I Fasted From Watching Violence for 12 Years

Vicarious violence is a huge part of my life. From an early age, I knew people were capable of violence—especially towards queer people and other minority groups (though growing up I didn’t have the vocabulary for that, it was still very apparent). Perhaps it was a way to protect myself in anticipation of violence or perhaps it was me struggling to find my own way in life, but I was drawn to watching violence from my earliest memories.

My tiny 5-year-old mind reveled in the environmental justice of dinosaurs eating people who were trying to control nature in Jurassic Park. I became obsessed with black and white monster movies when I found out I could check them out from the Library as a 12-year-old. When I entered high school, nothing could stop me from exploring the plethora of horror movies that were out there.

Then, The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins came out as I was in college (not the forgettable movies, rather, the book series). I have never been so spell-bound by a a few books. I bought the audio books so that I could listen to them end-to-end and immediately start over after finishing as though it were one continuous loop. There was something in there that both connected with me and frightened me.

At first, I related exclusively to the protagonist, Katniss, who volunteers for the Hunger Games in order to take the place of her younger sister who had been randomly chosen to participate. The series follows Katniss and her struggle for survival while she and other "tributes” from across their country get thrown into the Games that require all of these children to kill each other until there is only one survivor.

I wanted to be Katniss—someone who would stand up to save their family and beat all the odds to survive and conquer. I longed for the skills and the training, the hardship and the suffering, because it would be physical—not the mental and emotional anguish that I had been dealing with alone my whole life. The violence had an appeal because it was visible and it had the illusion of clarity: winners and losers.

In honesty, however, I saw myself in the Capitol—the people of wealth and privilege who led silly lives and happened to be on the right side of power when this dystopian world was reconstructed. The Capitol was responsible for creating the Hunger Games, pitting the youth of the Districts against each other and making it a spectacle, as if watching children rip each other apart in desperation were a sporting event.

It is possible to read The Hunger Games series and both hate and empathize with the people in the Capitol. It's a kind of cognitive dissonance that is easily dismissed as we pretend that we, too, are different than those people—we're on the side of the oppressed Districts and Katniss, our hero.

But we, like they, are more accustomed to viewing violence as entertainment than may be apparent. Our technology has escalated not just the access to violent media, but the realism in its depiction—and of course you could argue that our technology has even made real-world warfare even more callous and impersonal.

The Fast

At one point just before my last semester of college, I was watching a gruesome murder scene in a horror movie in the middle of the day. I felt gross. My years-long plan to desensitize myself had been failing and this was my breaking point. I turned off the movie.

A few days later, in a courageous act that I'm still impressed by (since my view of myself in my twenties is abysmally low), I committed to never watching a movie or TV series that “glorified violence” again. This decision led to a lot of losses that I didn't anticipate, but it also brought a stabilizing clarity to my mental state; a much-needed reset.

It wasn't until after I started this “fast”—the absence of these violent movies—that I realized how ubiquitous violence is. Since my commitment was ambiguously worded, I opted out of anything that could have violence in it, not just horror movies or violence-based action movies. That meant that going to the movie theater with friends was rarely an option for me. That meant that late-night binge watching with roommates was off the table. It also meant that I was completely unable to participate in the vast majority of small-talk conversations with coworkers and others. “What movies have you seen lately?” or “Did you catch the ending of <insert any popular show here>?” all had to be answered with lies like, “I'm way behind on my Marvel movies...” or “I just don't have any free time for shows.”

There are so many stories that have even a shred of “glorified violence” in them, that I ended up making it ok to close my eyes during a part where a few punches were thrown in an otherwise docile movie. I learned to anticipate the signs that such a scene was coming. A part of me wants to praise this awareness as though it were training for the real world—if I can spot the signs that violence is about to occur in a movie, maybe I can rely on that in “the street.” I am still so hyper-vigilant in expecting violence that even removing the scenes didn't keep me from considering it. It felt like there was a paradoxical hole in my life.

Twelve years after starting my fast, I decided that my commitment had finally served its purpose and that I needed to let it go. It was very difficult for me to end something that I had faithfully observed for so long. It was literally life-altering to start, and it would be the same to end. However, as I said, it was a means to clarity.

No longer are violent scenes used as a numbing device for myself. I don't watch the violence for violence's sake. I am so much more aware of how the violence is used in the story; how it impacts me; and how it plays an important role—as awful as that sounds.

The Capitol

Back in The Hunger Games, we see a culture of the Capitol built on watching violence. The people are so desensitized that they use the Games as a time for extravagant parties and gambling on the lives of participants. Katniss bemoans the wastefulness of these people, as they indulge in so much food, purge, and then go back to eat more, all while the Districts in the country are often scraping by for their meals—the point of the hunger games being that the winner doesn't have to go hungry anymore.

The combination of the Capitol's approach to food hoarding and culture of violence-as-spectacle is revealing, at least to me, of a desperately injured people seeking to numb their own pain. That is where I see myself in them. That's where I see people in countries like mine, tearing apart democracy and assaulting the vulnerable. It's not an excuse, but it is context.

I turned on violence when I felt threatened. I wanted to see others being punished for clearly evil acts—or just to see my own psychological pain manifested into physical pain when it was depictions of violence against the innocent. I wanted to prove to myself (and to others to whom I'd brag about what I had been able to stomach) that I was strong and capable, not weak and vulnerable.

In both cowardice and woundedness, I looked to violence to protect me, but it never did. It was an emptying system that subtracted from me until I could no longer bear it—and it took the entire twelve years to recover from the emptiness.

The Hole

I mentioned that there was something missing, almost as though the absence of seeing violence took away more than just the scenes. Why else would I feel that the fast had achieved its purpose? I had started it with the expectation that I would die before I saw another movie with that content.

I think it's easy to say why violence is bad, and why watching violence for entertainment is “not good,” (it's my experience that when people are confronted with their choice in watching violence that it becomes uncomfortable, so instead of a hard “yes, it's also bad to watch,” I hear a “well, it's not real” kind of rationalization).

There are interesting studies that explore how violent media impacts our behavior or our attitudes towards violence or victims of violence. I was not, however, able to find any research that suggested it could benefit us. Most “benefits” were more related to violent video games—but for the benefits of gaming, rather than the violence itself, such as hand-eye coordination or social activity. Doesn't mean it's not out there, but if it is, it's certainly not easily discoverable.

In the absence of science to explain my feelings, I have to lean on my experience to explain how I've seen the role of watching violence help me as a human, even if I am morally opposed to violence.

The stark contrast of going from no violence, to watching The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was shocking. I wasn't disgusted, nor injured, nor offended. I was amazed. I could choose how I experienced the war scenes or the heart-wrenching death scenes of close characters. I could empathize and feel the story with more depth. There was no craze of binge-watching violence, there was no increase in my aggression or stress. Instead, I have reflected on my humanity and my mortality in new ways that I couldn't have a few years ago.

It's not fun to say that violence plays a role in our lives—I would prefer it to play a part in entertainment only, if it were possible. But the world is a violent one, from nature to human geopolitics to interpersonal interactions. We harm and are harmed, and there is no way to be perfectly safe always. Pretending it is not that way is a form of violence. Even the youngest of children enact violence on each other through exclusion, bullying, accidents, and attempting to control their bodies.

What I learned from my fast is that I can be intentional and thoughtful. I can approach violence to learn about myself and the world around me. I can use it to remember the lessons that other generations had to learn by actually experiencing it (cough cough, fascist U.S. politics). I can sit with the pain that my humanity is both the good and the bad; the constructive and the destructive; and all of the ambiguous stuff in between. I can also develop the awareness to recognize when it's too much.