The Sin of the Lion

23

PART I
Chapter

The Sin of the Lion

Some thoughts about violence

In the first of the circles below are the violent;

since violence can be used against three persons,
into three concentric rounds it is divided:
violence can be done to God, to self,
or to ones neighbour.

Dante, The Divine Comedy, (I, 11, 28)

Dante called violence the Sin of the Lion. It was

indeed one of the sins that God most disliked, so the
punishment was severe. All violent people were placed in
the sixth circle, which was divided into three rings
depending on the nature of the violent act that had been
committed. For those who performed a violent act against
their neighbours the punishment was to swim in a river of
boiling

blood

(Phlegethon).

Those

who

had

committed

violent acts against themselves were now stumps of trees

and plants. Finally those who had committed a
act

against

God

or

nature

were

assigned

violent
different

penalties in the burning sands of the third ring, some

souls were stretched out flat upon their backs, others

The Sin of the Lion

24

were crouching there all tightly hunched, some wandered,

never stopping, round and round. (1)
Violence

was

considered a

sin

as

it implied not

having control of our passions. To accept violence would

mean to admit the bestiality of man, and if God gave us
reason it was to go against our passions. This view has
not changed significantly over the ages, and apart from a
few select intellectual circles, violence is basically
seen as something closer to animals than to humans.
In an almost eternal litany we hear that we are
living in very violent times, and as we witness the
beginning of the twenty first century it is commonplace
to state that human beings are indeed very violent.
Few categories of conduct evoke more concern
than
violence.
Social
critics
equate
violence with decay, statesmen deplore its
prevalence, and unprecedented resources are
marshalled to combat it. Everyone agrees
that we are a violent people. The mass media
are presumed suffused with cruelty, and they
in turn claim that the masses have a
propensity for gore. We are told that
violence lurks within us, that we dote on
it, wallow in it, and that we must exert
enormous effort to suppress it. (2)

Even

Stephen

Prince,

one

of

the

most

important

scholars in the topic of film violence goes on to state:

1

Dante, The Divine Comedy I, 14, 22 (London: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 189

Hans Toch, Violent Men: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Violence (London: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 33

The Sin of the Lion

25

Once American cinema turned the corner

toward graphic violence, there has been no
going back. And the culture as a whole has
accompanied cinema on this journey, becoming
bloodier, ever more grim, and ever more
confused about the accelerating spiral of
movie-induced violence. (3)

But if we go beyond this common place we will find

out that these are not at all violent times when compared
with the past.
Norbert Elias, in The Civilizing Process, states that
day-to-day violence in present times is minor if compared
with the Middle Ages,
Western man has not always behaved in the
manner we are accustomed to regard as
typical or as the hallmark of civilised
man. If a member of present-day Western
civilised society were to find himself
suddenly transported into a past epoch of
his own society, such as the medieval-feudal
period, he would find there much that he
esteems uncivilised in other societies
today. (4)

Elias argues that our society is in fact a society

where aggressiveness has been humanised. We have become
spectators rather than performers of violence. Sports,
books, newspapers and films are the places where almost
all our day-to-day experience of violence. We do not have
to physically fight our way through society anymore, just

Stephen Prince, Graphic Violence in Cinema, in Stephen Prince (Ed.), Screening Violence (London: Athlone
Press, 2000), p. 34.

Norbert Elias, The Civilising Process (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. xi.

The Sin of the Lion

26

as it is not necessary to kill anyone to get a job, or to

show the rest of our social group that we are strong. In
fact, if we compare our aggressiveness to that of the
Middle Ages,
It is confined and tamed by innumerable
rules and prohibitions that have become
self-constraints. It is as much transformed,
'refined', 'civilised', as all other forms
of
pleasure,
and
its
immediate
and
uncontrolled violence appears only in dreams
or in isolated outbursts that we account for
as pathological. (5)

But a question arises: Why, then, is it so widely

thought that we are now living in the most violent times
within the history of the world? The answer could be that
violence is now questioned; we do not take it for granted
anymore and this means it has become an issue. In the
late Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries we are far from
living in the most violent times, but we are indeed the
ones who feel most uncomfortable with it.
Although

violence

is

indeed

present

in

todays

society, the fact remains: the Homo homini lupus(6)

society is now alien to the Western world and it has been

Elias, The Civilising Process, p. 192. For more on this subject I recommend the chapter called 'On Changes in
Aggressiveness'.

Homo honini lupus means man is a wolf to other men. This phrase was first used by T. Maccius Plautus in his
Asinaria, Act II, iv, 495 and it is used here in the sense Thomas Hobbes gives to it in his book Leviathan (New
York: Barnes & Noble, 2004), pp. 75-78.

The Sin of the Lion

replaced

with

27

peaceful,

ordered

and

non

violent

society.
But to address violence presents many problems to
those

who

have

tried

to

analyse

it.

It

is

very

sensitive subject that touches the human heart and soul .

The outcomes of analyses of violence can have very grave
consequences and any research that does not have, as its
conclusion, an unconditional condemnation of violence is
received with outrage. Ortega y Gasset described what
happens to violence, referring to war in his article El
Genio de la Guerra y la Guerra Alemana (The Genius of
the War and the German War):
There are those who think that we cannot
talk
about
war
without
declaring
our
sympathy or our disgust for it, that is,
without stating our opinion and deciding a
policy. I respect that position, but I
follow the contrary. (7)

As Ortega does, we respect that position but would

rather engage in a kind of research that does not condemn
or praise violence prima facie. But lets see how violence
can be thought of as a topic worth of studying beyond
condemnation.

Jos Ortega y Gasset, El Genio de la Guerra y la Guerra Alemana, in Jos Ortega y Gasset, El Espectador
(Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1966), p. 299. The translation is ours.

The Sin of the Lion

28

Violence and rationality

It could be said that violence is rational in what
Habermas

called teleological

rationality

(8). In

this

kind of rationality an agent wants to do something and in

order to do it he needs means. The success or failure to
achieve the end (what he wants to do) with those means is
what will measure the rationality. A person will be more
rational if the means he or she chooses are the most
effective at their disposal.
Violence, being instrumental by nature, is
rational to the extent that it is effective
in reaching the end that must justify it.
(9)

So if someone has as a desire to own a car and by

using violence that person achieves his goal with minimum
effort and time the choice has been rational.
But Habermas makes a further distinction. Not only do
we have reason in the sense Weber explained it, but also
depending on what kind of means someone chooses there
will be instrumental and strategic rationality. In the
former

the

means

are

things

or

beings

incapable

of

Jrgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1. Reason and the Rationalization of Society
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), p. 87.

Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World INC., 1969), p. 79.

The Sin of the Lion

29

language, in the latter the means are beings capable of

language, that is, rational beings.
This distinction makes it feasible to restrain our
possibilities

of

being

rational(10).

Rational

beings

cannot be used as means but rather as ends in themselves.

Habermas introduces the term communicative rationality
to refer to the cases in which human beings are involved
in a decision to use a specific means. And it is in this
way that the rationality of an action can be measured
when rational beings are involved
The renowned humanist Hannah Arendt maintains the
thesis that violence can indeed be rational, and that
moreover in some cases the lack of will to be violent
might be the very fact that illustrates the irrationality
of a human.
The inability to show rage in extreme cases (such as
the murder of a parent or an offspring) is not an act of
rationality but one that manifests the contrary, namely,
supreme irrationality. If someone is attacked by a gang
of men and he or she does not respond at all and does not

10

Since this thesis is not about rationality it is not necessary to follow the whole argument. There are many books
on the subject but I recommend Anthony Giddens, 'Jrgen Habermas', in Quentin Skinner, The Return of Grand
Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 121-140.

