Revenge is a Many-Splendored Thing

Happy violence, films, and mental health

Photo by Bryan Garces on Unsplash

Think about a terrible thing someone did to you (please avoid traumatic stuff if you can). Whatever it was, the pain remained within you for a long time and maybe even until right now. You wanted to retaliate somehow but never did. You are not a bad person; it is just that most of us want a perpetrator to suffer in some manner comparable to that suffering we endured.

Next, imagine that the bad guy in your head is someone you do not know. I mean, his or her identity is known, but you have never met them. Likewise, this person is distant from you in every way, and you cannot get close or talk to them.

Also, the bad guy mistreats you somehow every day of your life. This continues without any means to stop it. This would be terribly frustrating, no? Even the strong-willed might succumb to the darkest of thoughts and emotions fed by continuous personal assaults. One might become hate-filled.

This happens every day just as described. We do not think of acts of injustice and cruelty in the world as directed toward us, but they are. Almost. We are not involved in the latest shooting, terrorist act, or wartime atrocity, but these are all perversions of our humanity. Some things, no matter where or who, are violations of every human being.

Let’s talk about revenge, what it means to desire it, and how it impacts our mental health. This is not a trendy subject. We modern sophisticates are above revenge, and all our self-help literature dismisses it as wrong and futile.

These are good ideas, but humans are feeling creatures. We get hurt and we want to hurt back. In my opinion, the most noble, self-helping, progressive, well-adjusted human being must crave vengeance from time to time.

The kind of mistreatment that is up-close and aimed directly toward us is not the type that is most interesting. I believe we can feel things personally where we are not participants but witnesses via media stories. To call it collective outrage relegates our emotions to abstract notions that blunt what really occurs with newsworthy tragedies: we experience them personally as well as members of a group. To summarize, acts not involving us can feel like we were involved.

I am thinking about the murders in New Orleans a while back on Bourbon Street. That is just one of endless examples. School-shootings are so tragic, pointless, and frequent. In this story, I am especially referring to senseless violence committed against innocent people. It happens all the time.

We are conditioned to look away and move on. But we do not. Not entirely.

Piles of unavenged traumas begin to accumulate much like personal affronts that someone close keeps inflicting on us. Everyone has an “enough” that is enough. Sometimes stories tell us that the perpetrator was caught or killed, but that is not always satisfying.

Revenge is what is needed, although that impulse may not lead to anything except temporary displacement of those uncomfortable feelings. Or, maybe not? Is desiring revenge natural or unnatural?

Surely, someone will mention that justice is good and healthy for the victimized, but revenge is something we should avoid. Someone inevitably says that.

I think that revenge and justice sometimes overlap and are too commingled inside our complex minds that separating them can be impossible. Not always. Tragic unfairness again and again, over time, exacts a mental toll that has no obvious remedy.

Maybe that is what happened to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, when unspent rage at the state of the world led to multiple murders. Though, in that case, those abusers and traffickers had it coming, right?

I find myself turning to movies again in order to peel back a layer or two of this topic. Popular movies are good cultural reference points, because I have confidence that lots of folks out there have seen them. Plus, films reflect who we are at any given time.

This makes sense in my head, at least, because part of entertainment’s appeal is to offer vicarious situations and characters who give us relief from pent-up frustrations. Through film, we can release some of our unsatiated anger.

For the sake of this story, it matters here that I grew up in the 1980s. Hollywood produced a certain type of movie back then.

They were violent, but it was violence of a different character compared to today. I have noticed that we now demand realistic gore in our entertainment. When blood is shed it can be unsettling, because the camera does not allow us to look away.

Back in the 80s, violence was more cartoonish and “happy.” We could watch as a family while a person was bludgeoned to death. Films catered to our sensibilities, and the attractions on the big screen generally delivered gratifying endings. Thus, there are differences when we contrast eras.

I believe we can distinguish the main factor influencing entertainment in the decade of my youth: the Cold War. By the 80s, this conflict had passed through many permutations, back and forth insults, and indirect wars between the superpowers.

The Cold War was this ongoing dichotomy with each superpower supposedly representing the good guys or the bad guys. Your perspective depended on many things, but we can argue that the world was “simpler” in the sense of taking one side or the other. And the evil “Other” must be defeated.

