real life or both dependedupon which was most significant to parti-cipants when telling their stories. Someparticipants spoke mainly about film,whereas some concentrated on their reallife experience of being a victim of violence.Other participants gave equal time in theirinterviews to violence experienced via filmand that encountered in real life. All parti-cipants were aged 18 or over both because itwas adult experiences which were of inter-est and also in order to comply with the ‘18’rating given by the British Board of FilmClassification to many films which containviolent scenes.

Interview scheduleParticipants were asked to name any filmsthey had watched which they believedcontained scenes of violence and then totalk about their responses to those scenesand films as a whole. The interviewerprompted individuals to describe whythey believed particular scenes to be vio-lent, how they reacted to them at the timeand how they felt about violent film moregenerally. The interviewer did not make anysuggestions about which films should bedefined as violent; this choice was left opento participants. As a result, films fromdifferent genres were discussed by eachindividual, including a drama based on atrue story, The Accused; a crime thriller,Seven ; a ‘cult classic’ about heroin addic-tion, Trainspotting ; a reworking of a literary

Making sense of violence 133

classic, William Shakespeare’s Romeo andJuliet ; and the ‘new brutalism’ films, Nat-ural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs and PulpFiction . Allowing the participants to selectwhich films they discussed was a crucialaspect to the project. The point of theexercise was to ascertain what participantsfelt was violent in the hope that the retellingof their experience would enable them toverbalize what they actually defined asviolent and how they were able to make itmeaningful.

Participants were then asked to talk aboutany encounters with violence they hadexperienced in real life. Again the defini-tion of a violent encounter was left up tothem and different stories unfolded includ-ing being a victim of an armed robbery,witnessing a mob crime in Africa, andconducting a police chase of an escapedconvict. The interviewer asked participantsto describe how the incident happened,how they reacted to it, what action theytook, and how they felt then and now.

The questions were designed to elicitparticipants’ narratives but also to answermore direct questions about how theyexperienced the violence at the centre oftheir stories. As a result the opening ques-tions were similar to those used in tradi-tional narrative research, for example, ‘tellme about any films you have experiencedwhich you thought were violent’ or ‘haveyou ever experienced anything violent inyour own life?’. Supplementary questionswere asked once a participant was in themidst of a story in order to obtain moredetail about their experiences, for example,‘what kind of emotions went through yourmind at that point of the film?’ or ‘what didyou think of straight away after it hap-pened?’. The researcher told participantsthey could withdraw from the study at anypoint during or after the interview, that their

data would be stored confidentially and thattheir names would be changed if their datawere used in any published work. Inter-views were tape-recorded and transcribedfor analysis.

AnalysisThe method of analysis employed in thisstudy is an analysis of narrative meaning(Polkinghorne, 1988) which has a dualpurpose: to reveal the narrative structuresat work in individuals’ meaning-makingprocesses; and to reveal the narrative de-vices employed by individuals in retellingtheir experiences of violence. The prag-matic approach adopted borrows aspectsof technique and purpose from narrativeanalysis as described by Crossley (2000)and Murray (2003) and from interpretativephenomenological analysis (Smith et al .,1999). Smith’s stages of coding for an inter-pretative phenomenological analysis areimplemented initially to explore partici-pants’ experiences. Before an analysisof participants’ use of narrative can beconducted we first need to establish thenature of their experience. The phenomen-ological aspect of Smith’s approach willhelp to achieve this goal. Crossley’s narra-tive analysis will then help to discernwhich, if any, narrative structures helpedparticipants to make sense of their experi-ences of violence. Crossley aims to identifythe narrative tone present in the accountsand the imagery used by participants. An-other useful step advocated by Crossley isfor the analyst to conduct an analysis oftheir own personal narrative alongside theanalysis of participants’ accounts. In othercontexts this would be referred to as reflex-ive analysis (Mulkay, 1985). Reflexivity isbecoming increasingly important in psy-chology as in other areas of the socialsciences (Smith, 1994; Finlay and Gough,2003) and can ensure that the analyst is

134 RL Shaw

capable of achieving a genuine and honestanalysis. Finally, Murray’s conception ofnarrative analysis allows the analyst toencapsulate the wider scheme of narrativefunction within the account as a whole. Theaim of Murray’s narrative analysis is ‘toreveal the underlying structure of narrativeaccounts that shape not only the way weaccount for our actions and those of othersbut also our very identity’ (Murray, 2003:130). This will help the analyst to identifythe narrative structures used by participantsin recounting their experiences of violence.These results will then be synthesized.

Findings

The results of the preliminary analysis ofthemes will be presented alongside theidentification of narrative structures withinparticipants’ meaning-making processes.The evidence of narrative devices at workin participants’ language will then be dis-cussed together with the concluding re-marks about the analysis. Before we moveon to the main analysis the researcherpresents a brief reflexive analysis of herown narrative.

A reflexive analysis of my personalnarrativeAs the researcher I acted as interviewer,analyst and author of this research. At thetime these interviews were conducted I wasa woman in my midtwenties with littleexperience of violence in real life. I washowever interested in violent film, hencethe topic of this research. In order to explorethe issues of violent film comprehensively Ibelieved it was necessary to also investigateindividuals’ experiences of violence in reallife, particularly considering the connectionbetween film and real life that had already

been created in the public consciousness bymedia coverage of films such as NaturalBorn Killers and events such as the Dun-blane shootings.

Sometimes I found the accounts of reallife violence offered by participants distres-sing. The confidence evident in theirretelling however and the familiar style ofthe narrative devices employed assisted myreading and understanding of what hadhappened; I could respond empathicallyboth to the detail of the events participantsdescribed and to the ways it made them feel.This was a challenging experience for some-one with no clinical or counselling trainingbut one that I was able to manage by activelylistening to participants’ stories and also bybeing aware of how I felt on hearing them.I was more at ease when discussing filmviolence because that was an experiencewith which I was familiar. However, thiscalled upon the different technique of self-monitoring my own presuppositions. As astudent of psychology with an interest infilm I was intellectually familiar with filmtheories of audience behaviour as well aspsychology’s part in the perpetuation of themedia effects discourse which dominatedthe public domain. As a result I hadto consciously stop myself from contribut-ing to participants’ debates about mediaviolence and their responses to violentfilm in order to enable them to reveal thenature of their experiences using their ownlanguage.

Aspects of my personal narrative may beevident in the written analysis of the datapresented in this paper and it was certainlyevident during the interpretative act ofanalysis. This is a great benefit of qualitativeresearch methods; they allow the ‘re-searcher as person’ into the research processin order to get closer to the ‘participant as


person’, in order to gain an insider’s per-spective of their experiences.

