Art has a long, well-documented, and complicated relationship with violence. Most genres of visual media use some form of physical force, whether it’s catharsis, plot device, or punchline. Unfortunately, that relationship is complicated even more by things like content ratings and squeamishness. It would be tough to dispense with the blows, blades, and bullets. It’s much easier to depict all that carnage without the bloodshed.
There are a truly stunning number of ways to depict violence without showing the parts that gross people out. A skilled editor can turn a comedic scene horrific ora scary scene hilariouswith the right cuts and cues. This essentially allows filmmakers today to choose their level of on-screen brutality at any point in the production process.
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Bloodless Carnage describes acts of violence displayed on the screen with either very little or no blood to be seen. Characters suffer terribleinjuries or die violently, but they simply don’t bleed. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this feat. The camera could simply pan away from the event as it happens. The body could exclusively be framed in ways that hide the injury. Or, most unsettlingly, the injuries could simply occur as normal without the resulting blood. The worst cases of Bloodless Carnage are disconcerting. It can make the victims look like robots when they react naturally to the force of a bullet without suffering the typical biological after-effects. In real life, internal injuries can be fatal without ever causing visible bleeding and some stab wounds can be plugged by the weapon that caused them, but most injuries still cause blood to spill. On-screen examples can be extremely visceral without a single red stain left behind.
This trope is fairly common in the modern day, but it used to be almost universal. The Hays Code andthe period immediately beforeand after its introduction were rife with shootings that mysteriously didn’t cause bleeding. The code specifically restricts “brutal killings,” without much explanation as to what that might entail. John Huston’s seminal 1941 noir classicThe Maltese Falconrevolves around the murder of a private investigator. Said killing occurs in full view of the audience. Miles Archer is shot in the abdomen in a first-person view, then he tumbles down a large hill and dies. It’s sudden and immediately haunting, but no blood escapes his wound and the film never revisits his body. No matter how many men are gunned downin the gangster moviesor detective dramas of the era, blood very rarely appeared.
Christopher Nolan’sThe Dark Knightis a near-perfect example of the Bloodless Carnage trope. Throughout the 152-minute running time of the film, more than sixty people die. Dozens are shot or stabbed in brutal action scenes. The Joker puts a pencil through a man’s eye, carves a Glasgow smile into another, and kills another with a surgically implanted cell phone bomb. Almost everyone agrees that Heath Ledger’s Joker is one of the most frightening movie villains of all time. It’s a genuinely horrific film in several scenes, so much so that several films rated it 16+ or higher. There are single shots of the originalFriday the 13ththat contain more blood and gore than the entiretyofThe Dark Knight. Aside from the disaster made of Harvey Dent’s face, almost all the violence occurs without blood and gore. The lack of blood doesn’t detract from the film’s impact, but it is a bit odd when a man’s slashed cheek splits without the geyser of viscera that would likely follow in reality.
The Star Wars franchise has one of the most interesting relationships with this trope in the world of cinema. Today, most filmmakers make cutsto avoid an R-Rating, but whenA New Hopepremiered, a G-Rating was even more unwanted. This led to an ongoing back and forth among the fans and the films. Do lightsabers and blasters instantly cauterize the wounds they cause? They didn’t in their first use when Obi-Wan used his laser blade to slice off a man’s arm. When Luke later got his arm removed by the same method, no blood was visible. Years later, when the unfortunate trooper next to Finn inThe Force Awakenstook a bolt to the chest,Finn’s helmet was markedwith his blood. Lasers only seem to cause bleeding when it’s convenient, leading to some gruesome injuries without gore.
Bloodless Carnage can be extremely strange in practice, but it does demonstrate how arbitrary our restrictions on violence are. If a character can torture and kill with impunity, so long as the film doesn’t show the actual aftermath of those events, what’s the point of the rule? Blood isn’t what makes on-screen violence unpleasant, but the absence of blood can make it look weird. It’s time for aparody film to really push the limit, and see how much gruesome violence one can get away with, so long as their carnage stays bloodless.
