Yet Untitled 101 - The Crucial Element
Musings triggered by TV violence
Dearest Yet Untitler,
Hello from the other side of 💯. Let’s see where we go from here.
I’ve been in a bit of a flu delirium this week, so likely this will be brief. My brain hasn’t been very focused and I’ve been doing what I usually do when in such states - catching up on passive entertainment via the Netflix-verse.
Almost everything I’ve been watching, though, has been dripping with blood.
About violence in film and TV - I’m not averse to it, but I’m supremely wary of it. I do not like to see it glorified but I accept that it has a place in our world - as a crucial element required when representing our world truthfully.
There’s violence everywhere. In the new Netflix mini-series ‘Ripley’ that I’ve been watching, the languorous climes of the Mediterranean are replete with blood that looks pitch-black in the show’s consciously chosen b/w treatment.
In ‘Gangs of London’ the lack of colour doesn’t give us any remove from the visceral mayhem of violent organised crime heightened to an unprecedented degree. In the word of the show’s creators on this podcast, they call it “the most dangerous show on television”.
However, I must admit that I was not able to stop watching either of these shows. This prompted the present reflection, making me think about two things - what drew me to both these very violent cinematic properties, and what are my responsibilities as a writer when it comes to writing violence?
Takes one to know one
Many of you know that apart from being the gentle writer of this here our Yet Unitiled, I was also a co-writer on an extremely violent TV show.
I ponder our age’s obsession with violence, feeling that it’s an important question to consider. I grate against violence because I refuse to see it as the only interpretation of our world; but it often feels like the loudest voice in the room, perhaps making it the lens of choice when looking at our times. Violence was a heavily used currency in Sacred Games. The book itself leaves you with nightmares, so you can imagine what a proper visual realisation may do.
Ever since I was chosen to write for Sacred Games S01, I have grappled with my reluctance to write violence. I grate against it, but I wrote some pretty bloody scenes in my episodes of Sacred Games - and clearly I did it well because the show went on to be very successful.
My survival mechanism while writing Sacred Games was: to be on the lookout for what other than violence lay in its murky world. After a while, once I’d adjusted to its darkness, I found there was a lot more in there: genuine, relatable relationships, sincere heroism and deep socio-political insight. I soon became pretty sure that was no way that this story could have been told without addressing the violence inherent in it.
While I would like to say that I tried my best to be measured as I wrote, not giving the violence more than its due; I have no memories of this. I do remember that a part of me kept grating against what I was writing and at some point, I don’t know when, I must have made a clear choice - to stop trying to mitigate the show’s violence and focus on other things. I do remember consciously choosing to amplify everything else I thought of value around the violence. This not only kept me sane, but showed me that - just as when you go looking and find violence everywhere, you’ll also find the good stuff everywhere when you go looking.
Buddhism affirms this in the concept of The Ten Worlds that you can read about here. Check it out, it’s pretty mind-blowing, going all the way to proclaim that it’s not just good to be found in the bad and bad to be found in the good; it’s that everything can be found in every aspect of everything.
Rooting for people who do bad things
All the shows I’ve referenced above are about really dangerous people - killers, hit men, crime lords. Despite seeing them do some really horrible things, the narratives manage to have us so invested in the stories of Ripley (‘Ripley’), the Finn Family (‘Gangs of London’) and Ganesh Gaitonde (‘Sacred Games’), that we, absurdly, want them to win; at least to survive.
They love. They care. They protect. They hurt.
They’re relatable.
The more difficult thing
Clearly, this trope of rooting for the dastardly antagonist has had a good run in the time of peak TV. But it’s been around for longer. I remember studying Milton’s Paradise Lost in college in which Satan, cast out of heaven, gives a rousing speech to his fallen host in hell. It was difficult not to feel sorry for him, like him even!
I think it’s reasonable to say that we tell and explore stories for a clearer understanding of humanity (writing this sentence makes me recollect Jonathan Pryce’s character in Netflix’s recent Three Body Problem reading ‘Red Riding Hood’ to an alien race in order to teach them about who we are). In telling stories of violence, perhaps we are continuing this enterprise, albeit in a time when violence is all-pervasive, where stories cannot help but reflect the times.
What else could stories reflect apart from the times? I have a special place for stories that reflect my confidence in humanity’s potential for change. In times where so much tends to veer towards the wrong, the destructive and the unsustainable, I cling tightly to anything that can suggest otherwise.
So, I found myself thinking about stories that deal with transformation, especially characters who change from violent practices to peaceful ones. I think it’s difficult to convincingly tell stories about people undergoing fundamental changes, but when someone pulls them off well, I find them immensely satisfying. Two films that come to mind here are ‘American History X’ and ‘District 9’.
In ‘American History X’, a Neo-Nazi youth is sent to jail for voluntary manslaughter but ends up being rehabilitated in prison via the kindness of someone he meets there; after which he has to fight to prevent his younger brother from being indoctrinated in the Neo-Nazi way.
In ‘District 9’, set in a alternate-reality Johannesburg where marooned aliens have been imprisoned in refugee camps, a cruel and inhumane government servant who specialises in harassing the refugee aliens undergoes a dramatic transformation when contact with an alien substance transforms him into an alien himself, turning him into a refugee.
Both are violent films, but I find that they’re more than just mirrors of the times that they were conceived in. In the dramatic human transformations they depict - where the protagonists end up rewriting their very source code - they suggest to me that we, we and the world - can all undergo fundamental change given the right triggers.
I‘ll stop here, dearest Yet Untitler. These are just fever-fueled musings triggered by blood on the screen. Take what you’d like from them, even if it’s couple of recommendations for some good TV.
A question. What are your favourite stories of transformation in film, TV or literature?
Tell me. I’d love to know!
Thanks for listening.
Lots of love
V