Hey folks, long time no post. After some time spent doing adult stuff, I've finally managed to work up another topic on my twelve part series. Just a quick note that with today's short story, I felt the need to rewrite it from the ground up from an earlier adaptation I had written for a college course a year or two ago. It had some good ideas that I've still implemented but I wanted bring something fresh to the table on this topic and not just something I edited like crazy (I had some help doing that this time as well, don't worry).
But onto the main event! Today's topic is about: Violence. And I'm talking about violence as it relates to a form of expression in media and literature. In fact, this post was partially inspired by a YouTube video from one of my favorite channels; Extra Credit. They do really good work so I'll leave a link below to check out the episode in question.
Extra Credit - Hatred
Now, I'm not here as a concerned citizen saying we need to control or censor the amount of violence in the general media or what our younger generations absorbs. As a writer and as someone who's seen a graphic amount of violent depictions in art, I want to talk about the value of expressing what we commonly know as frustration or rage.
There are all kinds of emotion people tap into when we go about our daily lives. Sometimes we listen to soothing music to fall asleep, sometimes we need the coach to get in our face and pump us up, and sometimes we need to think of our happiest memories if we really wanna fly or ward off those unsavory Dementors.
As a writer, I see it as my job to understand where these emotions come from and how to best represent them while also seeming authentic. However, there's been a long standing public decry of letting the community, especially younger generations, receive some of the harsher, grittier facets of human existence.
Now, I'm not saying we should shove our kids in front of a screaming monitor so they have a fuller understanding of what it means to be human... I mean, I'm not saying it like that at least.
I've always been of the mind that no matter how you feel, you're entitled to that emotion, whatever the cause. The actions you perform in reaction to those emotions are a different story. But as humans we all, for the most part, constantly feel things. What good does it do to not shed a tear if we feel sad, or blush if we're embarrassed, or yell if we feel angry? We'd be denying ourselves the right to expression and thereby, doing nothing instead. And doing nothing is boring as well as unhealthy.
When I write about a frustrating scenario, I'm not just putting the characters in that position, I'm presenting the audience with something to consider. Maybe they'll feel the same; betrayed, annoyed, even vengeful. But these moments aren't necessarily valuable in their own right. During my college writing classes, I studied the finer points of creating realistic and gripping conflict. Conflict is exciting and drives events onward when done correctly.
But it doesn't end there. Conflict traditionally exists in stories so it can be hopefully resolved at some point. In real life, constant conflict is unrealistic and exhausting. It also needs to be resolved to find closure in some capacity. Hundreds of stories start with ongoing and deafening conflicts that threaten to do nothing but destroy. And that's where the incentive to read comes in. We don't want to see that happen.
We don't want Helen of Troy to be the face that launched a thousand ships to their deaths, we don't want to see Captain America: Civil War end with the death of a cherished friend. We don't want Red Riding Hood or her sweet grandma to get eaten by the wolf. And that's my transition if you didn't catch it.
Red Riding Hood is the story of this post and I chose it because at it's heart, Red's story has always been about lurking danger and the perils of being exposed to the darker side of human nature. It's just under twenty-five pages long and I hope you guys enjoy my contemporary take on Red Riding Hood if she lived in a more familiar environment where things have been bad for a very, very long time.
Harrowed Hood
Alright, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed yourself or at least found something worth thinking about. If you didn't get around to reading it but are here anyways, don't worry, that link isn't going anywhere.
So let's play catch up for a second; we did a fair amount of role reversal for this piece. Rose Red is our main character and she's on her way to see grandma... in the middle of the night in an urban neighborhood. We have our big bad wolf in form of a local cop and before we fly off the handle; Brandon Wolfe as a character is meant to represent himself and only himself. But, on the other hand, we do have very real examples of what it's like when individuals with authority abuse their power. The implication is that there varying kinds of danger out there but our big, bad wolf isn't so bad when you get to know him.
In fact, he looks out for Red during the story and offers harsh advice to go back home and avoid danger. He warns of a malcontent woodsman who in many classic versions of the tale, ends up gutting the wolf to save Red Riding Hood. But in this festering timeline where things have gone on for too long, the Woodsman is tired of things never changing. He decides to take fate into his own hands and vent his frustration onto others.
And Granny isn't so sweet and innocent; she's a business woman with some work on the side. People keep secrets, start and end arguments, kill time so they don't die of boredom or anything else when things are at their worst. Sometimes it's a joke and sometimes it's not. The point is, this is a world where bad things happen and people deal with them. Rose Red wants to get out but is grasping at straws so she doesn't end up like everyone else. But sometimes you have to accept the bad if you ever want things to get good.
I'm not a fan of binary morality but understanding the bad of life helps you contextualize the good. Every negative experience I've ever had has helped me resolve new ones or helped me appreciate when something sincerely good happens. There's a saying I adopted, "real art comes from pain." Pain is real, pain is specific, it makes you want something good, makes you want to reexamine what it means to feel angry, or sad, or happy. If I didn't feel rage or yell once in a while, I wouldn't be able to laugh about it later.
And the same goes for our Rose Red. If she ever wants to know what or who is in that pendant, she has to accept that change is sometimes violent. That sometimes, in order to really understand who you are and where you come from, you have to look at the whole bloody and beat up pulp of a picture. Violence is part of our lives and while it isn't always pretty, it can help us channel a wider array of emotions and help us understand why we feel at all.
I hope you guys enjoyed this rather late blog post compared to the first ones but my fourth piece is nearly complete and deals with some coming of age concepts I wanted to play around with. It'll also be the first fairy tale I haven't adapted, it's something I dreamed up all by my lonesome but with a funny story I'll save for when we get there.
As always, thanks for dropping by and spending some time with a writer who felt like sharing! If you've got a favorite show, movie, video game, or book that you think tackles violence in way that makes you think, share in the comments below!
- Pygmalion
As always, a very interesting piece. But I didn't "Harrowed Hood" as violent as I thought it was going to be. Wolfe was more gruff than violent, even in his slamming of the chair in the lawn. But what I did enjoy about the violence is that it was written very simply, straight to the point. We see what's hapening even though it's not pretty.
ReplyDeleteI find this approach very similar to the approach to violence used in EE Knight's "The Age of Fire" series, particularly the first book, "Dragon Champion". The main character is a dragon with the intelligence of a human being, but slightly more instinctive. As Auron/AuRon, said dragon, literally and figuratively grows, he hunts and is hunted, and it gets pretty gory. Two scenes in particular include his taking of a human child, and the ripping in half of one of his would-be killers. Knight gives the audience the sounds and sights of Auron's kills, as well as the appropriate response from those being killed. What makes this "good" violence is that it helps to drive the story forward, and is reflective of Auron's desperation in those moments. Like in your highlighted piece, the violence is very simply told, described no more than it has to be. That's what makes it real.
And as you state, what's more compelling is the protagonist's drive to violence as well as the reaction to violence. While Auron has his quarrels with humans, he is not motivated by hate, though he doesn't forget their wrongs. His killing of the boy was almost completely impersonal, done because it was an opportunity for easy meat; ripping a man in half was done in order to run away from his other attackers. When AuRon does kill with an emotional investment, the violence feels completely different; there's nothing predatory (survival related)about it. The book provides a very interesting pairing of two intentionalities behind violence, but the violence itself is presented in the same way. It's a book, and series, that I highly recommend, friend Pygmalion.