Themes and narrative structuresInitially the themes emerging from the datawere separated according to whether theyrelated to film violence or real life violence.This enabled participants’ experiences offilm violence to be represented in terms ofresponses to violent scenes, justificationsfor violent actions within scenes, portraitsof characters involved in violence, expecta-tions and publicity surrounding notoriouslyviolent films and the effects of violentmedia more generally. Similar themes wereelicited in relation to experiences of real lifeviolence, such as emotional responses toviolence, rationalizations for violence andbeliefs about violence. In addition whenparticipants spoke of real life encounterswith violence they experienced a struggle tocome to terms with it, and some partici-pants found the anticipation of what couldhappen more threatening than what actu-ally did happen.

The themes which emerged from the datathat are related to the narrative analysis arepresented. These include the justificationsof film violence, character portraits in film,the functions of film violence, and experi-encing violence in real life.

Justifications of film violence.Frequently in their accounts of violent filmsparticipants automatically began to justifythe presence of violence. After having dis-cussed several films with Danny which hebelieved contained violent scenes I askedhim about whether he believed such vio-lence had a function.

Rachel1: Do you think that has a function, thatviolence in films has any kind of function?Danny2: As I said it depends I mean if it’s notdone properly then it’s obviously there just youknow, for a bit of surprise and shock maybe, butthere are occasions where as I say it’s necessary

for the plot I mean if you’re trying to show asituation where the life is violent then you’ve gotto show, you know, violence, as it really is. So inthat case you can’t understand, I don’t know,gang land New York or something withoutshowing the violence that’s in there, so yes Ithink on most occasions it is, it is justified andneeds to be shown.

At the time of Katie’s interview NaturalBorn Killers was in the news (e.g., Whit-worth, 1999) because there had been a caseof alleged copy-cat crime in the USA. Iasked Katie if she had seen this film so wecould engage in a discussion about violentfilms of a controversial nature. Katie hadseen Natural Born Killers and knew of theissues; she then began to discuss other filmswith equally violent reputations.

Rachel: Have you seen Natural Born Killers ?Katie: I saw it with the same group of friends Isaw Pulp Fiction with and I found it harder thanPulp Fiction . We had a debate afterwards and afriend found Pulp Fiction so disturbing that shewalked out but had no problem with NaturalBorn Killers . There seemed to be so muchviolence. It seemed like an MTV video style. Iwas concerned about how glamorous it made theperpetrators look. I don’t have a problem withviolence in films if it’s legitimate within thescheme of the plot. I have less of a problem withsomething like Reservoir Dogs because it’s aboutthe on-going injuries of one person. A lot ofpeople had trouble with Tim Roth’s characterand the pool of blood getting bigger, but I thoughtthat was realistic and how it is. I have less of aproblem with that than something like TheTerminator where life is very cheap and peoplejust get blown away two a penny.

Danny’s justification for violent scenes infilms was connected to the stories they told.He was unsure about violence that is usedto manipulate the audience for shockingeffect, for example, but believed that some-times stories of a particular subculturerequire representations of violence for themto be told effectively. Katie too was expli-citly concerned with ‘the plot’ in her assess-

136 RL Shaw

ment of justified violence. In the screenplayof Natural Born Killers Quentin Tarantinodeliberately manipulated the traditionallinear plot in order to create an atmosphereof chaos which Oliver Stone brought tothe screen with the MTV-style camera work.This problematizes Katie’s reading of Nat-ural Born Killers, making it hard to dealwith. Probably the most elemental of tradi-tional narrative features is the linear plot-line. Hence, when this is taken away, chaosthrives, making a coherent understanding ofevents in the film extremely difficult toachieve.

Katie’s account then unfolds to reveal themore implicit significance of realism in herjudgement of whether violence can be jus-tifiably portrayed in film. The violence ofTim Roth’s slow death in Reservoir Dogs isrationalized by Katie because of its realism.This finding supports Annette Hill’s (2001)conclusions about women who enjoy the‘new brutalist’ films like those in Taranti-no’s repertoire. Hill reports an interviewexcerpt almost identical to Katie’s in whicha participant, Jill, described Tim Roth’s‘bleeding to death’ as ‘a reminder of justhow bad it can be to be shot’ (Hill, 2001:139). Jill appreciated the challenge of pain-ful scenes, strong narratives and character-ization, such as those portrayed in ReservoirDogs , and preferred this to films like DieHard ‘where you just accept the violence asa matter of course’ (Hill, 2001: 139). Hill’sfindings also support Danny’s and Katie’snotion that the context of the film’s plot iscentral to viewers’ responses to violentscenes.

Diane saw Reservoir Dogs too but unlikeKatie was unable to justify its violence.

Rachel: And what do you think about violence infiction films?Diane: It depends, it’s like swearing, sometimesthat’s the only way you can portray a particularcharacter or scene, the only way you can get the

story across. [..] Some of the Tarantino films,Reservoir Dogs , that was two hours of mindlessviolence, so in that case there was no need for it.It wasn’t entertaining, it was a waste of filmbudget. There wasn’t any need for the violence, Ididn’t get it. I can remember the ear-cutting sceneand I remember a lot of shooting. It does tell astory but I don’t know what it was. [laughs]When I came away I just saw blood and nostoryline.Rachel: Does the story make a difference then?Diane: Sometimes violence helps to get a storyacross. The Accused, you had to show the rapebecause that’s what the whole film is about. Thewhole film is based around that girl and what shewent through and that’s what the film was about.That was particularly disturbing, I didn’t likethat very much because it could happen to me.It’s a woman and it’s the kind of thing that couldhappen to me, I didn’t like it.

From her account Diane appeared to havebeen equally disturbed by both films shementioned. However, her reaction to TheAccused was tolerated because it told a taleof something which ‘could happen’. Thescreening of the rape was according toDiane valid because she could justify itspresence within the narrative; if we had notseen the rape we would not understand thecontext of Jodie Foster’s character’s painand suffering. Schlesinger et al . (1992) alsoinvestigated women’s responses to The Ac-cused and found that women relate to filmviolence either as ‘the recreation of a pain-ful or dangerous personal experience’ or asan approximation of a feared event (Schle-singer et al ., 1992: 164). In her interviewDiane recounted some of her experiences ofbeing in a violent relationship. Althoughher abuse was not described as sexual, itwas suffered at the hands of a man. Herreaction therefore could represent both apainful memory and a feared yet imaginableand realistic event. This female responsehas been found to differ from the equivalentmale reaction to a rape scene (Schlesinger etal ., 1998). In this later study Schlesinger


and colleagues explored men’s responses tothe scene in Basic Instinct where MichaelDouglas’ Detective Nick Curran rapesJeanne Tripplehorn’s character, Dr BethGarner. Men did not condone rape but werefound to relate more easily to the maleprotagonist. This is an example of how theposition of the viewer, due to gender in thiscase, can influence an individual’s readingand justification of a violent scene within aparticular narrative.

