sqbr | Violence outside the system

There's been some very interesting discussion of violence in fiction recently, in Militarism, pacifism, fandom

naraht has some links and very interesting thoughts about pacifism.

My issue I guess with these posts is with the dichotomy between pro-military and pacifist. Because I love stories about violence, but my gut sympathies are very anti-military and while this is sometimes problematic, I think it's not inherently self-contradictory. This came up in the comments to

naraht's post but I'd like to poke at it some more.

I had some stuff here about why my gut reactions tend to be different but it got tl;dr. In short: one of my grandads may have been a WWII pilot, but the other met his wife at a communist party strike rally where they got shot at by police. Also I'm Australian, and was brought up to be leftwing and proud of my Eastern European roots during the Cold War. My natural sympathies do not lie with the (American) military, even if I do like and respect many individual soldiers and enjoy NCIS sometimes.

Why I like violence in fiction when my personal politics are fairly pacifistic…I don't know!

Also, one can have violent fiction where the protagonists aren't violent, or where they are but we're not supposed to like it. I'm currently trying to write a non-violent(ish) character in a fic for Dragon Age (a very violent setting!) and it's…interesting. I've been diverting all the violence onto the villains :D There's also explicitly and specifically anti-military "war is hell" violent war stories eg "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman.

Some examples of types of sympathetically violent characters who are not uncritically engaged with the military-industrial complex:

Rag-tag misfits against (or trying to avoid) an evil empire eg Star Wars (though of course they're trying to create their own replacement State), Farscape
Rag-tag misfits fighting a supernatural threat eg Buffy, Shawn of the Dead
Member of oppressed group joins military mission for the greater good but is still in conflict with the injustices of the system eg most origins in Dragon Age:Origins except Human Noble (at least how I play them), some "woman crossdresses to join sexist military" stories, especially "Monstrous Regiment" by Terry Pratchett
Contractor/mercenary etc, semi complicit with the system but very morally ambiguous and conflicted, eg lots of cyberpunk, Culture novels by Iain M Banks
Lone vigilantes. I tend not to like these myself since they trend towards fascistic ideals, as if the main issue with the police is that they have too much due process and community consultation. I know there's some less problematic examples though none are coming to mind.
Characters who are violent but don't kill anyone (or not anyone human), like most children's superheroes (eg Kim Possible) and Buffy.
Sympathetic villains, so that we understand their violence but do not condone it eg Catwoman in "Batman Returns" or (to some extent) Rorschach in "Watchmen" by Alan Moore.
It's the kind of setting where it's easy to just end up in lots of random fights eg The Wild West
Others I'm forgetting…

Are these characters problematic in their own ways? Absolutely. But not in quite the same way as is being criticised in these posts.

Most significantly, they are still killing people (unless they're not :)), and that always has ethical concerns and messes people up regardless of context. Also, often misfit anti-military types are totally fine with the "good" military, eg the brownshirts in Firefly, the US military in Farscape.

I was going to ponder the issues around writing these characters some more but..eh. I've run out of inspiration for the topic.

nb I'm not meaning to criticise or even really engage with the people talking about the good and bad parts of pro-military stories. They make some good points, I just felt there was some aspects of violent fiction they weren't covering.

No linking on metafandom please, I'm fine with random strangers engaging but I don't have the energy for a gazillion comments.

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stories about violence are the way that us non-violent people deal with our dislike for violence, generally speaking

Hmmmm. Maybe for some people, but I don't think mine can be explained away that easily. To some extent I like violent fiction the same way as I like stories about explosions and general destruction. It's just that my non-violent principles mean that I'm only comfortable with/interested in violent stories of particular types. (Though I also enjoy non-violent stories of upsetting the status quo. So violent status-quo upsetting appeals on two different levels)

I think this is one reason I enjoy Iain M Banks books (when he isn't irritating me), a lot of them explore violence as both alluring and unethical (and even when the characters fall on the "it's a bad thing" side the books themselves are almost always VERY violent)

I'm not particularly a fan of violence in stories, though many stories I enjoy happen to contain violence. It tends to be of a non-military sort, though, as I would venture to say that 90% of the stories I like with violence in are shounen manga. Those tend to be of the "people fighting because they have to, not because they want to" sort, though there is usually a character or two who just likes kicking ass.

