STUDENT VOICES | HONORABLE MENTION for the 2023 CHYNN ETHICS paper prize
Nonviolent Creativity
by Anna Nowalk, Fordham College Lincoln Center ’23
Lately, I’ve been troubled by the narrative power of violence. Killing a character is an easy way to make the audience feel something. The stakes in a scene skyrocket when a gun is in a character’s hand. Bloodshed onscreen – as desensitized as we are to it – is attention-grabbing, exciting, even. Violence is a frustratingly effective storytelling tool. However, it can’t be the only way to impact us. In this essay, I discuss the potential issues of violence in art and contemplate nonviolent creativity as a means of countering a reliance on it for narrative impact.
“Art imitates life” is an oft-repeated phrase. Writers may be told to “write what you know” and to try to develop work that’s authentic to them. If one’s lived experience has involved violence, then it makes sense that this would manifest in their art as well. However, real-life violence carries more weight than often comes across onscreen. The very existence of the “action movie” genre suggests that we’re happy to witness the use of choreographed physical force; in fact, we’ll go to the theater to be entertained by it. These movies don’t necessarily comment on the means with which their heroes accomplish their goals.
Psychological research demonstrates the potential danger of saturating our media with these images. Some studies have found that exposure to violence in media in children was potentially linked to “higher levels of aggressive behavior” later in life.[1] If we justify violence on screen because it reflects the state of the world – a world, perhaps, that continuously exhibits the symptoms of original sin, if one interprets it theologically – but seeing it in media sparks nonfictional iterations, we risk finding ourselves trapped in a loop where the stories we tell perpetuate the real-life issue they depict. In “The Decay of Lying,” Oscar Wilde mentioned that the adage that “art imitates life” can be reversed.[2]
I don’t want to say that violence should never be portrayed in art. As I said before, some people who have witnessed or experienced this brutality may see it as an honest part of their creation. Featuring violence in a story can actually serve as a powerful message against it. Furthermore, bearing in mind the amount of brutality featured in the Bible, as well as the importance of the stories of martyrs in Catholic tradition, I don’t want to issue a sweeping condemnation of the use of violence in narrative as a means of reaching people. As such, I’d like to take an approach based in positive morality, imagining what a better world could look like, rather than focusing on what we shouldn’t be doing. This prevents me from taking an unnecessarily strong moral stance and withstands the potential refutation of hypotheses about onscreen violence being connected to violence in real life.
My proposal is nonviolent creativity, which, in this essay, will refer to the choice to avoid using violence within a plot. This would push artists to creatively raise the stakes without resorting to fictional use of physical force. Notably, this is distinct from conflict. In a world without violence, people would still presumably have different values and goals; what’s important is that they do not resort to inflicting bodily harm as a means to deal with them. Similarly, though conflict plays an important role in stories, its resolution needn’t involve fighting. This is not to say that artists should approach their projects intending to preach nonviolence through their work, but rather that they should creatively use nonviolent means of developing the plot.
The quote, “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict — alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence” has been attributed to Dorothy Thompson.[3] Whether or not she in fact said that – quote attribution can get muddy – these words make a point: nonviolence is a creative venture. It is a moral stance and strategy that automatically removes a potentially effective means of pursuing a goal. In the realm of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim discusses how nice it is to listen to clean, perfect rhymes over near rhymes.[4] Though it is more restrictive, it can allow for an impressive display of skill. Acting within a nonviolent framework forms boundaries within which practitioners must creatively work to advance their aims. “Requiring” violence to make a point could be seen as a failure of the imagination, both in art and in life; avoiding it within a narrative would push artists to innovate. If a character is in an escalating argument at a bar, having them punch their opponent is an exciting but rather uncreative way of escalating it further. Taking that option away requires the writer to make more interesting decisions.
If the aforementioned psychological findings are true, this could create less real-life violence in the world; if not, then it will at least create fewer fictional depictions. In that process, the approach could have the power to shape artists. As creatives work through plot obstacles without resorting to bodily injury, they’ll both grow creatively and practice imagining nonviolent solutions, which could make it easier for them to enact such remedies in their nonfictional relationships.
There’s an additional creative element to this approach in that, more than using art as a reflection of the world, this posture allows art to imagine what a better world might look like. In her essay “Can Peace Be Imagined?” Elise Boulding draws on the work of Fred Polak to lament the lack of imagination in today’s culture. She writes, “the absence of aspiration for the society as a whole, for the planet as a whole, condemns humanity to a sorry performance in terms of human welfare.”[5] At another point, she discusses the powerful, positive responses that people had upon envisioning a world without arms, even though a solid picture was difficult to form. Participants considered new possibilities and felt renewed in their work towards peace.[6] To avoid artistically using violence, one may have to create a utopia of sorts. A screenwriter drafting a script who – whether because of artistic pacifism or a creative challenge – is eliminating violence from the plot may wonder what type of world would allow for such a story. This creator might be pushed to take on the task of imagining a utopia without it. In addition to the writer potentially being transformed, this utopia could then be shared with – and serve as an inspiration for – an audience.
Since learning about restorative justice a couple years ago, I’ve been considering the ways that creativity can serve as a jumping off point for a more ethical society. Art gives creativity a place to take a tentative shape, and that concreteness empowers it to shape the minds of audiences. Whether or not violence in media negatively impacts the world, nonviolent creativity could positively impact both the creatives who develop these works and the audiences who engage with them. Nonviolent creativity could make real peace a more likely possibility.
For more information about the prize, past winners, and submission requirements for 2024, please visit the Chynn Ethics Paper Prize webpage. The deadline to submit is Friday, March 15th, 2024 and is open to ALL undergraduates.
Works Cited
[1]. “Violence in the media: Psychologists study potential harmful effects,” American Psychological Association, 2013, https://www.apa.org/topics/video-games/violence-harmful-effects.
[2]. Oscar Wilde, Intentions: The Works of Oscar Wilde, (Boston: The C.T. Brainard Publishing Co., 1909), 38, retrieved from https://www.google.com/books/edition/Intentions/6EteA972Gp8C?hl=en&gbpv=1.
[3]. “Dorothy Thompson Quotes,” Goodreads, accessed 20 December 2022, https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/75103.Dorothy_Thompson.
[4]. Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudes, Whines and Anecdotes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), xxvii.
[5]. Elise Boulding, “Can Peace Be Imagined?” in A Peace Reader – Revised Edition: Essential Readings on War, Justice, Non-Violence and World Order, ed. Joseph Fahey and Richard Armstrong, (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 380.
[6]. Boulding, “Can Peace Be Imagined?”, 382.
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