Diane’s view of the justification ofviolence in Reservoir Dogs was diametri-cally opposed to Katie’s. On one level thisforcefully illustrates the significance ofidiosyncratic beliefs in the process of mak-ing sense of violence in film; Diane de-scribed the violence in Reservoir Dogs as‘mindless’ and was unable to justify it.However, they both used the same mechan-ism when they found justification of vio-lence possible: realism enabled Katie tojustify the long and bloody death of TimRoth’s character; and Diane’s justification ofthe rape scene was due to the fact that itshowed, in her interpretation, a realisticevent. So even though the meanings at-tached to individual experiences remainedunique, there were similarities in the pro-cesses through which meaning was attrib-uted based on the context of realism. Hencethe narrative framework of the violenceportrayed was central to both Katie andDiane in their interpretations of film vio-lence.

Character portraits in film.Most stories involve human actors interact-ing with each other as a series of eventsunfold. Violent films are no exception tothis rule but the roles of the charactersappeared to be of particular consequenceto the ways in which participants madesense of violence portrayed. Simon dis-

cussed several films portraying charactersfrom the Mafia and described a scene inCasino which was difficult to watch. Inspite of that Simon bought the video towatch at his own leisure and later went onto describe the importance of characters infilms of this genre.

Simon: I’ve seen Casino , Donnie Brasco andGoodfellas , three of the most violent ones.Casino is the one I’d pick out as having violenceI couldn’t watch, but I bought it on video. Theviolence was necessary to the plot to portray thelives of people in the Mafia. [..]Rachel: What was it in Casino that you founddifficult?Simon: The scene that was difficult to watch wasthe one where they’re torturing a bloke forinformation and they put his head in a vice andthey start tightening it. My eyes were wincingwhen I watched it at the cinema. I have watchedit since on video and it’s not an easy scene towatch at all.[..]Rachel: What emotions went through your mindwhen they were closing the vice and you werethinking that’s the sort of thing that couldhappen to me? [referring to a previous commentmade by Simon]Simon: I was struck by how evil these people areand the awful things they were doing and Irealised that these were probably the methodsthey used and, what makes them do that toanother human being? It gives you an insightinto the way the Mafia works, it adds to therealism.

Simon was animated when retelling hisemotional response to the ‘vice scene’ inCasino ; his appreciation for the film as acraft was evident. He was a self-confessed‘film fan’ which is perhaps the reason hewas able to endure such ‘difficult’ viewingwhilst retaining a feeling of enjoyment.Engaging with a film was important toSimon and for that to occur he had tounderstand the characters within the con-text of the story. The significance of thecharacters in Simon’s process of makingsense of violent film was even clearer in

138 RL Shaw

his account of watching Seven and Train-spotting .

Rachel: Do you think for something to be violentit has to be physical contact?Simon: There’s psychological violence so itdoesn’t necessarily have to be physical. I sawSeven and that film, and Trainspotting as well, Ienjoyed them. Sometimes the point of the filmisn’t for you to enjoy it but I always use the word‘enjoy’ because if you like it and you wereentertained by it, you enjoyed it. It’s not as ifit’s putting the thought in your mind to go and dowhat you’ve seen. It was psychological violencein Seven , I couldn’t sleep after seeing that film.That’s the first film I’ve seen where I reallythought about the characters, how are they goingto be now, because they’d been that well por-trayed during the film you really thought how arethey going to deal with it, that incident thathappens at the end is going to be with them forthe rest of their lives. It fucked my head up a bit,because it was psychological violence, KevinSpacey knew what he’d done and he knewBrad Pitt wanted to kill him and he wantedhim to. Pitt was having his revenge and he knewit would be with him for the rest of his life but heknew he had to do it. It was psychologicalviolence. With Trainspotting I wasn’t reallyaffected by the violence but it was Renton. Atthe beginning I felt empathy for him and it wasquite light hearted, they’re doing daft things evenwhen he swaps the videos over but that’s thecrucial point where everything starts to gowrong. Then he gives drugs to Tommy and yousee what he’s capable of doing. Then he catchessomething from the cat and that bloke says thecat’s fine and everyone laughed but I thought thatwas beyond laughter, it didn’t lighten the moodat all. It wasn’t funny at all, it didn’t detract fromthe seriousness at all.

Seven and Trainspotting were linked bySimon because they portrayed ‘psychologi-cal violence’. In Seven it was against itscentral ‘hero’ character and in the case ofTrainspotting its central character was theperpetrator. Simon’s diverse interpretationsof this psychological violence may indeedbe due to this difference. In watching SevenSimon had taken to heart the conditions inwhich Brad Pitt’s and Morgan Freeman’s

detective characters battled against the se-rial killer, played by Kevin Spacey. Simoncared for Brad Pitt’s character and so theanguish and passion portrayed by Pitt in hisshooting of Kevin Spacey’s serial killer wasjustified or even expected because of thefinal twist of the film which revealed themurder of his (unbeknown to him) pregnantwife. His description of Trainspotting how-ever revealed a feeling of betrayal whichwas difficult to interpret on face value.Simon was unable to make sense of Ren-ton’s (Ewan McGregor) behaviour becausehe felt isolated by the intended joke aboutthe cat. Tommy (Kevin McKidd) contractedthe HIV virus after being introduced toheroin by Renton. As a result of Renton’sactions Tommy lost his girlfriend and be-came depressed. He then fell ill and diedbecause he caught an infection from hisneglected cat. These facts are narrated byRenton during the funeral scene and histone of voice signifies irony and humour atthe manner in which Tommy died. It thenbecame clear that it was Simon’s inability tosee the joke, like Diane’s inability to get thestory, that resulted in his quest for meaningbeing unsatisfied. Simon’s account revealedthat he felt empathy for Renton but on thisoccasion his understanding of the characterbackfired. Many mainstream Hollywoodfilms have borrowed their narrative struc-ture from mythology and folklore whichmeans that in most cases audiences areable to recognize formulaic aspects of film,such as the hero/villain dichotomy de-scribed by Vladimir Propp (1968). Thiswell established narrative feature has beenturned on its head in Trainspotting whichmakes Simon’s meaning-making processparticularly difficult. Believable characterswere key to his interpretation of Trainspot-ting but its rejection of traditional rolescauses problems for Simon. The torment


that Brad Pitt’s character endured justifiedhis murder of Kevin Spacey’s character. Theattempt made by Renton to have the lastlaugh about his friend’s death cannotbe justified because, according to Simon,Renton killed Tommy. The meanings Simonattributed to his two experiences of psycho-logical violence were quite distinct. It is dueto this marked contrast in Simon’s interpre-tation of the films that the mechanism heemployed to make sense of film violencewas successful in one case and not in theother. The detailed portrait of the charactersin Seven enabled Simon to understand themotivation, background, and justificationfor the characters’ actions within the film’snarrative. The difference in Trainspotting isthat Simon cannot justify Renton’s beha-viour. Despite his initial empathy for Ren-ton, Simon believed that Renton wassuddenly unveiled not as a vulnerablevictim of circumstance but as an uncaringindividual willing to sacrifice a friend’swell-being for the sake of a joke. Thisrevelation that Renton was not the personSimon believed him to be led to the pre-vailing meaninglessness of the scene. Inessence a viewer requires access to the traitsand flaws of film characters to provide ameans through which understanding andtherefore justification and meaning can bereached.