It took me quite a while to figure out I really do like certain forms of violence for it's own sake, since it's such a ubiquitous feature of speculative fiction that it's not like I could have been avoiding it easily even if I wanted to. As it happens, I tend to find shounen manga fight scenes in particular rather dull and they're one of the reasons I'm ambivalent about the genre, so there you go :)

Rag-tag misfits fighting a supernatural threat eg Buffy<>, Shawn of the Dead, Supernatural

They're all about protecting civilians and fighting monsters, so it seems like they'd be in this category?

I don't know why, I am more likely to go see a movie/enjoy something if there is "action", it has explosions, etc, but I wouldn't want to be in one of those violent situations myself.

Haha, oh absolutely, I am such a weak tiny coward, I don't like violence in person. I don't mind playfights against someone of roughly equal strength I guess (at this point: my cat)

Supernatural definitely fits the description. The violence in it bothers me sometimes and can have some weird power dynamics, but it's not militaristic.

Yeah, if anything the boys are anti-"The Man"! I know their dad was military and they were raised in that fashion but their run-ins with the authorities don't generally go smoothly. :)

Heh. No, not from what I saw :)

I think we've been sold (for various values of 'we' and 'sold', heh), the idea of this sort of... inherent honour in violence, and particularly military violence, so much so that even purportedly anti-war stories have a rose-ish tint regarding it. (Why we are sold that ideal in our entertainment, I think it would be arguable, but it's specially noticeable in countries like, say, Argentina, where people very specifically don't buy that ideal about their military and their police (in my particular example, for historical reasons).)

I find it inherently repellent in military violence if I think about it (I've in general a large--though ever diminishing--capacity for disengaging my brain when consuming fiction), but not so much so in other types of violence. I personally would like to be sure I would be capable of doing violence if the situation required it (self-defence, attack from a foreign force, military coup, whatever), even though I'm in general someone that thinks violence is not--generally--the answer. There are situations where it will be necessary, and I like the idea of keeping those situations in mind. (Eg. despite anything one could criticize in, say, el Che Guevara--and sorry for the cliché, but he's like, the epitome of the romanticized revolution fighter around here--teaching, 'better to die standing than to live on your knees' is not something I disagree with. (Though if anyone would prefer the alternative, to each their own!))

*nods to all that*

But that's most anti-prevailing-social-trends fiction, it tends to only partially succeed at not perpetuating the things it's criticising.

Why I like violence in fiction when my personal politics are fairly pacifistic…I don't know!

My response here is going to be the same as for the kink meme issue: what you read =/= your political platform.

Absolutely. I certainly don't feel deeply conflicted about it. I just find it interesting.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand you have the "what floats your boat has nothing to do with what you endorse or believe in." On the other hand, it seems very natural that people who are anti-racist, anti-sexist, whatever, want to consume media that shares their values. I'm not sure whether either, neither or both of these is the right analogy in this situation.

It is complicated, and my reply to whatistigerbalm was a bit flip.

I think there's a difference between work which straightforwardly exhibits things I oppose/support as part of the plot, and that which has an effect I oppose/support.

I'm such a nonviolent and non-confrontational person that I have no worry that violent fiction will make me violent, thus I don't worry too much about liking it in principle.

I think there are other sorts of subtexts to violent fiction that could negatively influence me, but it's not as straight forward as "Is the violence in this story justified?", I have to think about why I like it and what my reactions are. Still poking at that one.

(So...we agree I guess?)

I... think we agree on the whole but not completely. Still pondering.

Violence outside the system

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