The Sin of the Lion

30

act violently but instead peacefully, he or she might be

considered irrational.
In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan, the evil
brother, tells Alyosha, the good one, the story of a
general that made his dogs hunt and tear to pieces a
small child as punishment for having thrown a stone at
one of the dogs. What should they do to the General?,
asks Ivan to Alyoshka, shoot him?, should he have been
shot to gratify moral outrage? Yes, shoot him! says
Alyosha

after

moment

of

silence,

upon

which

Ivan

comments, delighted, Bravo!(11)

In this sense, rage and the violence that
sometimes goes with it belong among the
natural human emotions and to cure man of
them would mean nothing less than dehumanise
or emasculate him. (12)

Also Sartre, in the Preface to Frantz Fanons The

Wretched of the Earth stated that it is precisely through
violence that men build their humanity, because we
only build what we are by the radical and deep seated
refusal of that which others have made of us (13). It is
therefore violence that has made us men.

11

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 305.

12

Arendt, On Violence, p. 64.

13

Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface, in Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London, Penguin, 1963), p. 15

The Sin of the Lion

31

Make no mistake about it; by this mad fury,

by this bitterness and spleen, by their
ever-present desire to kill us, by the
permanent tensing of powerful muscles which
are afraid to relax, they have become men:
men because of the settler, who wants to
make beasts of burden of them -because of
him, and against him. (14)

In harmony with this view is Anthony Burgess's novel

A Clockwork Orange(15). This is the story of a violent
man who will be the starting point of an experiment which
the government wants to extend to all violent prisoners.
Instead of holding them in prison the goal is to "teach"
them how to be non-violent.
You, 6655321, are to be reformed. Tomorrow
you go to this man Brodsky. It is believed
that you will be able to leave State Custody
in a little over a fortnight. In a little
over a fortnight you will be out again in
the big free world, no longer a number. I
suppose.

Now, there is a form here to be signed. It

says that you are willing to have the
residue
of
your
sentence
commuted
to
submission
to
what
is
called
here,
ridiculous
expression,
Reclamation
Treatment. (16)

This Reclamation Treatment is an aversion therapy to

get rid of any violent tendencies present in Alex. After
giving him a medicine that makes him sick, Alex is tied

14

Sartre, Preface, p. 15.

15

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (London: Penguin, 1996).

16

Burguess, A Clockwork Orange, p. 75.

The Sin of the Lion

32

to a chair and his eyes are kept wide open while some
very violent films are shown to him.
As a result of this treatment Alex cannot do anything
violent, as it would make him feel so sick that he would
faint.
We understand why he does not respond when he is
beaten by police and some old men in a library. The
rational prospect to react violently to some acts has
been eradicated from him.
Is Alex more rational now that he cannot be violent?
No, what we see is an irrational man that cannot respond
to unjust acts.
Burgess sees no means of stopping the cycle
of adolescent violence, except with methods,
whether aversion therapy, eugenics or other
forms of socio-psychological programming,
which are dehumanising, morally unacceptable
and a usurpation of God. (17)

17

Blake Morrison, Introduction, in Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, p. xxii.

The Sin of the Lion

33

The Enjoyment of Violence

The judgement of the squeamish masses
will never stop some of us from finding a poetry
in violence, an awful intimate beauty.
Poppy Z. Brite, The Poetry of Violence, in Karl French,
Screen Violence (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 65.

What does it mean to talk about the enjoyment of

violence? It can mean many different things. It can mean
that someone enjoys being violent, or that someone enjoys
people performing a violent act upon him, or that someone
enjoys seeing actual violence(18).

In the case of those who enjoy performing violence we

have

many

examples

in

the

arts.

In

painting

by

Magritte, shown in Magritte's first one-man show in the

Galerie Le Centaure at Brussels in 1927, this can be
clearly seen. The painting is called Lassassin menac
(The Threatened Assassin), and in it we can see seven
characters.
The invaders, presumably detectives, await
their moment outside the room. They are two
virtually identical bowler hatted men,
except that one is carrying a club in the
form of a human limb, and the other a net.
Inside the room a lurid female corpse is
18

As has already been pointed out by Sigmund Freud, these 'perversions' can interchange with time and
moreover someone can have more than one at the same time. Sigmund Freud, 'A Child is Being Beaten', in
Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, vol. II (London: The Hogarth Press, 1948), pp. 172-201.

The Sin of the Lion

34

sprawled on the bed, and a somewhat

equivocal man stands listening to a record
on the gramophone. His hat and coat on a
nearby chair, and a valise on the floor,
suggest the possibility of disguise or
escape. Three men observe the scene from
outside a window at the far side of the
room. (19)
Rene Magritte,
L'assassin menac

The man who is listening to the music has just killed

the woman in the bed. The painting would have a normal
subject (a man kills a woman and the police are waiting
to catch him) if it wasnt for the phonograph. Why is the
murderer listening to the music instead of running away?
According to Joel Black, and inspired by Thomas De
Quincey's

essay

On

the

Knocking

at

the

Gate

in

Macbeth(20), one could say that the murderer is merely

19

Suzi Gablick, Magritte (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), p. 61.

20

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, in Thomas De Quincey, De Quinceys Works,
vol. XIII (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1863), p. 197.

The Sin of the Lion

35

listening to the music to enhance the aesthetic pleasure

that the murder has given
Joel

Black(21)

him.

contends

that

in

order

to

enjoy

violence and murder aesthetically there has to be an

alienation of the ethical world. At the moment in which a
murderer is killing someone, and as he is trying to get
from

it

himself

an aesthetic
from

the

real

experience,
world,

in

he

has to

which

he

separate

could

not

possibly enjoy it because of the moral repercussions. How

can he achieve this? It appears that he does this by
listening to the music. The men in the painting represent
(as the knocking at the door at the gate in Macbeth) the
moment in which that aesthetic state is broken and the
murderer goes back to the real world in which he will be
punished.
This analysis and the actual painting have an uncanny
resemblance with the film The Silence of the Lambs. In a
scene in this film, Doctor Lecter manages to get out of
his handcuffs and kills the policemen guarding him. After
doing this we can see the dead policeman on the floor as
well as Lecters mouth full of blood from having eaten
21

Joel Black, The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture (London: The
John Hopkins University Press, 1991). It is important to remember that Black is not talking about the case of the
person who witnesses violence, but of the person who performs violence.

The Sin of the Lion

36

part of the mans lip. But Lecter does not escape right
away; he waits and listens to some classical music while
he is enjoying what he has just done.
Every single element of The Threatened Assassin is
present in

this scene.

We

have

the murderer

happily

enjoying what he has just done by listening to some

music. We have the victim covered in blood. We have the
policemen waiting outside for the murderer and finally we
also have the people watching with curiosity, not through
the windows, but in the cinemas, wondering what is going
to happen next.
However, in The Silence of the Lambs, this is not the
only fact that suggests that Doctor Lecter considers his
killings to be a well-executed work of art.
As an artist, he wants to show his work. An artist
does not create his works to be only enjoyed and seen by
himself,

but

frames,

books

by everyone
are

bound

else. Paintings
with

beautiful

are

put

paper

in
and

orchestras play music to an audience. Lecter thinks the

same way.
He wants to show his work in an artistic way. He
dresses up a body and hangs it in the cage as if showing

The Sin of the Lion

37

it as his painting, as his work of art. He even takes the

time to change the layout of the lights so they make a
beautiful scene. It is set just as it would have been
made in a museum with a painting.
'He wants
to show
his work
in an
artistic
way.'

