Violence in the cinema has been and will continue to be fraught with controversy because there is still no fully agreed upon consensus as to what constitutes the very subject itself.The types of violent representation
- physical, emotional, psychological, symbolic, systemic, and so forth - present in Western cinema since its inception are as broad and varied as any other element of the cinematic experience, yet there remains a stubborn tendency to subsume this vast and diverse arena into a singular entity called ‘violence'.
Film violence is not some monolithic and therefore easily understandable ‘thing', but rather a complex mode of stylised representation that needs to be thoroughly grounded in historical, cultural, aesthetic and industrial contexts.This chapter will look specifically at various forms of ‘extreme violence' in Western cinema, which is generally understood as violence that pushes past current cinematic norms in its intensity and graphic qualities. Extreme violence is emotionally upsetting, causes discomfort, shocks, and may even physically assault the spectator's body by causing uncontrollable physiological responses. While various films produced in the United States and Europe have achieved such levels of violence, not all of them (or even most) are still defined as such, having been surpassed by even more extreme depictions. How those definitions have changed and continue to change can tell us much about the interrelationships of social and political sensibilities, changing ethics, and the ever-evolving aesthetics of filmmaking.