Walking Dead, and a Little Treatise on Gratuitous Gore
The trend towards gore (not AL) has bothered me for a while. The trend of film and TV being overly violent and extremely graphic--by which I mean showing shattering body parts, gooey splatters, and audible evisceration. Apart from the general, "I don't like/need that," I've not been able to pull together at an artistic level what about such content bothers me.
Sunday night I watched the much-hyped pilot episode of AMC's new series The Walking Dead, based on the comic book by Robert Kirkman, directed by Frank Darabont. Within three minutes I realized it was going to be one of those. It's artfully shot, well acted, well directed, edited creatively. It had promise. But the gore ruined it for me, and here's why: it breaks my wall.
As a writer, I'm a stickler for keeping a reader engaged, and I want my visual media as intense. As much as I want to forget that I'm reading a book, I want to become a character in the show. I want to believe all of it. The momentum driving the delicate crafting of perfect lighting, tone, movement, angle, timing, words, all working in tandem to set the mood... should carry itself, not only to bring me in, but keep me in. When a creepy scene ekes from the shadows, when suspense has me taut, I want to stay with it. Keep me in the context and allow me the shock, thus, the catharsis of the characters, and I stay interested in the show. As soon as the sensual shifts to gore, I am lost in repulsion. The fourth wall is psychologically violated and I'm thrown out of the context. Once I'm out, I have little to invest in getting back in.
Regarding Dead, Darabon's skill in creating exquisitely provocative tension is spot-on. Falling back on the cultural trend toward graphic violence shows his inability to be evocative. I'm disappointed in his emphasis on shock value, the inability to stand out from this daily diet of gross-fest reality TV and trust my imagination at the pull of a trigger or peek out a veiled window to fill in the horror he has carefully drawn me into.
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