Violence in Film
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Violence in film is not a single entity. It is shaped by the styler of the film, by the sensibilities of the filmmaker, by the nature of the thematic discourse conducted in the film, and by a number of other factors that make an example of film violence unique. The filmmaker may be trying to use violence to challenge the nature of violence in society, and even then the way the issue is treated will vary from film to film. Violence has an near iconographic place in film so that the evocation of an instance of violence in one film builds upon and recalls other instances in other films extending back through the history of the medium, and a good director can make use of audience expectations about violence to challenge those expectations, to satisfy them, or to twist them into something very different than what is expected. Lindsay Anderson in his film If. . . and Jean-Luc Godard in Les Carabiniers each draw on earlier film images of violence in creating a particular vision of what violence means in society. While both films can be considered social statements and derive much of their power from the way they reflect the political and social turmoil of the 1960s. the films have very different visions and styles. Les Carabiniers has the veneer of a mythic story taking place outside of real time and real place. The subject is war--the title in English would be The Soldiers--and war is the height of violence, with one society fighting another. Director Godard sets this fi
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nst the Establishment was recognizable in the British film as it was in the American experience. Where Godard created a fable, Anderson mixes reality and fantasy in a way that the two are not always clearly separated. Both films build their violent worlds in a serio-comic fashion, which can lead to a misunderstanding of the use of violence if the viewer does not see where the satiric edge is intended to lie and takes seriously the more fantastic elements of both films.
Anderson's film develops the characters of the boys in the school and contrasts them with the professors who hold sway over them. Central to the film is Mick Travis. He is the student who appears to be radicalized, leading to the student rebellion at the end. In fact, Mick is a pseudo-radical, taking his cues from different publications without really understanding the nature of rebellion or the foolishness of his own actions. What really interests Mick is his own ability to impose control on others. He has to be the leader, and he manipulates other boys in the school mercilessly, with an arrogance that is quite beyond his true abilities and position. His need for control extends to his teachers as well, and his failure to control them as he does the other
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2316
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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