But Lecter is not the only killer in this film, there

is

another

killer

called

Buffalo

Bill.

Buffalo

Bill

kidnaps oversized girls and skins them in order to make a

dress out of female skin.
As if to show us that not every killer in this film
considers his work as art, we can see that Buffalo Bill
does not intend his killings to be seen by anyone in a

The Sin of the Lion

38

special way. The bodies are found in rivers, thrown away

without any special preparation, showing that for him
those bodies are nothing but rubbish to be discarded.
Another freak in this film however shies
away from the status of spectacle; hidden
from the view he performs grotesque sexual
rituals, practising for the finale, where he
intends to clothe himself in a skin made out
of female flesh. (22)

His killings are not performed to provide him with

any special kind of experience but just for the reason of
using their skins.
Killers

and

criminals

in

the

cinema

like

Doctor

Lecter are of a special kind. They not only inspire

terror in us, but also admiration.
Even

the

defenders

of

the

right

feel

this

admiration. It is impossible to confront them and not

feel

the

temptation

of

calling

them

geniuses.

As

Sherlock Holmes says of Moriarty,

He is the Napoleon of Crime, Watson. He is
the organizer of half that is evil and of
nearly all that is undetected in this great
city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an
abstract thinker. He has a brain of the
first order. He sits motionless, like a
spider in the centre of his web, but that

22

Delphine DCruz, Tim Burtons Monsters, Masquerades and Martians: The Emergence of the Neo-Grotesque
in Contemporary American Cinema (unpublished Masters Thesis, University of London, 1997), p. 5.

The Sin of the Lion

39

web has a thousand radiations, and he knows

well every quiver of each of them. (23)

In the case of Lecter, he is presented as a very

gifted psychiatrist with good taste in the things he
reads, eats and likes.
In

Silence

fascination

with

of
the

the

Lambs

criminal.

the

film

Doctor

presents

Lecter

becomes

something to see. In the scene discussed above, he is

caged in some kind of a box, where it is possible to see
him just as one would see a caged monkey in a zoo. It
signifies that Lecter is different. He is something
worth seeing. Also at the beginning of the film he is
kept locked in a cell with a transparent wall, instead of
bars.
'....he's something
worth seeing'

23

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Final Problem, in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Charleston: BiblioBazaar, 2006),
pp. 239-240.

The Sin of the Lion

40

On several occasions in the film he is caged

up while the grotesque story of his life is
discussed and on her many visits the
heroine, Clarice, views him in a glass cage
resembling that of an oversized specimen
jar. (24)

Audience and readers are presented with these gifted

minds for a specific purpose - to prevent them from
considering those acts as ordinary crimes. These very
special people are there to make audiences think that the
crimes committed are of a special kind.
What can we read in Holmes's description of his enemy
Moriarty? Behind
admiration.

that description there is very deep

Holmes

even

seems

somewhat

jealous

of

Moriarty's 'brain of the first order'.

Going back to Magritte and The Threatened Assassin,
it is very interesting to look at the circumstances in
which this painting was done. As a result of his joining
the surrealist movement Magritte commenced his obsession
with crime literature and in particular with characters
like Maldoror and Fantomas.
Maldoror was created by the Comte de Lautreamont, the
pen name of Isidore Ducasse, who was the son of a French
24

D'Cruz, Tim Burtons Monsters, p. 5.

The Sin of the Lion

41

diplomat in Uruguay and who died at the age of 24.

Maldoror was created in the prose poem Le Chants de
Maldoror,
a kind of infernal machine, incarnating a
mixture of divine blood with repressed
sexual desires and sadistic impulses. He is
filled with rages and anxieties, and even
persecutes God with his threatening games.
He inflicts gratuitous suffering without
suffering himself; he contradicts all laws,
both human and divine. (25)

But the real star, the one who was admired by all
surrealists was Fantomas. Fantomas was created by Pierre
Souvestre and Marcel Allain in 1912.

So popular was this

series Souvestre and Allain kept writing them at the rate

of one volume each month, until 1914 when they had to
stop because of the outbreak of the First World War.
Fantomas, like Maldoror, was a master criminal.
Fantomas
was
no
ordinary
hero.
Like
Maldoror, he operated to reverse human
values. In more conventional thrillers, the
hero
is
always
the
detective
who
triumphantly restores law and order. But
Fantomas, far from being the detective, was
a diabolical criminal who constantly brewed
misfortune and never got caught. Like
Maldoror, Fantomas was a genius of evil - a
devil who could enter through any keyhole
and commit lurid and brilliant crimes
without leaving a trace. Crime was a sport
at which he excelled. He was continually
seeking to surpass his own record and to
invent some even more daring atrocity with
which to petrify the mob. (26)

25

Gablick, Magritte, p. 46.

26

Gablick, Magritte, p. 48.

The Sin of the Lion

The

42

obsession

(and

indeed

admiration)

felt

about

these criminals can be seen in Magritte, who published an

edition

of

Les

Chants

de

Maldoror

with

his

own

illustrations. It is from this period when he first met

the surrealist in France, that his paintings take on a
rather 'bizarre' and 'macabre' turn.
The majority of works from this period,
spanning approximately the years 1925-1930 which Magritte himself called 'Cavernous' are melodramatic, bizarre and often macabre
scenes that are generally dark in both mood
and colour. (27)

Therefore, it is possible to see how Magritte, as

well as the surrealists, had this 'admiration' for the
geniuses of crime, for the brilliant minds that had the
capacity of breaking the law in an ingenious way.
An example of the pleasure felt when witnessing
violence is that of the film Tesis (1996). Tesis is the
first

feature

film

of

Spanish

director

Alejandro

Amenbar [who also directed Abre los ojos (1997) and

The Others(2001)]. Angela (Ana Torrent) has decided to
write her dissertation on violence in cinema. She asks
Chema, a classmate, to help her since she has heard
that Chema has videos of real accidents. One day Angela
finds the secret passage to a video library of what she

The Sin of the Lion

later

realises

Noriega),

43

are

another

snuff

movies.

classmate,

is

Bosco

(Eduardo

accomplice

of

the

people who do the snuff movies and since Angela is

getting too close to the truth he kidnaps her to
videotape himself torturing and killing her. Right
before he kills her she is saved.
The film starts in a subway carriage. There has
been

an

accident

and

the

train

has

stopped.

An

attendant comes into the carriage and explains:

Ok. Lets see Now walk

carriages, to the platform.
thrown himself in front of the
you reach the platform, leave
you can. Do not look at the
mans been cut in two.(28)

through 2
A man has
train. When
as soon as
track. The

Angela leaves the carriage and walks towards the

exit, but suddenly she starts walking towards where the
body is. We know she is going to see it and we breathe
heavily in expectation. She is almost there. A group of
four or five people are already there, watching the body
as a policeman asks people to leave the scene and tells
them not be morbid. The camera starts tilting down and we
can almost see the body now. But before we can lay our
eyes on what promised to be a good spectacle a policeman
27

Gablick, Magritte, p. 44.

28

All the quotations of Tesis come from the English captions of the DVD.

