How to Justify Violence

To justify fictional violent acts, it leads to not only the construction of the media texts but also the audience who watch and participate in such texts. With regards to films this justification usually comes from the construction of the Protagonist and Antagonist in the story, to look at their morals and ethics and the violence that they undertake in the story and narrative of the film.

Justification is key in understanding violence, and how this leads to an audiences overall perception of the film. I believe this to also be relevant in television series. Bruce Kawin, suggests that “ With or without its sexist aspects, the justification of violence goes in film after film, always with reference to some higher system of values, and appealing to a variety of emotions.” (Kawin:2013:7)

What I take from this is that in audiences justification of violence they take in to consideration not only their own pleasures and boundaries with fictional media violence, but also their own personal experiences that lead them to form their own opinions when watching violent acts. I know that when I watch violent acts I agree and disagree based on my own life experience.

In many respects justifying violence falls under the same systematic procedures that occur in all areas of film, such as; relationships, romantic entanglements e.g. love triangles which lead you to root for two of the characters to be together regardless sometimes of the impact that this will have on the third character.

However as I stated in a previous post “Meaning in my view that fictional media violence justification is not blind justice but circumstantial.”(Atkinson:2014) The circumstantial aspect of justification is that each person enters in to watching violence with their own biases and therefore they lead to somewhat pre-engineered opinions, which are key in understanding their overall decision as to whether the act is justified or unjustified.