Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 15, 1994 TAG: 9411180047
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADRIAN BLEVINS-CHURCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
My father and his most dedicated students would have placed themselves before the easels spread out in a semicircle across the room. The nude women, not yet really nude, would then undress and climb a 2-foot platform covered in white sheets. The painters, most of them women as well, would begin their contouring and their shading: They would work late into the night to interpret and portray the bodies before them.
I know about that ancient notion, illustrated most astutely in Adam and Eve's allegorical banishment from the garden, that there is something indecent, something sinful, about the naked human body. People intuitively understand that human sexuality lacks the composure we associate, necessarily, with civilization. But they also seem to think that this lack of composure, especially when depicted in images, is obscene, which - and I would like to be quite emphatic about this - it is not necessarily.
So what is?
Violence is.
Lately, my 16-year-old brother has been watching rented movies at my house. I suspect he does this because he would not be allowed to watch R-rated movies at home, but because I am his sister and not his mother, I go easy on him: I'm able somehow to give him a space I doubt I'll be able to give my own children once they are his age.
I thought - foolish thing that I am - that he was renting these movies for their sex scenes. And recognizing that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, I did not particularly mind. But sex is not, though he assures me that he is interested in it, what my brother wants to watch. No, my brother - the 7-pound boy I met just minutes old as he lay yellowed and magnificent next to my mother in the hospital, the boy who made me aspire out of love to have my own first child at 22 - wanted blood.
And I must admit I was shocked. Me, shocked! The slaughter flick was more brutal than anything I have ever seen before in my life, and I have seen fights and births and death, and I have even had to watch the wounded as they were lifted, either screaming or moaning, into an ambulance. I can't tell you how many men died in this movie, but I don't think one was left standing. And I can't tell you how many gallons of blood I had to watch pour out of actors' chests and faces, but there was enough, I assure you, to saturate the sky.
The movie was so violent, so vicious, so riotous, I left it feeling a certain standard of decenc" had been crossed. I felt as though I'd been intentionally violated; I felt as though I'd been raped.
When my cousin Alyson and I were 10 or 11, "Helter Skelter" was aired for the first time on television. As you might expect, we decided we would like to watch it. Her mother wouldn't let us, so we decided to try to sneak it over on our grandmother. She was trying to sleep upstairs in her room, but because we told her there was something on television we would "just die" if we couldn't see, she rolled over and told us that if we kept the volume down, we could watch it.
The only light in the entire house seemed to come from the tiny box on a table at the foot of our grandmother's bed. This frightened me. I also did not like the wild-eyed faces of people as they entered Sharon Tate's house and then proceeded to undertake their slicing and dicing. Yes, I remember now: I was divided that night between my innate morbid curiosity and my fear, but was also far too dedicated to putting up the bravery front to admit this to my cousin, though I'm willing to bet she was feeling the same contradiction of desires.
As we lay there side by side on our stomachs and gawked at the movie, our grandmother would periodically ask in an alarmed tone of voice, "What are you girls watching?"
"Nothing," we would say, ashamed.
This went on for about 10 minutes.
Then, to my great relief and disappointment, our grandmother sat up in bed, turned on her lamp, watched the movie for about three seconds, and, with an indignant sniff and a lecture about what was and was not appropriate television for us, flipped the switch that made the screen go black.
A friend of mine recently put a name to the emotion we feel in response to that sudden recognition we get sometimes when we understand how truly awesome and beautiful the world and our experience of it really is. He called it "metaphysical wonder": What a grand phrase! I felt it when I gave birth to both of my sons, I feel it each fall when the leaves begin to change, and I felt it as a child when my father called in the women to take off their clothes.
Why, you ask? Because neither the nude women nor the paintings portraying them were injurious. The intentions behind both the modeling and the painting were, in fact, altogether honorable: The hope was to put into visual terms our metaphysical wonder, to bring forth from both the reality of the world and from the imagination a thing of grace and beauty.
The intention behind much cinematic violence, however, is not so virtuous. It is not even to portray the violence within the world or to depict the fragility of the human body. The intention, I think, is to heighten and enhance dehumanization itself in an effort, it seems to me, to arouse the ancient cauldron of adrenaline the body naturally offers in response to situations that may kill us. My students' reactions to my concerns about the grotesquely realistic images of death and dying within the media underscore my point: They talk as though watching human massacre on video is like riding a roller-coaster or driving 50 mph beyond the speed limit. They talk, in other words, as though watching such video images is just another way of getting high.
I am not saying we should deny the savagery within us, for it is as fundamental within nature as is, say, poise. I also recognize that human beings have been fascinated with carnage since the beginning of time and that perhaps I have led, as ironic as it sounds, a somewhat sheltered life. But the movie I watched with my brother suggests to me that we've stepped over some kind of an edge from which, if we are not quite careful, we will never withdraw.
I am certain as well that the violence - blood image after image - we see on television is more detrimental, more intentionally destructive, and more obviously vulgar than any naked body could ever be. It and the unenlightened media's willingness to feed it to us are obscene. I believe the nude women would think so, too.
Adrian Blevins-Church of Fincastle teaches writing at Hollins College.
by CNB