The Sin of the Lion

44

takes Angela by her shoulder and takes her away from the
place together with us, the audience.
Thats how Tesis starts, telling the audience that
it is not easy to judge Peeping Toms because we all are
Peeping Toms, most of us want to be where Angela was,
to see what a body split in two looks like. We are all
voyeurs.
Angela

is

writing

her

thesis

on

audio-visual

violence and asks Chema, a classmate obsessed with

pornography and violence, to show her some of his
tapes. It is for my thesis. I have no interest in your
films. I do not enjoy them. It is disgusting she says,
but when Chema plays them for her she cannot help
staring at the TV screen as if mesmerised by those
images.
Tesis is a film about voyeurism and about the
pleasure felt when watching violence, real violence on
the screen. But a question arises, is violence on the
screen real violence? Angela asks Chema if he has ever
seen anyone killed, Not TV stuff, but the real thing.
Violence mediated by the TV or the media is never real.
The mere fact of it being mediated takes away from it

The Sin of the Lion

45

the reality of the real and makes it into something

that is neither fiction nor reality.
A good example of this is given in the film. At the
end of the film Chema is in hospital. On TV a reporter
who is talking about the case comments on it saying
this:
A spine-chilling case, a story of blood and
terror in which reality and fiction combine
to produce something beyond reality, of
which no rational mind is capable.

This end is a complement to the opening sequence. It

has the same message; it reminds us that deep inside we
are all voyeurs. The TV reporter keeps talking about the
case and explains that they have some images they want to
show. While the reporter prepares everyone for what they
are about to see, we observe how everyone in the hospital
is mesmerised

-just as

Angela

was

at

the

beginning-

waiting for the spectacle. For the spectacle of real

violence made consumable.
Well, the long awaited moment has arrived.
As announced we have managed to get our
hands on one of those macabre tapes. The
images you are about to see are of Vanessa
being savagely tortured, and subjected to
all types of atrocities before being killed.
Unpleasant as it is to show these images, we
think they are of interest to all. The crude
violence speaks for itself. Here now are
those images.

The Sin of the Lion

46

Violence as a mediated spectacle

For anyone who has a television it is normal to see

violence on the screen. Millions see not only films, but
also real street violence in the context of mass media.
Janet Reno, Bill Clintons State Secretary, stated in
1993 that once a kid has finished primary school he or
she has seen eight thousand murders and one thousand acts
of

violence(29).

It

seems

that

Mrs.

Reno

wants

to

conclude from this fact that the familiarity a child has

with violence nowadays is far from desirable. But, is
that the case? Violence, when seen through the media, has
to be analysed very carefully.
Media

seems

to

have

need

to

convert

into

spectacle everything they touch, with violence (real or

fictitious) being no exception.
Contemporary American and European Culture
consists of events and experiences that are
virtually all aesthetically mediated in some
way; and the most spectacular displays by
the mass media are scenes of violence. (30)

And as Joel Black points out, a cultural, aestheticcritical approach is particularly appropriate in cases of
murder where the mass media have played a major role, not
29

USA Today, 21 of October 1993.

30

Black, The Aesthetics of Murder, p. ix.

The Sin of the Lion

47

merely in reporting and commenting on the violent events

in question, but in the circumstances leading to these
events.(31)
Violence has been a spectacle since the times of the
Roman Empire. In the eighteenth century people even had
to be prevented from watching executions with the threat
of penalties. As Foucault describes,
The Revolution had endowed executions with a
great theatrical ritual. For years it
provided a spectacle. It had to be removed
to the Barrire Saint-Jacques; the open cart
was replaced by a closed carriage; the
condemned man was hustled from the vehicle
straight to the scaffold; hasty executions
were organised at unexpected times. In the
end, the guillotine had to be placed inside
prison walls and made inaccessible to the
public, by blocking the streets leading to
the prison in which the scaffold was hidden,
and in which the execution would take place
in secret. Witnesses who described the scene
could even be prosecuted, thereby ensuring
that the execution should cease to be a
spectacle and remain a strange secret
between the law and those it condemns. One
has only to point out so many precautions to
realise that capital punishment remains
fundamentally, even today, a spectacle that
must actually be forbidden. (32)

There is fascination with violence. But, what kind of

fascination is it? Is it just a sick part of our being or
a true and defensible human appetite?

31

Black, The Aesthetics of Murder, p. 10.

32

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 15.

The Sin of the Lion

48

The same phenomenon can be assessed in many ways. An

apartment can be judged using practical criteria such as,
are there enough bedrooms? Is there enough light? Has the
space been well distributed? Or it can be judged using
aesthetic criteria such as, is this apartment beautiful?
Have

they

used the

right

colours?

Both criteria

are

different and by one standard the apartment can be good

and by the other bad. The same thing happens when looking
at violence.
Although it might sound quite shocking, violence can
be judged by ethical criteria - as it is usually judged or it can also be judged by aesthetic criteria. As Thomas
De Quincey(33) once said about murder:
Everything in this world has two handles.
Murder for instance, may be laid hold of by
its moral handle (as it generally is in the
pulpit and at the Old Bailey), and that, I
confess, is its weak side; or it may also be
treated aesthetically, as the Germans call
it- that is, in relation with good taste.
(34)

33

It is interesting to note that De Quincey edited the Westmorland Gazette, which was filled with reports of crimes
and assassinations. These reports included the most morbid details about the victims, the attackers and the
actual crime.

34

Thomas De Quincey, On Murder as One of the Fine Arts, in Thomas De Quincey, The Collected Writings of
Thomas de Quincey, v. XIII (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1890) p. 13

The Sin of the Lion

49

If one accept Kants criterion that the pleasure one

has in something has to be disinterested (35) in order to
be beautiful, then the possibility of enjoying violence
can be better understood.
Pain is one of the most important characteristics of
violence. And when one is witness to a violent act, one
always projects that violence and the pain onto oneself,
that is, one starts to think what would happen if that
violence were being inflicted on oneself.
To enjoy watching violence it is necessary to follow
Kants advice and not to have any interest in it.

That

is to enjoy violence one should not reflect on the pain,

or think what it would feel like.
An

example

possibilities

of

of

the

intrusion

aesthetic

of

pleasure

interest
is

the

in

the

sculpture

called Self by the British artist Marc Quinn. To someone

who does not know what it is made of, it simply seems to
be a sculpture that represents the face of the artist.
But once we read the label and we see it is made of
blood the aesthetic possibilities are reduced. In the

35

Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of representation by means of a delight or aversion apart
from any interest. The object of such delight is called beautiful. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 50.

The Sin of the Lion

show

Sensation

50

at

the

Royal

Academy

of

Arts

it

was

possible to see people who liked the sculpture, but once

they found out it was made out of blood they just could
not admire anymore. It was possible to hear how the oh
of enjoyment became the yuck of disgust.
In this sense going to see a film, which is the art
that

is

being

dealt

with

in

this

thesis,

has

many

advantages: we do not know the victim and we do not know

the killer, which makes it possible for us to distance
ourselves from the situation and enjoy it.
Only the victim knows the brutal reality
of murder; the rest of us view it at a
distance, often as rapt onlookers who regard
its
reality
as
a
peak
aesthetic
experience. (36)

In a subsequent chapter it will be explained why one

of the main reasons of enjoying fictional violence comes
from the

fact that disinterestedness is an important

criterion when assessing things aesthetically. Violence

can only be disinterested if it is not referred back to
reality. The only way we can enjoy violence is by taking
it as far away as possible from reality.
Even

though

we

have

only

talked

about

cases

of

fictional violence, there are also examples of people

36

Black, The Aesthetics of Murder, p. 3.