The function of film violence.Throughout his struggles with Seven andTrainspotting , Simon maintained that heenjoyed them. At the beginning of theextract presented he said that ‘sometimesthe point of the film isn’t for you to enjoy it’.What then is the point of watching violentfilm? Katie, like Simon, enjoyed going to thecinema but she believed there was more tobe gained from watching violent film thanmere entertainment. Katie enjoyed the

opportunity for social intercourse, forcultural stimulation and the post hoc phi-losophizing about the nature of the humancondition.

Rachel: What makes you want to go and see afilm?Katie: If I’ve got information about the director ofthe film or the cast and there’s people whosefilms you’ve seen and you’ve enjoyed. I’m notthat discriminating, if there’s a week whenthere’s films that I might not enjoy as much asothers I have seen I would still go. Even if Ihaven’t enjoyed the film I enjoy the discussionafterwards so it is still part of an evening’sentertainment. I tend to go to the cinema withmy partner who is also interested in films and itwould be rare for us to just go out and notcomment about it afterwards, it would be unu-sual. I normally go once a week, three times afortnight.

Similarly, Danny enjoyed the opportunity todiscover ‘the other side of life’ when watch-ing violent film which is reflected in hisassessment of it.

Rachel: Can you think of the film that stands outin your memory as being the most violent filmyou’ve seen?Danny: Erm, Reservoir Dogs probably somethinglike that. As I said in there the violence was thefilm. There really, I mean, as I said I’m not tookeen on films which just use it to grab theaudience but I don’t think that was done insuch a gratuitous way. It was more just showinghow things can be and I think that’s the wholepoint now of getting a glimpse of the other side oflife that you don’t see very often. So although itwas violence, it was, I think it was done in amore or less sensible way. I mean you saw theconsequences of it which is I think that’s themain thing that people worry about violence forthat it’s showing, like you see The A Teamthey’re there blasting away with their guns andeverybody sort of stands up pats themselves offand strolls off for a cup of tea whereas in that youknow you actually saw that if you go aroundshooting things people get hurt I mean if you seethe amount of blood coming out of Tim Roththat’s enough to put you off firing a gun in thefirst place so.

140 RL Shaw

Danny has no time for gratuitous violencebut appreciated that violence which isrealistic and which shows the consequencesof people’s violent actions has a role. Dannywas hopeful that being exposed to realisticviolence would teach viewers to be aware ofwhat will happen if violence is used. Peteralso believed that representations of vio-lence are justified and serve the purpose ofreflecting the tragedy that violence cancreate. Peter was not a regular cinema-goerbut had recently watched William Shake-speare’s Romeo and Juliet starring LeonardoDiCaprio and Claire Danes. Baz Luhrmann’sfilm takes place in a modern day ‘VeronaBeach’ with street gun battles and specta-cular explosions set against fast pacedcamera work and music.

Rachel: What did you think about the violence inRomeo and Juliet ?Peter: I thought the violence was valid because itshowed the senseless results of groundless fa-mily bickerings and it shows the tragedy ofyoung men killing each other for no reason,except for their fathers’ arguments. The violencewas justified because it was in proportion to themessage that was being portrayed.

Peter’s and Danny’s belief that realisticallyportrayed violence could have an educa-tional function was grounded in experience.Peter was a police inspector and Dannytrained in the army but left because hewas disillusioned with violence. For them,film violence had the function of teachingthe audience about real life violence and itsconsequences. A multifaceted function ofviolent film has emerged from the datapresented: experiencing violence via filmallows individuals to learn about violencein a pragmatic sense; it allows viewers tospeculate about human nature and thelengths different people will go to whenfaced with a violent situation; and it pro-vides an opportunity to experience some-

thing which is outside our usual everydayexistence.

Experiencing violence in real life.For participants in this study the experienceof violence was not limited to that portrayedon screen. As a police officer Peter hadencountered violence in real life more fre-quently than most. He spoke of fights as‘bread and butter’ and described the experi-ence of chasing an escaped convict as beinga particularly dangerous situation. He hadfinished a story about being called to dealwith an armed, suicidal man who hadattempted to stab Peter and his fellowofficers when they broke down the lockeddoor of the room in which he was hiding. Tome, this was a violent and dangerous situa-tion, hence my question, but for Peter thatwas not the case.

Rachel: Can you think of an example that wasn’tquite as bad as that?Peter: That wasn’t bad. It’s incredible it’s oftenwhen things don’t happen that you get morefrightened, when things happen you can get onwith it and deal with it. We’re not actuallytrained to cope with it, not sufficiently anyway.When you expect something to happen and youknow you’re dealing with someone dangerous,that’s when it’s frightening. Another examplethen is when I was after a prison escapee and itwas reported that he had a gun. I found this manand he did have a gun. This was before the timeof armed police officers. I chased this man andhe dropped the gun. Later my colleagues told methat he also had a knife that he threw away as Iwas approaching him, I never saw this knife.Anyway I caught him in the end. This was afrightening situation because this man was in-timidating, he was only small, relatively, but itwas his personality. When you’re dealing withsomeone who has no conscience there is norestriction on his misbehaviour and the potentialof something happening is always there, evenwhen you are interviewing them, that’s when it’sfrightening. The actuality is less frightening thanthe anticipation.


Peter’s account bears a resemblance toSimon’s description of psychological vio-lence; it was the mental reaction to apotentially violent situation rather than anactual physical attack which Peter believedto be one of the most violent experiences heencountered as a police officer. The notionof ‘anticipation’ which Peter refers to asfrightening highlights the unpredictabilityof violence. This fear of the unknown, ofbeing afraid of what could happen, is pre-sent in several participants’ stories of vio-lence. Katie felt that she had never been avictim of violence herself but described anevent which was particularly disturbingbecause she was in a foreign situation,both literally and experientially.

Rachel: Have you ever experienced anythingviolent yourself in real life?Katie: I have never had any violence againstmyself. I have seen violent situations when I wasyounger, fights in pubs. The most violent thing Ihave seen in my life was on a bus in [Africa]. Ilived there for two years. [..]Rachel: What happened?Katie: There was a thief on the bus and becausethe country is poor, pick-pocketing is usuallydealt with by mobs. Someone was kicked andbeaten unconscious and left in the corner of thebus and then the bus was driven to the policestation and he was thrown out. That was really,really disturbing.Rachel: Can you describe what happened?Katie: A man got on a bus as if he was a passengerbut he wasn’t, he wanted to go through peoples’bags and it was found out what he was doingvery quickly. Rather than the police being calleda mob thing took over. That was the culture therethough so it wasn’t as surprising that it hap-pened. It was very shocking because it wasoutside my experience. He was a couple of seatsin front of me and he fell to the floor and peoplekept kicking him and then all the people whohad been involved just went back to their seatson the bus and the driver drove to the policestation and said ‘this is a thief’. It sounds crazytelling it but in the context of life there it wasnormal. [..] I can’t compare it to a similar thinghappening in England because it isn’t a parallel

situation. It was so beyond my experience that itwas very shocking. I felt sick when it happened,shaky, sick, shocked. I tried to stand up and saysomething but the first language in [that country]isn’t English but there was nothing I could havedone, I was powerless in the situation.