So, violence was often approved of and applauded, because the powers of good assumed the responsibility to scold and perhaps kill those on the wrong side. I am using the word happy, because violence made people feel good without exploring any themes that were too realistic.

I believe happy violence was about revenge. It still is. Is this a problem?

More than any others, I am thinking back on Sly Stallone’s Rambo franchise and the films of action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, and Charles Bronson. Stallone won the Cold War twice, once in Rambo III and again in Rocky IV. He was the pumped-up instrument of rage who deleted communists and an assortment of other evil-doers.

The world has changed, and you already knew that. The binary us versus them dynamic no longer dominates our understanding of how the world works. Entertainment reflects that with more anti-heroes than those like Stallone.

When people hurt one another, it is messy. War is not a spiritual crusade or a contest about polar opposite ideals. Most people cannot be determined as “good” or “bad.” Entertainment overall depicts war as chaos. Does that make revenge less “happy” and clearcut?

Where does revenge go? How are we exorcising that demon? The mental health field evidently provides me with contradictory lessons.

Revenge necessarily has some role to play in our mental health. Since everything impacts how we feel, I must try to figure this out.

Professionals in the health field entreat us to process trauma and try to forgive others. We do this for our benefit more than theirs, because it hurts us when we stoke that fire within that keeps grudges and hate burning bright. Hate can destroy a person even when that feeling is justified.

Yet, these recommendations are easier said than done. No person is a robot programmed to be an automated forgiveness machine.

Should we try to abstain from the revenge fantasies that feel good? Mental health also taught me not to ignore emotions and thoughts. We cannot leave wounds un-mended. So, I still wonder if revenge is natural and proper (to imagine) or if it defies the prevailing consensus. I don’t know.

The Taken franchise is proof that revenge-as-entertainment is not dead. During a very challenging time in my life, I watched the first installment over and over. I can offer personal testimony that it worked as a balm to soothe that powerless feeling of being misused without any redress. There is no reason to get into details, but there was a contract dispute where I was right, the offending party was wrong, and there was nothing at all I could do about it.

The great film, No Country for Old Men, supplies a contemporary example more emblematic of how we think of violence. It is the opposite of Liam Neeson’s butt-kicking and name-taking. There are the people we root for, but the lines are blurred. The only wholly sympathetic character is Tommy Lee Jones’ sheriff who is old and overmatched.

Any viewer surely learns that violence is random, and justice is never guaranteed. That is part of the theme of the story, as Javier Bardem is a walking coin flip of death without logic or mercy. No Country has a famous non-ending, ending, where the camera abruptly goes to black just after the sheriff’s half-coherent dream dialogue.

Yet, the Coen brothers are making a point: the ending is not cathartic, just, or anything we want it to be. It just is, much like the grotesque death that visits our world without warning or justifiable purpose. And this is what we grow accustomed to—vileness without any meaning. Thus, revenge is also less straightforward even in our minds, and this is the key difference between films of my youth and those of recent years.

Perhaps Internet brawling, with keyboards as weapons, takes the place of acting out in-person revenge fantasies. Could it be argued that Internet buffoonery is the current method of releasing the violent want to even scores? Maybe you will tell me, dear reader.

A long time ago I heard people say, “do not fight,” or, “there are no winners in a fight,” but I never believed them. The authority figures who spoke in these terms were not sincere. This might be an overstatement, but it feels accurate: most people believed fighting, but especially revenge, was just fine as long as the bad guy received retribution.

And now? I believe happy revenge is not nearly as prominent. Real life has intruded into our bloody fantasies. Victims have more of a voice and talk about real experiences, and true crime is one of our favorite things.

Some people I know have turned off the news altogether. I hear a repeated refrain that the news is too depressing.

To me, this is a form of coping with this unfair world where we can’t help but notice that the good guys are not winning. As for my many questions, I do not have firm answers. However, I lean toward thinking that revenge is much more natural than we want to believe.

It is that part of our existence that we wish to sweep under the rug. I am not saying that revenge is a good thing, but I do believe conscientious people cannot escape the lingering thoughts of wanting to punish those who we revile.

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