The Sin of the Lion

51

enjoying real violence as a spectacle. Violence is in

these cases an aesthetic experience.
The Spectacle of Real Violence

The problem with enjoying real-life violence poses

more

questions

and

problems

than

enjoying

fictional

violence. The main obstacle to enjoying real violence is

the obvious moral implications of enjoying it
The only way that real violence could be enjoyed
aesthetically is if this is presented as a spectacle,
as something that has been staged so as to make it
consumable thus not belonging to the realm of the real
anymore. To enjoy real violence otherwise is to indulge
in cruelty, to satisfy base appetites, and thus to break
the first rule of aesthetic judgement, that it concerns
beauty independent of interest or appetite (37).
The main characteristic of spectacles is that they
are staged. Etymologically the word spectacle comes from
the latin spectare, to watch, and it refers to events
whose main characteristic is that it is there to be
watched. Thus spectacles are always staged, prepared,

37

Disinterest has been a criterion for aesthetic enjoyment since the XVIII century. For a detailed account of the
history of disinterestedness see: Jerome Stolnitz, On the Origins of "Aesthetic Disinterestedness" The Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Winter, 1961), pp. 131-143

The Sin of the Lion

52

mediated so when it gets to the spectators it has been

prepared for consumption.
Gladiatorial games are a perfect example to show what
is meant by real staged violence. This is relevant to
this work because gladiatorial games have the conscious
purpose of making violence a spectacle to be seen by
people.

Gladiatorial games
Nam qui dabat olim imperium fasces legiones
omnia, nunc se continent atque duas tantum
res anxius optat, panem et circenses.
Juvenal, Satires, 10, 77-81

"There was a time when the people bestowed every

honour -the governance of provinces, civic leadership,
military command- but now they hold themselves back, now
two

things

only

do

they

ardently

desire:

bread

and

circuses." (38) This sentence by Juvenal shows how much

the

Romans

were

preoccupied

with

attending

the

gladiatorial games (munera). Emperors and senators, in

38

Juvenal, Satires, 10, 77-81, quoted, in Alison Futrel, Blood in the Arena: the Spectacle of Roman Power (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1997), p. 45.

The Sin of the Lion

53

order to win the favour of the people (Populus Romanus),

satisfied that desire.
Why did the Romans engage in such bloody acts? It was
one of the favourite spectacles of the Romans. 'As early
as 160 B.C. the public deserted the theatre where the
Hecyra of Terence was being performed, for one of these
gladiatorial combats'(39).
The first notice we have of gladiatorial games in
Rome dates back to 264 B.C., when the brothers Marcus and
Decimus Brutus organised one of these events in the Forum
Boarium to commemorate the death of their father (40).
Some historians push the date back as far as 600 B. C.
Tarquinius

Priscus

established

some

state-sponsored

munera(41).
These (the gladiatorial games) were, and
long remained an irregular private affair.
They took place at a funeral, and were
essentially a survival of a very ancient
notion that such offerings contributed to
the honour and comfort of the dead. (42)

39

Jerome Carpocino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height of the Empire (London:
George Routledge and Sons, 1946), p. 231. See as well, W. E. Heitland, The Roman Republic (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1969), p. 243

40

Nam gladiatorum munus primum Romae datum foro Boario Ap. Claudio, M. Fulvio consulibus: dederunt
Marcus et Decimus filii Bruti Perae, funebri memoria patris cineris honrando. Valerius Maximus 2.4.7, quoted in
Allison Futrel, Blood in the Arena: the Spectacle of Roman Power (Austin TX, University of Texas Press,
1997,)pp. 21 and 235.

41

See Futrel, Blood in the Arena, p. 19.

42

Heitland, The Roman Republic, p. 243

The Sin of the Lion

54

The origins of the munera can be traced back to

Etruria,

where

such

games

were

part

of

the

funeral

ceremonies there. At the beginning they were privately

organised, and it wasn't until the last days of the
Republic

that

they

became

public

shows,

undoubtedly

because of their increasing popularity. Politicians paid

for these shows to please the public, thus winning their
votes. The munera passed from being a modest show with
three pairs of gladiators (as in the one organised by
Marcus and Decimus Brutus) to a grandiose spectacle with
twenty-two pairs of gladiators.
The practice of using the games as a way to bribe the
people was so widespread that Cicero promoted the idea,
in

63

B.C.,

organised

of

or

law

stating

financed

such

that

any

spectacles

senator
was

to

who
be

disqualified for election for two years after it. This

law was to be known as lex Tullia de ambitu. This law was
in fact a new interpretation of a law dating back to 67
B.C.,

the

lex

Calpurnia

de

ambitu,

which

regulated

senators to prevent any kind of dishonest use of public

means in election times. (43)

43

See Futrel, Blood in the Arena, p. 32.

The Sin of the Lion

When

55

fight

was

going

to

take

place,

'the

announcement was made by libelli sent to the people in

the

neighbourhood

or

by

advertisement

on

the

walls

(programmata)' (44).
The munera began with a procession followed by beasthunting. After this some kind of faked munera took place,
in

which

old

gladiators,

dwarfs

and

sometimes

women

fought. When these spectacles had finished, the serious

fighters entered the arena in procession and started a
ritual in which they would scream to each other until the
sound of the trumpets ended this preparation.
Not everyone praised the games. There were harsh
critics such as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius who refused
to watch these spectacles unless he was assured that no
one

was

going

to

die.

But

perhaps

one

of

the

most

important of these critics was Seneca, who loathed the

munera and anything that had to do with the cruelty of
the crowds (and indeed anything related to them). In a
letter to Lucilius, about mobs, we can clearly see how
the spectators behaved at such spectacles. He says:
In the morning, they cried, "Kill him! Lash
him! Brand him! Why does he strike so
feebly? Why does not he die game? Whip him
44

Guhl and Koner, The Romans: Their Life and Customs (London: Senate, 1994), p. 560-561.

The Sin of the Lion

56

to meet his wounds! Let them receive blow

for blow, with chests bare and exposed to
the stroke!" And when the games stop for the
intermission, they announce: "A little
throat-cutting in the meantime, so that
there may still be something going on!" (45)

When Seneca talks about the entertainment that took

place "in the meantime", he might be referring to the
meridianum spectaculum, where the execution of regular
criminals took place. Gaius Caligula, an Emperor known
for his derangement and morbidity, prevented people from
leaving the arena while these meridianum spectacula were
taking place.
The crowds were indeed very important in the munera.
Once

gladiator

had

been

wounded

they would

scream

"Habet!, Hoc Habet!" (He was wounded!, he was wounded!),

and

the

decision

to

spare

his

life

rested

in

the

munerarii, who were the referees (unless, of course, the

Emperor was present, in which case it was his decision).
Even though the munerarius had the power of sparing or
condemning someone's life, it is known that he would
usually

favour

the

decision

he

knew

the

spectators

wanted. The public showed their wish by either waving a

handkerchief, meaning they wanted the gladiator's life to

45

Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales VII, 5 (London: William Heinemann, 1937), p. 33

The Sin of the Lion

57

be spared, or they could also point their thumbs down,

meaning that they wanted the gladiator to be killed.
Apparently,

'Roman

opinion

rather

viewed

them

as

means of educating the people to look death in the face,

and in

Roman

literature

the gladiator

appears

as

an

example of manly courage.'(46)

But

munera

werent

as

'authentic'

as

some

might

think. They involved a complex organisation of human and

theatrical

resources.

The

organisers

of

these

events

mediated them in order to achieve a particular effect. It

was not just about some men fighting until one of them
died, but rather the munera were well staged spectacles
which

achieved

specific

response

from

the

public.