This story of violence in a foreign countrystresses the significance of cultural differ-ences when attributing meaning to violentevents. Previously we saw how importantthe plot was to understanding violentscenes in films; this account reveals anequivalent need for contextualization inreal life. The cultural code in Britain doesnot condone violent mob behaviour in anysituation which meant Katie did not under-stand the readiness of the passengers on thebus to get involved in beating the pick-pocket. Katie’s shock at witnessing theattack was equalled by her shock in re-sponse to the passengers’ behaviour duringthe attack and their calm return to normalityafter it. Katie was left disturbed, shocked,and feeling ill without any available meansof making sense of what happened. Herfellow passengers closed off any route torationalization for Katie by reacting indif-ferently to what she felt was a violent andunjust attack. In effect, Katie was deniedaccess to the narrative framework of thisevent because she was isolated by culture;the context necessary to understand themotivation behind the behaviour of thecharacters in her story was not available.As an outsider, Katie’s path to understand-ing was frustrated, resulting in her feeling ofpowerlessness.

Violence in familiar circumstances canalso be difficult to deal with. Andrea told ofan armed robbery in the off licence shemanaged. The thieves were armed withknives and in the interview Andrea hadsaid earlier, ‘I’ve got a thing about knives Idon’t like knives, I think people pull themout too quickly and that scares me’, which

142 RL Shaw

points towards the lasting effect of herexperience.

Rachel: Have you ever experienced anythingviolent in your own life?Andrea: Yes I’ve had an experience. I was work-ing in an off licence I was manageress for a whileand two guys came in with knives and basicallywe got robbed. It’s been a while since I’ve talkedabout this actually it was a few years ago. I wasserving and two guys came in earlier and theydidn’t buy anything, my boyfriend was in theback which was lucky, I’d go in, have a brew andwe’d have a chat. There’s a bell on the door so Iknow if there’s someone in the shop. So I go inand there’s this guy there and he says can you tellme which wine this is and such and such a thingso I left the counter which I shouldn’t have donereally and he just pushed me into the back of theroom and this other guy who was looking atchocolate and things on the other side came backin, they didn’t know my boyfriend was in theback so that took them by surprise and they werejust like shouting ‘where’s the safe?’, ‘emptythis’, ‘you hold this bag’, and we ended up beinglocked in this stockroom we had a stockroomwith just a bolt where all the beer was kept andwe ended up being locked in there. It soundsdead dramatic doesn’t it. They made out of thefront of the shop and about two minutes later, itfelt like about ten, fifteen, but it was only acouple of minutes later we heard the bell go andwe were like ‘we’re in here’. And I was cryingand you know all that.[..]That was quite shocking. I had to have two weeksoff work and I ended up leaving work through it.I didn’t want to go back in the shop. After the twoweeks holiday I went back in and I just hated thejob, hated it. It was during the day, four o’clock inthe afternoon.Rachel: What did you think of straight away afterit happened?Andrea: I felt stupid because I’d left the counter,and should we have done it differently andDavid [Andrea’s boyfriend] was saying ‘I shouldhave just hit him’ you know. We were just sayingwhat we should have done different, if we’d havebeen near the panic button, I don’t know. But oneof them had a knife so and we couldn’t under-stand why nobody was coming in the shop. Itwas just, it felt really surreal afterwards andeveryone was fussing over us and the companywas worried about me. It was just a really weird

time for me that. It was about two years ago now.I still go past the shop I always look in the shop,always. Really weird. I don’t think about iteveryday or anything like that. A couple of weekslater, I’d only been with my boyfriend about twomonths so it was like ‘can you believe thathappened to us?’, we were like buzzing about itbut not you know, I wouldn’t like it to happenagain but it happened and we dealt with it. Wewere in the paper and everything we were localcelebrities. Everyone was like that [making a gunout of her hands] ‘stick ‘em up!’ all our friendsand everything. I think if I’d have been on myown it would have been completely different, I’dhave been a nervous wreck.

A struggle to come to terms with whathappened is evident in Andrea’s account.Immediately after the event Andrea wasunable to continue working at the shopand at the time of the interview, two yearslater, she found that it was still current inher mind despite her claim that it was aclosed chapter (‘I don’t think about it every-day or anything like that’). In her accountAndrea painted a nostalgic picture of theroutine that she shared with her boyfriend.She was in a familiar setting, she wasresponsible and confident. When thethieves robbed the shop though they vio-lated this space that she shared with herboyfriend and they not only stole the moneyfrom the till, they also deprived her of a joband her confidence. Andrea’s rationaliza-tion for the robbery was simply that thethieves were on drugs. Her rationalizationof the way she reacted told more aboutAndrea’s great effort to make sense of whathad happened. Andrea was critical of herdecision to leave the counter which turnedout to be a ploy by the thieves, she feltdegraded by their demands, she was con-cerned that she could have prevented it andwas embarrassed about crying. There is noroom, in Andrea’s eyes, for these failingsdespite the fact that she was being threa-tened at knife point and that she was


undoubtedly in shock. The legacy of thisevent was that Andrea was constantly re-minded of what happened, which indicatesthat the powerlessness she felt at the timehad never been overcome by attributingmeaning to the event. However, she wasable to glean something of use from theexperience. Andrea recounted that she andher boyfriend were ‘buzzing’ after what shedescribed as a ‘dead dramatic’ and ‘surreal’event; in spite of the shame she felt abouther response she was able to see that in factshe and her boyfriend had achieved some-thing together. The way Andrea describedthis feeling was as if she and her boyfriendwere heroes in an adventure (‘stick ‘emup!’); in spite of the fear and in spite ofthe danger, they successfully dealt with theexperience and came through the other sidewith an exciting story to tell. This seemedlike a ‘surreal’ event to Andrea because theonly other context in which she had wit-nessed such behaviour was via the bigscreen. She therefore used the ‘dramatic’narrative conventions of film to explain herheroic ‘buzz’. This sense of achievementwas significant to Andrea because it wasonly through the discovery that she and herboyfriend had gained something by endur-ing this event that she was able to attributemeaning to it and account for what hap-pened.

Narrative devices in participants’accountsThe strategies employed by participants tomake sense of their experiences of violenceresemble narrative features of storytelling;the story itself as a whole, the characters’motivations, and the cultural context ofevents were each illustrated as crucial inparticipants’ accounts. It is also possible toidentify places in the text where partici-pants have employed narrative devices totell their stories.

