Grace Heriegel

–

Violence has vastly differed within the last few decades, from looking at Agatha Christie’s cosy and close-knit crime novels all the way to graphic scenes in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. Why is this, we wonder, that explicit and bloody scenes have become the norm over comfort in a world already overrun by brutality?

To take it back a couple years, Agatha Christie is the epitome of cosy crimes, creating worlds where the criminal couldn’t be anybody but the person who was there all along. It’s meant to be comforting, in an inter-war period where we just needed a break from the violence of war.

But now we crave horror and intensity. Saltburn is just one from the myriad of examples I could name. In a time of war, pain and suffering we crave something that’s disturbing but oddly reassuring.

Even down to video games, stepping away from simple Mario Kart and Sims towards shooting games such as Fortnite and Valorant. Conditioning young minds to find this ‘normal’ could be the basis of our problem.

Perhaps, as a society, the suffering we endure is so great that we cannot be comforted. Looking for something to keep us company whilst we warm by the fire and sip our tea doesn’t cut it anymore. The only way to cope is to make it normal, to have everything we absorb in the media to match what is happening outside.