Gladiatorial games had much more spectacle than reality,

thus putting them closer to fiction; or at least as near
to fiction as to make it possible for audiences to enjoy
them.
As we have said before and according to Joel Black it
is important to understand that an aesthetic approach is
convenient when events are in some way mediated so as to

46

Heitland, The Roman Republic, p. 244

The Sin of the Lion

58

make them consumable and it would suggest this is the

case with the Roman Games.
As Jean Seaton tells us,
Illusion in the arena was assiduously
fostered. Audiences (like those watching a
modern horror movie) understood that the
effects were simulated, judged them by their
ambition and impact, and also rated them by
their ability to provide a convincingly
realistic impression. Special effects were
used frequently in the more lavish and
sophisticated games. Choirs and orchestras,
trumpets and water organs were employed to
heighten emotional and dramatic impact not
only to introduce and conclude games, but
also to provide a musical commentary, rather
like a film score today. (47)

The choosing of weaponry was not practical but rather

based on which weapon and armour would create the best
effect for audiences. Special effects were used in the
munera. And most strikingly of all, prisoners were made
to dress up and enact famous battles or segments of
famous stories like that of the Gods where they would be
killed for the enjoyment of the masses.
This mediation and the fact that the games were legal
and not considered by the Romans to be immoral, makes
the gladiatorial games a spectacle closer to the ones we
would witness today in a theatre. The games were real

47

Jean Seaton, Carnage and the Media. The Making and Breaking of News About Violence (London: Allen
Lanwe, 2005), p. 64

The Sin of the Lion

59

spectacles and as such they were there to be enjoyed. The

fact that they were mediated made of them an acceptable
spectacle to watch.
Belief or Suspension of Disbelief?
Why do we go to the pictures? To see life reflected on screen
Alfred Hitchcock, Why Thrillers Thrive

I feel totally great and fine in saying that in real life I have a major problem with
violence, that I do think our society is too violent, but I have no problem going to a
movie and seeing violence on the screen.
Quentin Tarantino

movies are really a kind of dream-state, or like taking dope. And the shock of walking
out of the theatre into broad daylight can be terrifying. I watch movies all the time and I
am also very bad at waking up.
Martin Scorsese

Enjoying

fictional

violence

would

seem

less

problematic fact since, it appears, no one is harmed and

therefore ethical implications should not exist. But it
does present some difficulties because its relation to
reality is manifold. The aspect addressed here is the
question of whether enjoying fictional violence presumes
enjoyment of it in real life.
Do we reproduce things because we like them? In that
case, do we reproduce violent acts because we enjoy them?
That is, if we enjoy mimed violence, is it because we

The Sin of the Lion

60

enjoy real violence? Is it a necessary condition to enjoy

something in real life in order to enjoy it in art?
Arent things precisely copied because they are enjoyed?
Certainly it would not make much sense to copy something
we would not enjoy.
The first philosopher who pointed out the importance
of mimesis in art was Aristotle. In his book Poetics he
stated that:
Epic poetry and tragedy, as also comedy,
dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing
and lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a
whole, modes of imitation. (48)

On the other hand, this fact, which according to

Aristotle is the main characteristic of poetry, is the
same fact that makes Plato reject it. He states that art
fools us by making us take for real that which in fact is
only a mere imitation of an image of an idea.
when the painter makes his representation ,
does he do so by reference to the object as
it actually is or
to its superficial
appearance? The art of representation is
therefore a long way removed from truth, and
it is able to reproduce everything because
it has little grasp of anything, and that
little is of a mere phenomenal appearance.
(49)

48

Aristotle, Poetics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle 47a14 to 47b19 (Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1985), p. 2316

49

Plato, The Republic 598b to 598c (London: Penguin, 1987), p. 426.

The Sin of the Lion

61

According to Plato, art is a mere deceiver that makes

us forget reality. Its only contribution is to take as
truthful

something

which

is

the

mere

copy

of

phenomenon.
Well, we seem to be pretty well agreed that
the artist knows little or nothing about the
subjects he represents and that the art of
representation is something that has no
serious value. (50)

Firstly,

what

do

we

exactly

mean

by

art

is

representation? According to Nelson Goodman, the most

nave

view

of

representation

might

perhaps

be

put

somewhat like this: A represents B if and only if A

appreciably resembles

B,

or

A represents

to

the

extent that A resembles B. More error could hardly be

compressed into so short a formula.(51)
According to Goodman even though at first sight it
seems to be true that art is basically representation,
when we start considering the subject it becomes clear
that this is not the case.
If we accept that art is mimesis, representation,
then we would have to agree that the best painting will
be the one where the image best resembles a particular
50

Plato, The Republic, 602b, p. 43.

51

Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (London: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1985), p. 3.

The Sin of the Lion

62

object. But this means that to judge a picture we have to

know exactly what the object is. Thus we would have to
accept that sight is a perfectly trustworthy sense and
that what we see is what the thing really is, which is
far from the truth.
To the above assertion it is necessary to add that
what the spectator sees is a reproduction of an object as
the artist saw it, so to the circumstances of my viewing
the object, I would have to add the circumstances of the
viewing of the artist.
For Kant it is originality, the capacity to surpass
mere imitation, which characterized the genius, the fine
artist.
...
genius
creates
without
imitation,
without teaching, without rule, but it must
not be purely irregular; genius is not
restricted by rules, but it is an exemplar
for them; either it follows spontaneously
previous rules, or it must invent new ones.
(52)

However true it might be that considering art as a

mere representation of nature is far from reality(53), it
is also true that art has always had an obsession with
reality, with representing nature faithfully (Islamic art
52

Giorgio Tonelli, Kants Early Theory of the Genius (1770-1779): Part I, in Journal of the History of Ideas,
volume 41, number 1 (1980), p. 121.

53

About this subject see Goodman, Languages of Art, first chapter.

The Sin of the Lion

63

being one of the few exceptions). Andre Bazin, the French

film theoretician, stressed this in his essay Ontologie
de limage photographique(54):
Thenceforth painting was torn between two
ambitions: one, primarily aesthetic, namely
the expression of spiritual reality wherein
the symbol transcended its model; the other,
purely psychological, namely the duplication
of the world outside. (55)

In fact, according to Bazin, it was the invention of

photography that allowed art to lose this obsession with
representing

reality.

This

allowed

some

artists

to

express themselves in a different way, such that art does

not represent anything different than itself.
The objective of the camera became a human eye that
no longer represented nature as art used to do. Instead
it became nature. Photography was thought of as being
reliable. What someone sees in a picture is as believable
as that which we see with our own eyes.
The photographic image is the object itself,
the object freed from the conditions of time
and space that govern it. No matter how
fuzzy, distorted, or discoloured, no matter
how lacking in documentary value the image
may be, it shares, by virtue of the very
process of its becoming, the being of the
model of which it is the reproduction; it is
the model. (56)
54

Andre Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image, in Andre Bazin, What is cinema? (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1967), pp. 9-16

55

Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image, p. 11.

56

Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image, p. 14.