The accounts of real life encounters withviolence told by Peter, Katie, and Andreaeach began with information that sets thescene. For example, Peter introduced hisstory using the phrase, ‘another example iswhen I was after a prison escapee. . .’. This isan attention-grabbing device that immedi-ately draws the listener in by advertising thecontent of the story to follow. This techni-que is traditionally used by novelists tocapture the reader’s imagination and topersuade them to continue reading. Katie’sinitial short description of the violence sheobserved, ‘there was a thief on a bus. . .’, actsin a similar way. She described the event inshort, sharp phrases to stress the impact ithad upon her. A great deal of information iscompacted into this brief description; al-ready the listener is aware that a man wasbeaten unconscious, it was because he wasa thief, and it was a very disturbing event towitness. Katie then provides further detailof her emotional response to what hap-pened in answer to the question ‘can youdescribe what happened?’. Another me-chanism Katie adopted to contextualizeher narrative account was to offer informa-tion that will help the listener understandthe impact of the event, ‘That was theculture there though. . .’. This contextualiza-tion of Katie’s encounter with violenceconveyed a dual message: that Katie wasshocked and disturbed by what she wit-nessed because it was ‘outside her experi-ence’; but also her shock was perpetuatedbecause it was ‘normal’ in that country forpick-pockets to be ‘dealt with by mobs’.

Andrea’s account also began with a highimpact description of the event, ‘I wasworking in an off licence . . . and basicallywe got robbed’. She then went on to tell thestory in more detail providing further con-textual information where necessary, ‘myboyfriend was in the back so that took them

144 RL Shaw

by surprise’. Andrea’s choice of wordsreflects the message she wished to portrayand her ability to employ narrative techni-ques to do so was evident. For instance,repeating what the actors in the story saidusing the present tense, whether or not it isa verbatim account, made the event feelmore contemporaneous. Similarly, in re-counting the event, Andrea stated, ‘Itsounds dead dramatic doesn’t it’, whichillustrates her awareness of the effect ofthe way she told the story on the listener’sreading of what happened. The simple useof words like ‘surreal’, Katie’s description ofsomeone being ‘kicked and beaten uncon-scious and left in the corner of the bus’, andPeter’s fear of ‘someone who has no con-science’, each relayed powerful images.Participants’ narrative tone when recount-ing their experiences of violence was ani-mated and excited yet deeply effective inportraying the intense responses they eachhad to the violence they encountered. Thisenables the listener to imagine the scene, toempathize with the storyteller and to under-stand the significance of the event.

These narrative devices are also em-ployed by film makers. The accounts pre-sented of participants’ experiences ofviolence via film revealed that it was pre-cisely these narrative techniques whichallowed viewers to make sense of scenesof violence. Characters’ motivations, thestory told by a film, and the aspects ofviolence portrayed which enabled viewersto justify its presence, such as realism,helped them to make sense of their experi-ence of watching violent film. In exactly thesame way, the context in real life in whichviolence occurred and the motivation of theperpetrators assisted victims and witnessesof violence participating in this study tounderstand why the violence happened.This is particularly significant because it

shows that whether violence is experiencedin real life or via film the same mechanismsare implemented to make sense of it. Thisdoes not mean the experiential boundariesbetween real life and film are blurred; thecontrary has been shown to be the case. Itdoes mean though that we use precisely thesame meaning-making process when attri-buting meaning to violence in real life asviolence in film. Real life events are experi-enced and made sense of through theirnarrative structure; they are interpreted inexactly the same way as a film or some othernarrative form. Also, in recounting theirencounters with violence in real life, parti-cipants used the same devices employed inexisting types of narrative, such as novelsand films, to make their experience intelli-gible to the listener. In doing this partici-pants confirmed that they depended upontheir own constructions of narrative struc-tures to both make sense of their violentencounters and to retell them in a compre-hensive manner. Hence narrative is theprimary function in our quest for the mean-ing of violence whatever its context.

Worthy of note is a small but significantdifference in tone between participants’narratives about real life violence and filmviolence. Applying a narrative structure toreal life violent events performed an orga-nizational function, in that it allowed in-dividuals to think about violence in astructured and organized way which helpedthem to come to terms with it. The case wasdifferent with film violence. Although nar-rative was found to be equally significant tothe meaning-making process in film as inreal life, it appeared to have a more argu-mentative, defensive tone. This differencecan be attributed to the ‘effects model’(Gauntlett, 2001) which dominates the wayfilm violence is construed in modern so-ciety. The negative connotations of violent


film and the concern that people exposed toit will be ‘affected’ and subsequently be-come more violent dominates the publicconsciousness of the modern westernworld. This is not a new phenomenon.

‘This simple image of direct effects draws itspower from a deep reservoir of social fear anddogma which first formed in the mid-nineteenthcentury as commentators began to link the socialcosts of modernity with the proliferation of newforms of popular entertainment. Then, as now,the perceived disorders of the present were oftencounterposed against an idealised image of thepast.’ (Murdock, 2001: 151)

The effects model defines viewing violentfilm as an anti-social behaviour whichincreases society’s ills by creating violentpeople. Society expects law-abiding citi-zens to be repulsed by violent films, anotion which is perpetuated by accusatorymedia articles which blame films like Re-servoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers forviolent crime (Gauntlett, 2001). It is notsurprising therefore that fans of violent filmfeel they require some kind of defence forpursuing their chosen pastime. The argu-mentative structure of participants’ dialo-gue when describing their experiences offilm violence demonstrates the power of theeffects model and its infiltration into main-stream society. As a result the cultivation ofthis dominant discourse demands justifica-tion for the very act of watching violentfilms before we even consider the possibi-lity of enjoying them.

Discussion

The findings of this research have revealedthe significance of narrative in individuals’experience of violence. Watching violentfilm is an experience which can be difficultand participants have shown the necessity

of drawing upon narrative structures tomake sense of such portrayals of violence.Encountering violence in real life had, asexpected, a greater impact on participantsthan being exposed to violence on screen.Furthermore participants’ accounts illu-strated the difficulties with which theywere confronted when attempting to makesense of violence in real life. Often themotivation of the perpetrators of violencewas unclear or their actions existed outsideof participants’ ordinary everyday experi-ence. It was therefore the absence of a ready-made narrative structure and the conse-quent anticipation of the unknown whichleft participants feeling powerless in theirstruggle to explicate the occurrence of vio-lence in real life.

We have already seen that meaning iscrucial in understanding human experi-ence. Viktor Frankl’s work on logotherapyhowever, which he developed during andpartly because of his suffering whilst aprisoner of war in Nazi concentrationcamps, places ‘the will to meaning’ at thecentre of human existence.

‘Man’s search for meaning is the primary motiva-tion in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalisa-tion’ of instinctual drives. This meaning isunique and specific in that it must and can befulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve asignificance which will satisfy his own will tomeaning.’ (Frankl, 1984: 121)

The human ability to reframe or translateexperience as contingent narrative is themethod through which this meaning isattributed to our life events. This is evidentin participants’ accounts. Their implemen-tation of narrative devices reveals on onelevel the usefulness of narrative in attribut-ing meaning. However the centrality ofnarrative structure in individuals’ mean-ing-making processes is powerfully demon-strated in the event of meaning beingfrustrated. When an event remains mean-

146 RL Shaw

ingless, participants have shown that it isdue to a lack of narrative context. In theprocess of making sense of an event we findourselves reliving it, going over the detail,and searching for mitigating circumstancesthat can account for what happened (Bru-ner, 1990). The act of telling another whathas occurred offers the opportunity to framethe experience within a story. The perva-siveness of narratives in everyday lifemeans that we are familiar with their formand are readily able to provide storiedaccounts of our own and others’ behaviours(Polkinghorne, 1988). These contingent nar-ratives provide a route to meaning.

