I went to see The Expendables II last week. I did roll my eyes a good deal, even in the first ten minutes, to the derision of my other half (“Just because I film doesn’t have subtext doesn’t mean it isn’t any good.” Yes it does.) However soon I was laughing. Not at the script which is mostly bloody terrible. I was laughing at all the blood. There was so much of it. Scores of people died in much gore, gallons of the red stuff splashing everywhere; hilarious. It was probably due to the lack of subtext that my overactive brain began to search for something else to dissect. So I started to ponder on why it was that vast amounts of blood were making me laugh so much. Was it the sheer numbers in which these characters seemed to be dying? Was it the way they were dying? Was it because I knew they were only characters and therefore whether they lived or died didn’t matter?
It was that last question, and the separation from myself, sitting watching, and what was going on onscreen that interested me, because it gave me permission to laugh at what would have been a horrific scene if it had been real. It makes me wonder a bit about Romans and their gladiatorial spectacles or bizarre mass executions. Did they laugh at the people being disembowelled before them, or at the sheer amounts of blood, just as I laughed at the film? Or perhaps the layout of the amphitheatre acted for them the same way as the screen acted for me. Perhaps for them, the people dying where not people at all, separated by class and the distance of the theatre, they were ‘only’ gladiators, or ‘only’ slaves. At most they might be affected for a moment when a favoured or supported gladiator died, but they would be more likely to laugh than cry at the sight of a criminal who had just had his arm ripped off by a lion, running away from the same lion in an attempt not to make up more of the animal’s dinner. It’s the Black Knight syndrome, isn’t it, that famous Monty Python sketch where the protagonist has had all his limbs cut off, and is still hilarious in a blood spurting, darkly comic way.
There are various differing tastes in humour across the globe, but it says something about us that as a race we universally find slapstick violence funny. However it is reassuring to know that the proportion of violence to humour has probably decreased. To give you one example of medieval humour; Edward I was riding behind one unfortunate member of his retinue who fell off his horse and injured himself quite badly. The King laughed heartily. The man got back up, and rode on, only to fall off again, in exactly the same way, injuring himself still further. Edward I roared with laughter and gave the man a good deal of money as a reward for being the butt of such a good joke. Which is just as well because they lived in a time when a broken arm could often lead to an amputation, so at least the poor chap could have something to live on, even if he ended his days somewhat incapacitated.
At least nowadays we use actors rather than real people to act out our gorey comic tendencies because it occurs to me that if we ignored those tendencies we would be lying to ourselves. Much better to admit it, but unlike our Medieval forebears, go to help a fallen person up and then laugh at them when they are essentially ok, rather than laugh while they bleed to death, Roman style.
It makes me wonder where our sanitisation of comic savagery will lead us in the future, when there is a possibility we will be even more civilized and even more sanitized – will action films be banned? Will our future selves point and condemn us for being savage just as we point to our medieval ancestors and they in turn would have accused the ancient ‘heathen’ Romans for being barbaric?
I’m honestly not sure, not being clairvoyant (if there is such a thing.) Meanwhile I think I am going to take the advice of my other half and stop reading into simple things like action films, where there definitely isn’t any subtext. Just watch the film and laugh at the unrealistic body count.
The Champagne Anarchist 