Whether it be crime thrillers about catching a murderer, or sadistic romps like American Psycho, the simple reality is that we readers generally enjoy a good bit of violence in our novels.
Of course, there will be some who absolutely despise novels with violence, but go and find me a horror, thriller, or crime novel without some element of threat, violence, or outright murder.
The more I think this over, the more interesting it becomes to explore why we seem to be so drawn to this taboo element of fiction. My belief is that our level of enjoyment and shock really comes down to how involved we are with the depiction of violence, and I’m going to use other mediums to demonstrate my point.
Let’s begin with films and movies. In this, we are complete passengers to what is happening on screen. The film has already been scripted, shot, and edited; viewers have zero control over how the scene plays out from start to finish. Whilst this still results in some very graphic and shocking moments, it ultimately removes us as individuals from the ordeal. We are observing and nothing more.
Video games are another great example of violence, especially those which go to extra lengths to include particularly realistic or exaggerated gore. The interactive element of video games should make them the most involved regarding violence, right? Yes, that’s true, but we lose something when gaming. That screen still exists between us, and our brain is very aware that what we are seeing is not real and therefore lacks any consequence or need for morality.
The premise really boils down to killing the enemies before they kill you, or perhaps just mowing down NPCs for self-amusement. Morals have no place in gaming, because anything we can do with regard to violence is there by design. As the player, this action has been accounted for, coded into the game, and was intended to be an option (or perhaps the only option).
Books, on the other hand, gifts us both elements of the prior mediums. We get the predetermined element of cinema, a script and flow to follow, but also have the direct control that something like a video game gives us. When I read a piece of text from a violent novel, I imagine that scene differently from how you do. The core elements are the same, but our image of the location, the characters, the extent of gore and overall brutality, will differ.
To me, that is why a lot of us readers enjoy violence in our reads, because we get this strange control over everything, without having the guilt of making the scene up ourselves. After all, if the content was sickening, it was the author who wrote it, and the publisher who later approved and printed it.
If you are not a fan of violence and blood, then your mind will likely censor much of the scenes that contain these things. Of course, it can’t just neglect every detail included, but it will probably not focus on much more than it has to in order to get the imagery across. If you are the opposite, and remain weirdly keen on graphic imagery, then I’m certain your brain is capable of conjuring up some particularly sickening and disturbing stuff with the wording afforded to it.
Our minds often scare us, and our imagination is an almost limitless source of entertainment, so reading about inhumane actions is like indulging in something we shouldn’t be. Enjoying violence in a book is not the same as a game or film. We enjoy violence in films for the swift shock and spectacle, we enjoy it in video games because we are mostly permitted to control how it plays out, and we enjoy it in books because we effectively have the ability to blend both these elements.
There is guilt and guiltlessness for us as a reader, because we are much more integral to the scene. It isn’t actors, nor is it polygonal models, it’s characters that we are envisioning in our own unique way, carrying out actions we have no say in, all while giving us a mixed dosage of action, suspense, and horror.
However, if you really wanted me to boil the weird appeal of violence in novels to just a few words, I’d say it is simply because we get a sick kick out of something so immoral, wrong, and hard for most of us to envision ever doing in the real world.
Leave a Reply