Personal analysis of the cult obsession of depictions of blood, gore and violence, its potential origins and roots in 2010 internet culture.
Arlo Babenko, June 2024
[Hot Blood, 2024, Guache and Ink on Paper, 40.5x50cm]
Growing up on the internet with unrestricted internet access, I was part of a young demographic that discovered the unlimited horizon of media which portrayed violence, blood and gore. I believe it has shaped me as a person and still affects my views on aesthetics as well as media consumption. Reading Cynthia Freeland’s chapter titled, “Blood and beauty” from her book “But is it art?” made me think about the ever present violence in online media, which influenced the greater sphere of its aesthetics and my personal experience with the aesthetics of blood at an early age. In this essay, I will explore potential origins of gore and violence obsession in online media, and its aesthetic effects on my generation.
When referring to gore aesthetics, I am referring to images posted by social media users. While not being made or seen as art, these images are gathered under hashtags dedicated to these categories of evidence of violence on the body (@every-bruise-a-galaxy). These aesthetics influenced not only photography but also illustrative work to include these depictions.
One part of the evolving categorization under gore is the subgenre of juxtapositioning, something stereotypically perceived as cute and combining it with elements of horror, including body horror, making it also fall into the category that I am defining in this essay. A classic example is the animated series PONY.MOV. It was a series of 12 short animated videos posted onto YouTube, parodying the popular tv show My Little Pony Friendship is Magic (MLP). It pictured the main 6 characters of the show as mentally unstable, psychopathic, or deranged and carrying out unethical actions, not typical to its reference material. (Gilardi 2011) Being about 7 years old when this was released, I remember watching it and being unable to discern it from content meant for children. Afterall, it featured the familiar faces of cartoons that I would watch. When brought up in discussion with friends to see if anyone had a similar experience, one said that “They ruined my childhood”. This is one way of introducing blood in the media at a young age. I believe it's a gateway to attraction to gory aesthetics.
Being acquainted with this media one may ask, why would such major collections of images depicting bruises, bloodied knees, nosebleeds and children cartoons reimagined as psychotic, be gathered by such a wide range of users? Exposure to such violent content at a young age is not the cause of a community's descent into desensitization. It’s one of my anecdote examples of potential root causes of the trend. Although some may have never been exposed to this kind of content regularly, they may remember it from brief interactions. The psychological response of long standing remembrance of violence is something we are born with. Researchers found that “Long-term memories are influenced by the emotion experienced during learning as well as by the emotion experienced during memory retrieval.” (Buchanan). When comparing the recall of a neutral memory to a one with an emotional one, the latter one is more likely to be remembered. Applying this concept to consumption of media, emotionally charged media depicting violence, is more likely to be remembered, and more likely to be reproduced.
Whilst examining the potential scientific reason behind the attraction to gore, one may remember that Kant, also tried to find the scientific and objective reason behind aesthetics. The attraction to aesthetics of an injury fit into his description whilst contradicting it. Freeland states that Kant believed “that something beautiful has ‘purposiveness without a purpose’.” (Freeland, 11). A bruise or a nosebleed has no active purpose, but rather is the symptom of an action. It’s the aftermath of trauma inflicted to the body. It could be argued that neither serve a purpose when detaching it from its cause and creation. But some would argue that both are beautiful. The bruise may serve a purpose on the body through processes that we can only observe through its change in color, but to quote Freeland on the separation of usefulness and beauty in the object, the purpose of an injury, “is not why it is beautiful. Something about its array of colours and textures prompts my mental faculties to feel that the object is ‘right.’” (Freeland 12). In this case an injury is not beautiful because of its lack of perceived use, but is also found beautiful through its cause. This makes it follow Kant’s idea of aesthetics, whilst also contradicting it.
Combining both of my arguments for obsession over the aesthetics of injuries and violence on the internet, there is a potential new question to the attraction to this aesthetic. If you can’t forget the content you consume, do you start to find it beautiful? Potentially, yes, but I don't know for certain. I believe that there is a combination at play of the two elements, as well as attraction to the illustration of cause on the body by injuries being present. After all, it's proof you're alive, even if bleeding, and there is beauty in seeing those elements as beauty as well.
Works Cited
Buchanan, Tony W. “Retrieval of Emotional Memories.” 2008, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2265099/. Accessed 3 June 2024.
@every-bruise-a-galaxy. “Bruised knuckles and night skies for anon.” Tumblr, Every Bruise a Galaxy, 14 October 2022, https://www.tumblr.com/every-bruise-a-galaxy/698119006135238657/bloodyhands-butimnotdead-bruised-knuckles-and. Accessed 4 June 2024.
Freeland, Cynthia A. But is it Art? An Introduction to Art Theory. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed 6 June 2024.Gilardi, Max, creator. PONY.MOV. 2011. 2011. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94A83DC128CC6B4B. Accessed 5 June 2024.
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