When Exactly is Violence “Gratuitous”?
Just a day after it was released earlier this week, the unnervingly violent anti-genocide music video, “Born Free,” was reportedly deleted by YouTube. Actually, as Wired has confirmed, it was only “buried” to make it much harder to find. But the video was simply posted on Vimeo and other sites, and the outrage over the “censorship” caused a viral response, such that the hit rate over the last few days has meant a version of it is again nearing the top of search lists on YouTube. In effect, the Internet has “routed around” this problem.
The rationale for burying the video in the first place was that it violated YouTube’s standards against gratuitous violence. Did it? Judge for yourself – but only click if you’re willing to be disturbed:
Bourne from Jason Wilson on Vimeo.
It’s violent, to be sure. But does YouTube’s gratuitous violence policy apply to portrayals in film or only to actual violence against actual persons? (Not sure by the look of their Community Guidelines.)
But more broadly, this begs the question of what “gratuitous” actually means and what reasonable standards might be applied in such a case. Is it “gratuitous” to portray the horror of political violence as part of a critique of such violence? I have never thought so; comfortingly shielding ourselves from images of violence is in fact one of the things that leads to an acceptance of or denial of violence. In fact, considering the other kind of clips from R-rated films you can find on YouTube, my guess is it’s the political message of the video that YouTube – and many people – actually find uncomfortable.
However what constitutes “gratuitousness” is, I suspect, an “I know it when I see it” sort of question, so I’ll pass the buck to readers.
It is more or less irrelevant what I think, their community has clearly spoken. They find the idea that a video can be buried against their collective will more disturbing than whatever was in that video. You Tube clearly made a bad call, or this wouldn’t be the kerfluffle it is.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve played so many violent video games and watched so many violent movies/tv shows (HBO’s, “The Pacific”, being the most recent), but I did not find very much of that video
“disturbing”. The only part I really had a problem with on an emotional response level was the part toward the end where the government agent shot the red-headed kid in the head.
While the part where they blew up the kid at the end was probably realistic (having never seen that, I wouldn’t know), I did find it disturbing. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was gratuitous. It did not elicit the kind of emotional response that the prior shooting did – evidence that it was poorly done. In that sense, I would say that the kid exploding was “gratuitous”, but shooting the other kid was not.
Perhaps their view of violence is that Hollywood depictions of violence where no-one is actually hurt is never as bad as videos where a real person is seriously injured?
Of course, there’s probably enough videos of gun accidents, skateboard crashes, and “death by misadventure” to make that standard hypocritical as well.
Yes, that sonic assault was gratuitously violent to my ears. The images were merely compelling.
it doesn’t seem gratuitous to me since the violence was the point, I guess. (And I’ve seen much worse violence in all types of Hollywood movies). But what was the point of this? I couldnt understand the lyrics but the movie seemed to show jack-booted american troops beating up fat, naked people, then rounding up red haired teenagers, shooting the cutest one and then blowing up the rest when they tried to run away. What is the political message -that all American troops are blood thirsty killers or is this somehow symbolic or representative of what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan (if so, is this a particularly apt analogy?) or something else? I don’t get the message.
Seriously? The video was released the same week that AZ decides that a specific ethnic minority is to get special police treatment and you don’t get the political message.
The Red insurgents were wearing keffiyahs which makes them objectively pro-Dunkin Donuts.
If you don’t buy this blog we’ll shoot this dog.
Yeah, I guess I don’t see it as particularly gratuitous, particularly in light of what Hollywood not only promotes, but has promoted for decades (guy getting liquefied on car windshield in Robocop, anybody?). Why are people so outraged? Is it because of the whole “think of the children” bit? The whole “born free” motif on top of images of a police state makes it pretty clear that this is a charged political message not for children; employing Romain Gavras (Costa-Gavras’s son) just reinforces that. Quite frankly, it’s a silly thing to get so upset about in the face of much more sadistically violent material out there (torture-porn, etc.). Still, M.I.A. must love what it will do to the sales of the album.
On a much lighter note, anything that gets kids these days to perhaps listen for the first time to Suicide’s first album is OK by me.
And I’d add that, given her family’s ties to the Tamil Tigers and the way in which Sri Lanka pretty brutally ended the war recently, I think her point about police states brutally going after minorities doesn’t just make the song topical, but personal and germane to her own life. Some may not agree with the politics, but it’s hard to deny that it’s relevant to her and her life.
“Ghost Rider” is so great, Mr. Trend. (As you said, M.I.A.’s father was a Tamil militant, although I don’t believe he was a member of the Tamil Tigers per se.)
anything that gets kids these days to perhaps listen for the first time to Suicide’s first album is OK by me.
You hate kids these days, huh?
There are at any given time hundreds of videos consisting of nothing but compilations of motorcycle crashes set to heavy metal music. How is that not gratuitous violence?
I am much more disturbed by the misuse of “begs the question.”
The video is fine.
The youtube issues aside…. I didn’t find the gun-to-the-head or flying body parts particularly upsetting (and I can be squeamish and turn my head at “well-crafted” violence — the knife-to-the-nose in Chinatown, for instance). I found the violence, and the whole video, pretty wooden and rather heavy-handed — but somewhat effective for all that, since it did bring home the existential arbitrariness of many of our objects of hatred (said the white lady with a red-haired son). What was truly disturbing about the video for me was its utter dehumanization of the men (all were men, as I remember) perpetrating the violence — without its making a statement about how their actions were dehumanizing them, either. These vicious men felt like the evil extras working for Goldfinger — should they die, who cares, they’re not “real.” Now, I do think it’s very important to appreciate how coldly evil the people enacting violence against oppressed groups seem to those who are oppressed, and the video conveys that well. And I can’t stand it when critics insists that every work is responsible for at least gesturing toward “redemption.” But, but. This video seems actively to foreclose any possibility that, outside and beyond the experience of the oppressed at the height of their oppression, the oppressors are, in fact, human beings, too. In other words, the video merely reinscribes the very dynamic it claims to expose and oppose.
Just realized that this video’s violence isn’t gratuitous enough — no extra, no remainder that might start something new (unless the anger, bound to persist, from the dark-not-red-haired people whose lives are upset by the searches for red-heads at the video’s beginning, is “gratuitous”).
Private sites like YouTube have vague policies like this precisely to be able to act arbitrarily. The point is to understand that they don’t even have to have such policies in the first place — or follow them. It just makes their users happier, which for the most part suits their interests. but when other interests supersede, the policies go out the window (entirely legally), or their vagueness is exploited. This is entirely legal. Moreover, the motive is likely mercenary, not political. So it means nothing to YouTube that the video gained greater exposure as a result of their demoting it — they could care less about that, as long as the demotion (or banning, if that is what it had been) satisfied the influential interest who prevailed upon them to do it.
The last MIA concert I attended it was kinda tragic. Miss-Refugee-Tamil-Tiger-Daughter spent 20 minutes yelling about how she hasn’t sold out despite winning a Grammy, with her DJ was spinning her signature heavy electrodrum beats in the background. Meanwhile, her husband, the son of a NBC Universal VP was by the bar.
it’s not gratuitous, it’s just not very good.
I guess I’m not finding Google’s standards all that confusing.
Sexual Content:
Children:
Violence:
I realize it’s the “new thing” for music videos to have envelope-pushing videos that are made for the web, because they can’t be aired on broadcast television, but YouTube seems to be making it pretty clear that they’re not very interested in being the medium of choice for envelope-pushing.