Our attraction to narrative forms canexplain the success of film in contemporaryculture. What remains difficult to graspthough is the appeal of experiencing vio-lence through this receptive channel. Oneway of explaining this behaviour, proposedby Annette Hill (1997), is that we useviolent film for boundary-testing, that is totest the boundaries of what we are willingand able to endure. Hill describes filmviewers, like Simon, who purchase a videoof a violent film like Casino or ReservoirDogs so that they can watch the disturbing‘vice scene’ or ‘ear-cutting scene’ over andover in order to test their reactions to it anddiscover whether they could, after repeatedviewing, cope with it better. An awarenessof others’ responses as well as our ownwhen viewing violence, together with thetechniques used by film makers to ‘hype up’violent films, contribute to our expectationsof them and subsequently influence thelevel of satisfaction gained through watch-ing them. Our motivation in choosing towatch a film which we know or expect willcontain scenes of a violent nature is notexplained by this however. The functionsrevealed by participants have gone beyondHill’s theory of boundary testing; we are not

simply attempting to test ourselves but areessentially attempting to make sense ofuniquely human acts of violence. The edu-cational possibilities of portraying the con-sequences of violence in a realistic mannerwere also identified in this research as afunction of violent film. A more fundamen-tal question remains however; what can begained through experiencing violence via adramatized medium? To answer this ques-tion we begin with Rollo May’s theory of theaesthetic ecstasy of dramatized violence. Toillustrate his theory May described a scenein Herman Melville’s 1891 novel, BillyBudd, Foretopman . This story is aboutjustice and the injustice of punishment.May described the scene where in responseto the perceived unjust charge of mutinyBilly was ‘seized by sudden rage in hisverbal impotence’ (May, 1972: 170) and hitthe Master at Arms with all his rage, killinghim outright.

‘When this act of sheer violence occurs on stageor screen, a sigh of relief goes through theaudience [original emphasis]. We feel that theviolence fits the situation. It is aestheticallycalled for; nothing less would have sufficed.Violence makes complete the otherwise incom-plete aesthetic Gestalt. At that point there is forthe audience the experience of the ecstasy ofviolence in aesthetic terms.’ (May, 1972: 170)

Dramatized violence that is ‘called for’ inthis manner is felt deeply by the audience;likewise, according to this study’s partici-pants, film violence such as Brad Pitt’smurder of Kevin Spacey in Seven is justi-fied by its context: but what is its function?May believed that through the tragedy ofsuch violence we experience our own mor-tality, which enables us to transcend, for amoment, our relatively banal existence. Acrucial distinction made by May is con-firmed by participants’ interpretations andrationalizations of film violence. May statedthat for the aesthetic ecstasy of violence to


be achieved the violence must be an integralpart of the drama and not inserted for shockvalue, horror or titillation. Again we returnto the importance of narrative in indivi-duals’ attempts to make sense of violenceexperienced via film. This may not be astraightforward explanation that appliesequally to all viewers of violent film. Theremay be issues of gender, for example, whichinfluence the degree to which the aestheticecstasy of violence is at work in an indivi-dual’s experience of dramatized violence.Schlesinger et al .’s (1998) work falls withinwith society’s stereotype of the powerful,‘macho man’; they concluded that menpreferred the ‘new brutalist’ violent filmssuch as Reservoir Dogs and found themmore satisfying than formulaic action filmssuch as Under Siege . If this is not surprisingthen what would the stereotypical passive,feminine woman make of such in-your-faceviolence? Annette Hill’s (2001) study ofwomen’s enjoyment of ‘new brutalist’ filmsasked that very question.

‘I want to show that this attraction [to violentfilms] is not based on deviancy or amorality, butrather it is an attraction to the aesthetics of film,the range of emotional and physical responses towatching film, and the experience of testingresponses to violent cinema.’ (Hill, 2001: 136)

Hill’s findings revealed that the women inher study enjoyed the ‘new brutalism’ genreof film because it offered something newand because it invited feelings of fear, anger,excitement, laughter and surprise. A usefuldevelopment of this work would be toinvestigate the aesthetic ecstasy of violenceaccording to gender and across differentcultural roles, taking into considerationthe effect of power dynamics within indivi-duals’ experiences and also the ways inwhich they make sense of violent film.

Erich Fromm’s notion of ‘existentialneeds’ (Fromm, 1973: 26) provides a further

explanation for participants’ identificationsof possible functions of violent film. Ac-cording to Fromm, uniquely human pas-sions such as the need for love, tendernessand freedom as well as the lust for destruc-tion, sadism, and power, help to satisfy theexistential needs that are rooted within thevery conditions of human existence. Katie’sbelief that violent film prompts a pseudo-philosophical assessment of human naturesuggests that our process of meaning-mak-ing may be achieved through an under-standing of these existential needs.Similarly, Danny’s and Simon’s interpreta-tions of violent film as an opportunity to gobeyond our ordinary existence support thenotion that Fromm’s existential needs canindeed be satisfied vicariously.

ConclusionThis research asked how individuals reactto and cope with violence portrayed in filmand encountered in real life to ascertain ifthere are any similarities between theseapparently diverse experiences. It alsoasked what role is played by narrative inindividuals’ attempts to attach meaning totheir experiences of violence. Finally itasked what is the function of violent film.The answers provided are based in partici-pants’ data and in the literature. In answerto the first question, individuals are able tomake sense of their experiences of violenceboth via film and in real life throughinterpreting the narrative structure pro-vided. When meaning is frustrated it isdue to the lack of a narrative framework inwhich to place events. This is more likely tooccur in real life because in film a ready-made story is usually, although not always,accessible. This leads directly to the secondquestion. Narrative was found to be centralto participants’ meaning-making processes.If an encounter with violence in real life or aviolent film was not contextualized by

148 RL Shaw

narrative it was extremely difficult to gainany sense from it. However, in the act ofretelling events, apparently meaninglessexperiences were framed within a contin-gent narrative which subsequently ledto understanding. This significance of nar-rative continues in the answer to the thirdand final question. The function of violentfilm is dependent on both the story it tellsand the narrative devices it employs intelling it. Only if film violence can berationalized and considered crucial to thestory can it serve a purpose. That function isto go beyond our ordinary experience and tolive for a moment outside of our relativelymundane existence. Violence is embeddedwithin human culture and through theaesthetic Gestalt we can experience the‘ecstasy of violence’ vicariously via coher-ent narratives and are able to satisfy ourspecifically human existential needs.