The Sin of the Lion

64

Photography was rendered as a scientific process in

which human beings had little intervention, and science
could not produce false images. Photography acquired an
almost ontological status since it was seen as that which
showed the truth.
Essential
to
the
belief
system
which
photography engendered was the fact that the
image was created by a physical process over
which human craft exerted no decisive role.
Photography was therefore a scientific
process, free from the unreliability of
human discourse. Photography could serve as
both tool of discovery and means of
verification in a new worldview constructed
on an investigation of actual entities
explored through their visible aspects. (57)

However, for Aristotle the problem that was raised in

the first paragraph of this part of the chapter seems to
be clear. He states in the Poetics that humans tend
naturally towards representations. In fact, it is one of
the characteristics that differentiate humans from other
animals.
Imitation is natural to man from childhood,
one of his advantages over the lower animals
being this, that he is the most imitative
creature in the world, and learns at first
by imitation. (58)

57

Tom Gunning, Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theatre, Trick Films,
and Photographys Uncanny, in Patrice Petro, Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video (Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 42.

58

Aristotle, Poetics, 48b5 to 48b8, p. 2318

The Sin of the Lion

65

And as a proof of this natural appeal he uses the

fact that we delight in representations of things that
would be disgusting in real life.
And it is also natural for all to delight in
works of imitation. The truth of this point
is shown by experience: though the objects
themselves may be painful to se, we delight
to view the most realistic representations
of them in art, the forms for example of the
lowest animals and of dead bodies. (59)

Is it so easy to explain why we delight in seeing

things represented in art that we would otherwise dislike
by

saying

that

human

beings

naturally

like

representations?
No, according to Aristotle, besides saying we delight
naturally

in

representations,

he

also

develops

the

concept of catharsis. Aristotle discussed this for the

first time in the Politics.
For feelings such as pity and fear, or,
again, enthusiasm, exist very strongly in
some souls, and have more or less influence
over all. Some persons fall into a religious
frenzy, and we see them restored as a result
of the sacred melodies when they have used
the melodies that excite the soul to mystic
frenzy- as though they had found healing and
purgation
[catharsis].
Those
who
are
influenced by pity or fear, and every
emotional
nature,
must
have
a
like
experience, and others in so far as each is
susceptible to such emotions, and all are in
a manner purged and their souls lightened
and delighted. The melodies which purge the
passions likewise give an innocent pleasure
to mankind. Such are the modes and the
59

Aristotle, Poetics, 48b9 to 48b13, p. 2318.

The Sin of the Lion

66

melodies in which those who perform music at

the theatre should be invited to compete.(60)

Thus we not only enjoy representations of violence

because

of

represented,

this
but

natural
we

also

appeal
enjoy

to

anything

these

that

is

representations

because that way we can channel violent emotions through

the fictional world instead of doing it in the real one.
In the Critique of Judgement Kant makes a remark
where it seems he agrees with Aristotle.
the furies, diseases, devastations of war,
and the like, can (as evils) be very
beautifully described, nay even represented
in pictures. (61)

Therefore to like violence or any other peculiar

feature in a painting does not mean that we like it as
well in reality. Even though cinema consists of make
believe, once we are out of the cinema it all ends and
our life continues as it was before. As Martin Scorsese
comments:
I do not think there is any difference
between fantasy and reality in the way these
should be approached in a film. Of course,
if you live that way you are clinically
insane. But I can ignore the boundary on
film. (62)

60

Aristotle, Politics, 1342a 5-15, pp. 2128-2129.

61

Kant, The Critique of Judgement, p. 173.

62

David Thompson and Ian Christie, Scorsese on Scorsese (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. 60.

The Sin of the Lion

67

But of all the fictional representations of violence,

the ones that interest us here are those that come from
the cinema, so it is important to answer the question,
how is violence represented in films?
Violence in the cinema
Cinema is specially suited to the depiction of violence.
Stephen Prince

Early Cinema to 1960

Violence has been present since the very beginning of

film. The history of violence in cinema is the history of
the

pushing

of

boundaries.

The

evolution

of

graphic

violence goes hand in hand with the evolution of the

limit of how much violence people can take. So the story
we will tell is one of a fight between filmmakers on the
one side and cinemagoers, establishment and the State on
the other.
Since, The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S.
Porter in 1903 and arguably the first feature film in the
history of cinema is the account of the robbery of a
train and how the bandits are later trapped and killed in
a gun battle. As if the violence of the films wasnt

The Sin of the Lion

68

enough it ended with an image of the bandit chief firing

his gun at the audience.
the bandit chief
firing his gun at
the
audience
in
The
Great
Train
Robbery.

Concerns about violence in cinema (usually related to

its relation with delinquency) appear very early. Since
the beginning of cinema some people, and the State, have
been concerned about the necessity of

regulating the

content of films people viewed and especially in the case

of violence since it was seen as a kind of behaviour that
could either affect impressionable minds or be used by
some to copy it.
Investigations
by
the
Juvenile
Court
Committee in Chicago in 1907 and the
Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago
in 1909 and 1911 confirmed the links between
cinema and juvenile delinquency, as did
other countless case studies Over and over
again nickelodeons and moving pictures were

The Sin of the Lion

69

seen as an insidious breeding ground for a

debauched citizenry and were positioned as
sites of danger within the social body in
conjunction with the wider concerns about
the governance of a mass public in earlytwentieth-century America that underpinned
the rhetoric on delinquency.(63)

From the fact that cinema was under very strict rules
and which did not affect newspapers or theatre, we can
safely assume that it was seen as a medium more dangerous
than any other. The first case of movie censorship to
ever reach the courts was a case that involved violence
in cinema and it was the case known as Block v. the City
of Chicago(64). Chicago was the first city to have a
censorship ordinance (November 4, 1907) which limited
what could be seen in the screen.
Blocks lawyers argued that:
The
censorship
ordinance
thus
unconstitutionally discriminated against the
exhibitors of moving pictures making a
distinction between moving pictures and
other forms of commercialized amusements. In
particular, they argued that the ordinance
drew an unfair distinction between cinema
and the theatre.(65)

63

Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema. Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth Century America (London:
University of California Press, 2004), p. 15.

64

To see a detailed account of this and other cases of the time on the same subject Cf. Stephen Prince, Classical
Film Violence. Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1968 (New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 2003), pp. 13-18.

65

Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema, p. 74.

The Sin of the Lion

But

70

what

occupies

us

is

not

so

much

the

legal

implications of censorship, but what influence this might

have had in the portrayal of violence within cinema.
Directors

had

to

be

careful

and

therefore

at

the

beginning of cinema violence was tamed and adapted to the

audiences and regulations. As a consequence this violence
had virtually no effect on the human body and therefore
it was easy to watch. It was more a textual resource than
a visual resource and it was there only to indicate that
someone had died or had been a victim of violence, but
not to make us witnesses of it.
(violent scenes) were often expertly
concealed in a Breughel-like mise-en-scne.
() The longshot, the panoramic view, kept
death far from us and that was real. The
bullet holes were too small to see well; the
sword wounds were always on the side facing
away from the camera.(66)

Stephen
aesthetic

Prince

because

calls
victims

this
of

the

clutch-and-fall

violence

were

virtually

unharmed even when they were killed. There was no blood

and the passing of the person was almost angelical.
The defining feature of [the clutch-andfall aesthetic] lies in the victims
response. The victim takes the bullet with
little to no physical reaction, even if
the shot is fired at close range. Rather
than responding with pain or distress ()
66

Vivian S. Sobchack, The Violent Dance: A Personal Memoir of Death in the Movies, in Stephen Prince (ed.),
Screening Violence, (London: The Athlone Press, 2000), p. 111.

The Sin of the Lion

71

the clutch-and-fall victim falls into a

trance, or seems to fall asleep, and then
sinks gracefully and slowly out of frame.
(67)

But perhaps the most important control exerted on

films content was not done by the government but by the
film industry itself. In an attempt to prevent the
government from tightening its rules on censorship the
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
(MPPDA) appointed in 1922 Will Hays to establish a set
of

guidelines

that

would

serve

the

industry

in

regulating the contents of its films in terms of, among

others, violence. In 1930 this set of guidelines was
rewritten by Hays and others and would come to be known
as the Hays Code and the Production Code Administration
was created to enforce it under the leadership of
Joseph Breen.

