I don’t like violence. I’ve gotten anxious when a fight broke out at a hockey game. How is it that I can sit enthralled watching people cut each other to ribbons in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill? 

In one sense, there is no mystery at all. Whatever our preferred psychoanalytic theory, we can agree that aggression is basic to our makeup. Films mobilize that aggression by having the bad guys do terrible things, creating a wish for revenge. Guilt is tempered with the justification that those bad guys deserve punishment and that their evil must be stopped. Similarly, there must be no grief to interfere with our enjoyment of the violence. I have heard numerous times from combat veterans that they became aware of sympathy for their victims only after finding a wallet with pictures of loved ones. The Continue reading “Kill Bill”: Mastering Anxiety with Violence