Films cited

The Accused. 1984: Director, JonathanKaplan.Basic Instinct . 1991: Director, PaulVerhoeven.Casino . 1995: Director, Martin Scorsese.Die Hard . 1988: Director, John McTiernan.Donnie Brasco . 1997: Director, MikeNewell.Goodfellas . 1990: Director, Martin Scorsese.Natural Born Killers . 1994: Director, OliverStone.Pulp Fiction . 1994: Director, QuentinTarantino.Reservoir Dogs . 1992: Director, QuentinTarantino.Seven . 1995: Director, David Fincher.The Terminator. 1984: Director, JamesCameron.Trainspotting . 1996: Director, Danny Boyle.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet .1996: Director, Baz Luhrmann.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants forsharing their experiences, also David Hilesand Kevin Wright for their guidance andsupport when conducting and writing upthis research.

Notes

1. Interviewer2. The names of all participants have been

changed.

References

Atkinson, P. 1997: Narrative turn or blind alley?Qualitative Health Research 7, 325 /44.

Barker, M. and Brooks, K. 1998: Knowing audi-ences: Judge Dredd, its friends, fans andfoes . Luton: University of Luton Press.

Barthes, R. 1966: Introduction to thestructural analysis of the narrative . Occa-sional Paper, Centre for ContemporaryCultural Studies, University of Birmingham,stencilled.

Bloch, M. 1998: The presence of violence inreligion. In Goldstein, J.H. editor, Why wewatch: the attractions of violent entertain-ment . New York, NY: Oxford UniversityPress.

Bok, S. 1998: Mayhem: violence as public en-tertainment . Reading, MA: Perseus Books.

Bruner, J. 1990: Acts of meanings . Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Buckingham, D. 1996: Moving images: under-standing children’s emotional responses totelevision . Manchester: Manchester Univer-sity Press.


Crossley, M. 1999: Stories of illness and traumasurvival: liberation or repression? SocialScience and Medicine 48, 1685 /95.

_________ 2000: Introducing narrative psychol-ogy: self, trauma and the construction ofmeaning . Buckingham: Open UniversityPress.

Cumberbatch, G. and Howitt, D. 1989: A measureof uncertainty: the research evidence . (ABroadcasting Standards Monograph.) Lon-don: John Libbey and Co Ltd.

Finlay, L. and Gough, B. 2003: Re�exivity: apractical guide for researchers in health andsocial sciences. Oxford: Blackwell Publish-ing.

Frankl, V.E. 1984: Man’s search for meaning:revised and updated . New York, NY: Wa-shington Square Press.

Fromm, E. 1973: The anatomy of humandestructiveness. Reprinted, 1990. London:Penguin.

Gauntlett, D. 2001: The worrying in�uence of‘media effects’ studies. In Barker, M. andPetley, J., editors, Ill effects: the media/violence debate , second edition. London:Routledge.

Giorgi, A. 1970: Psychology as a human science:a phenomenologically based approach . NewYork, NY: Harper and Row Publishers in-corporated.

Heidegger, M. 1962: Being and time , seventhedition. London: SCM Press. (Translated byMacquarrie, J. and Robinson, E.)

Hill, A. 1997: Shocking entertainment: viewerresponses to violent movies . Luton: Univer-sity of Luton Press/John Libbey.

_________ 2001: ‘Looks like it hurts’: women’sresponses to shocking entertainment. InBarker, M. and Petley, J., editors, Ill effects:the media/violence debate , second edition.London: Routledge.

Husserl, E. 1936: The crisis of European sciencesand transcendental phenomenology . Evan-ston, IL: Northwestern University Press.(Translated by Carr, D., 1970.)

Mair, M. 1989: Between psychology and psy-chotherapy: a poetics of experience . Lon-don: Routledge.

May, R. 1972: Power and innocence: a search forthe sources of violence . New York, NY: W.W.Norton and Co Inc.

McAdams, D. 1985: Power, intimacy, and the lifestory: personological inquiries into identity.New York, NY: Guilford.

Melville, H. 1891: Billy Budd, Foretopman. InMelville, H., Four short novels . New York,NY: Bantam Books. (Reprinted, 1959.)

Mishler, E.G. 1986: Research interviewing: con-text and narrative . Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Morrison, D., McGregor, B., Svennevig, M. andFirmstone, J. 1999: De�ning violence: thesearch for understanding . Luton: Universityof Luton Press.

Mulkay, M. 1985: The word and the world .London: Allen and Unwin.

Murdock, G. 2001: Reservoirs of dogma: anarchaeology of popular anxieties. In Barker,M. and Petley, J., editors, Ill effects: themedia/violence debate , second edition. Lon-don: Routledge.

Murray, M. 2003: Narrative psychology. In Smith,J.A., editor, Qualitative psychology: a prac-tical guide to research methods . London:Sage.

Paik H. and Comstock, G. 1994: The effects oftelevision violence on antisocial behaviour:a meta-analysis. Communication Research21, 516 /46.

Polkinghorne, D.E. 1988: Narrative knowing andhuman sciences. New York, NY: State Uni-versity of New York Press.

Propp, V. 1968: Morphology of the folktale ,second edition. Austin, TX: University ofTexas Press. (Translated by Scott, L.)

Sarbin, T., editor, 1986: The storied nature ofhuman conduct . New York, NY: Praeger.

Schlesinger, P., Dobash, R.E., Dobash, R.P. andWeaver, C.K. 1992: Women viewing violence .London: BFI Publishing.

150 RL Shaw

Schlesinger, P., Haynes, R., Boyle, R. and McNair,B. 1998: Men viewing violence . London:British Standards Commission.

Smith, J.A. 1994: Towards re�exive practice:engaging participants as co-researchers orco-analysts in psychological inquiry. Journalof Community and Applied Social Psychol-ogy 4, 253 /60.

_________ 2003: Interpretative phenomenologicalanalysis. In Smith, J.A., editor, Qualitativepsychology: a practical guide to researchmethods . London: Sage.

Smith, J.A., Jarman, M. and Osborn, M. 1999:Doing interpretative phenomenological ana-lysis. In Murray, M. and Chamberlain, K.,editors, Qualitative health psychology. Lon-don: Sage.

Warner, M. 1998: No go the bogeyman: scaring,lulling and making mock . London: Chattoand Windus.

Whitworth, D. 1999: Film violence put in thedock. The Times 9th March, 14.

About the authorRACHEL SHAW is a psychologist working in the Department of Health Sciences at theUniversity of Leicester. Her current work is funded by the ESRC Research MethodsProgramme and involves the development and evaluation of systematic reviewmethodology for qualitative evidence. She completed her PhD at De Montfort University in2001 which investigated individuals’ experiences of violence both via the medium ofpopular �lm and directly in real life. She then worked on two health psychology projects,about women’s experiences of breastfeeding, at Coventry University. Rachel has a keeninterest in sensitive and controversial experiences of health and illness, narrative anddiscourse, and the development of synthesis methods for qualitative evidence.


making sense of violence: a study of narrative meaning · pdf filemaking sense of violence: a...

Documents