Psycho (1960)

Many films claim to have been the ones which made

America

lose

its

virginity,

but

it

is

Alfred

Hitchcocks Psycho (1960) which remains in the mind of

the public as the one which went where no other film had
gone before.

67

Stephen Prince, Classical Film Violence, p. 153.

The Sin of the Lion

72

Psycho was branded as too violent even before it

became a script. William Pinckard, a script reader for a
studio,

said

that

the

book

was

too

repulsive

and

impossible for films(68). Script writer Joseph Stephano

did not try to conceal the violence or other elements
that were taboo at the time. On the contrary, he and
Hitchcock both wanted to see how much they could get away
with.

The

most

controversial

features

of

the

script

appeared in the film.

The script is shot through with obvious

delight in skewering Americas sacred cows
virginity,
cleanliness,
privacy,
masculinity, sex, mother love, marriage, the
reliance on pills, the sanctity of the
family and the bathroom. (69)

Towards the end of the 1960s studies started paying

less and less attention to the Code. In fact, in 1967
Antonionis Blowup was released by MGM despite the fact
that the PCA denied its approval. The Code belonged to a
time already gone and it had to be changed for a more
modern system that instead of restricting the contents
would specify the age needed to see a specific film. This
is how in 1968 the Code and Rating Administration was
founded and a new system of ratings was established in
68

Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), p. 13.

69

Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, p. 46.

The Sin of the Lion

which

the

patrons

73

responsibility

who

would

was

now

put

decide

on
if

the parents
they

thought

and
it

appropriate to see a movie or not. This new acquired

freedom for directors would have an enormous influence in
the way violence was depicted.

1967 onwards

Maybe for todays standards Psychos violence is less

than striking, as we are now used to ultraviolence(70).
Ultraviolence is the term referred to the last stage of
violence

as

represented

in

cinema.

This

new

way

of

portraying violence started in 1968 with Arthur Penns

Bonnie and Clyde.
Bonnie and Clyde was the beginning of a trend to show
violence that did not try to hide anything, but rather to
find new and exciting ways to show it. Indeed this way of
filming violence became (and still is) the main style of
filming violence in cinema.

70

To understand this term in all its complexity Cf. Stephen Prince, Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise
of Ultraviolent Films (Austin: Universitry of Texas Press, 1998).

The Sin of the Lion

74

' Bonnie and Clyde was

the beginning of a new
trend

The main elements that Penn deployed have by now

become the standard way of filming violence. Technically
the use of multicamera filming, slow motion, and montage
editing(71) were crucial to the portrayal of violence.
Dramatically and most importantly a mise-en-scne element
that would take violence, or rather its consequences, to
the limits of what is allowed within American society:
the use of squibs.

Squibs were condoms filled with fake blood,

concealed within an actors clothing, and
wired to detonate so as to simulate bullet
strikes and blood sprays. (72)

71

Stephen Prince, Graphic Violence in the Cinema: Origins, Aesthetic Design and Social Effects, in Stephen
Prince (ed.), Screening Violence, p. 10.

72

Stephen Prince, Graphic Violence, p. 10.

The Sin of the Lion

75

Blood in its radiant red and in quantities never seen

before

was

something

missing

from

violent

scenes

in

classical Hollywood cinema. Blood in great quantities is

the first hint that death could be near and, as Edmund
Burke noted, the idea of death is one that produces the
strongest effects in human beings and indeed the one that
makes pain even worse than it already is.

as pain is stronger in its operation than

pleasure, so death is in general a much more
affecting idea than pain; because there are
very few pains, however exquisite, which are
not preferred to death; nay, what generally
makes pain itself, if I may say so, more
painful, is, that it is considered as
emissary of the king of terrors. (73)

Lack

of

blood,

therefore,

makes

violence

more

digestible and consumable. In the cinema from 1920 up to

1960

blood

was

either

completely

absent

or

cheap

substitute that was not anything like real blood and in

quantities that were not directly related to the level of
violence. As Vivian Sobchack has noted,

Blood was something we were rarely given

enough of on the screen-it oozed rather than
spurted, it was most often black or a rusty
Cine-color. () I cannot remember a single
film death which fired my imagination as

73

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part one,
Section VII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 36.

The Sin of the Lion

76

much as the bright red blood from my own

finger. (74)

It is clear that what made films like Bonnie and

Clyde or The Dirty Dozen (which came out the same year as
Bonnie and Clyde) so appealing to the public was their
representation of violence and death. Both films were
unprecedented box-office hits.

These
controversial
pictures
were
extraordinarily popular. The Dirty Dozen was
the biggest money-maker of 1967, and so
extraordinarily was repeat business for
Bonnie and Clyde that Variety, tracking its
box-office performance, placed it in an
impossible to project category.(75)

Death had previously been stylised and therefore had

nothing to do with reality. Films represented dying to
their own rules, and that meant audiences knew perfectly
well

that

therefore

what
they

they
could

were
feel

seeing
safe.

was

What

not
did

real

and

Bonnie and

Clyde, The Dirty Dozen and also Sergio Leones Dollar

Trilogy(76) do that made them so revolutionary? For the
first time death in films looked real and this made
American society very uncomfortable.

74

Vivian S. Sobchack, The Violent Dance p. 112.

75

Stephen Prince, Graphic Violence p. 12.

76

A Fistfull of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966). Albeit
the fact that these films are older than Bonnie and Clyde and The Dirty Dozen, they were all released by United
Artists in 1967.

The Sin of the Lion

One

77

element

that

contributed

to

the

new

way

of

portraying violence was the broadcasting of news from the

Vietnam War. For the first time people were seeing real
death occurring on their television screens. The blood of
real Americans was being spilled in Vietnam and the fact
people were able to see that was also the fuse that would
ignite the new ultraviolence.

The savage bloodshed of the Vietnam War

established a context whereby filmmakers
felt justified in reaching for new levels of
screen violence.(77)

If we compare Psycho with these ultraviolent films it

is possible to see that deep down the effect they wanted
to cause in audiences was the same: things are not as you
imagine them. They seem to be claiming that the world as
it used to be represented is false and here is the real
world: a dangerous one where bad things can happen. What
Hitchcock did with the shower scene in Psycho, Peckinpah
and Penn did with violence. They made audiences aware of
the fact that cinema was lying to them, that the worldview it was forming was false and that a new world-view
had to be formed: one where violence happens and it is
quite

77

messy,

and

here

Stephen Prince, Graphic Violence, p. 8.

is

where

the

stylisation

of

The Sin of the Lion

78

violence begins to play an important part: it was the

only

way

audiences

would

accept

such

terrifying(78)

portrayals of violence.
As

we

can

see

the

two

elements

that

have

traditionally been used to establish changes in the way

we portray violence in cinema are the use of blood and
the effect that the violence has on the victim. These are
the elements we will use to show how a new shift has
occurred in the portrayal of violence in cinema. This
shift is much more subtle that the one that occurred in
1967

and

it

does

not

have

so

much

to

do

with

the

quantities of blood used as with the context in which the

violence is portrayed.

78

I use the word terrifying in the sense that Edmund Burke gives to this word as what we feel when confronted
with death. Cf. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, Part Two, Section II, p. 54.