IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 134

Sunanda Kar

Tripura University

Bangaluru, India

sunandakar94@gmail.com

Bishal Sinha

Tripura University

Bangaluru, India

bishal.sinha456@gmail.com

The Binaries of Audio-Visual Violence: Depiction of Violence from The Angles Of Urban

And Rural Screenings.

Abstract: The particular shades of daily life, which, perhaps we fail to acknowledge either due

to ignorance, or we are made to ignore by subtle institutions, art takes them up in a different

canvas, where we play the role of the audience, receiving them, criticising them or

acknowledging them, sometimes directly or with a willing suspicion of disbelief. Violence

might not find a place in our daily application, however, it never failed to attract a positive

audience reception in the artistic canvas, be it film or painting. The Hungry by Bornila

Chatterjee, opens in a setting which is dwelt upon by a group of posh, polished and corporate

personalities who intend towards a wedding, which too is backed up by a tertiary relationship,

not to bring out the emotional side of the human psyche, rather to lubricate business runs of

two families which share a common company. According to a Ted talk by Eddy Von Mueller

on ‘the technology and the new aesthetics of violence’, that is where we can compile the whole

of the aesthetics of violence that Anurag Kashyap grips perfectly and dexterously. In contrast
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 135

to the raw nature of GoW, Bornila Chatterjee’s ‘The Hungry’ is a beautiful representation of

refined violence or we can say it sums up both the polished and rustic nature of the violence. It

is a perfect example of urban violence performed by the Bourgeois, having a veil and who

masquerades as a ‘civilized’ being in the society in contrast to GoW’s ‘devil-may-care’

characters.

Keywords: daily life, audience, Bornila Chatterjee, The Hungry, violence, .etc

Dwelling amidst the 21st century, where representations play a vital part in the daily discourse

of human life and its dynamicity, the inclination towards homogenizing various aspects of

history and culture has become an inextricable practice on the part of the human beings.

However, art can never be totally separated from the corpus of reality and probably this is

where Richard Schechner, in his treatise, Performance Studies, comments, “art is cooked and

life is raw”. The particular shades of daily life, which, perhaps we fail to acknowledge either

due to ignorance, or we are made to ignore by subtle institutions, art takes them up in a different

canvas, where we play the role of the audience, receiving them, criticising them or

acknowledging them, sometimes directly or with a willing suspicion of disbelief. Violence

might not find a place in our daily application, however, it never failed to attract a positive

audience reception in the artistic canvas, be it film or painting. Although the most successful

medium of representing violence and taking it out to the audience is films, or more

academically we may say, audio-visual texts, which has been backed up by the concept that,

the postmodern society patronises a general aestheticisation of all forms of art and culture, not

excluding anti-cultural ones. When I mentioned previously, the concept of being attached to

violence without actually practising it a term which constantly keeps lurking me, is somewhat

an oxymoronic one, which goes as “non-violent violence” Which can be roughly taken as the

passive participation in violent aspects. Here we take up the representatives of fictional form
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 136

of violence, depicted in two films, one which gives us the raw and gory dimension of violence

leading us to a sort of repulsion psychologically and physically, in Gangs of Wasseypur, the

other a subtle and clean representation of violence, which more peaceful and serene mode of

unleashing violence on screen, where we are awestruck with jaws wide open, to realize the

polished and acrimonious way of performing violence, as violence on screen is also a

performance, skillfully represented in The Hungry. When Bruder writes in her article as a

stylization of violence, once again an oxymoronic flavour gets inflicted upon the terms violence

and style.

The Hungry by Bornila Chatterjee, opens in a setting which is dwelt upon by a group of posh,

polished and corporate personalities who intend towards a wedding, which too is backed up by

a tertiary relationship, not to bring out the emotional side of the human psyche, rather to

lubricate business runs of two families which share a common company. On the other hand, a

look towards Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur depicts violence in a rural setting near

Dhanbad, in an area called Wasseypur, dominated by butchers, goons etc, where violence in

the form of gunshots, scythes, which are mostly indigenous, play an important part. A violence-

ridden film today constitutes the heart of a particular cult. The projection of a man being

murdered by gunshots both frightens and fascinates us to the core, specially with the coming

of technology and the new gen filmmakers, bringing in the concept of the new aesthetics of

violence on the Silverscreen, which has eventually given rise to two binaries of violence in the

domain of film studies, one the raw and direct violence, more inclined towards a rural setting

and the other the stylized effect of violence where violence is portrayed through skill and clean

hands, set in an urban setting, precisely something which is ‘civilised’.

The Gangs of Wasseypur series helmed by Anurag Kashyap stands as a landmark for the

projection of violence and spectacularly displaying the ‘rural setting’ and make it a daily

phenomenon among the movie aficionados. In terms of ‘violence’, he displayed it more in the
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 137

realistic style following the ‘real’ killing culture that dominates the rural streets, particularly

his portrayal of the streets of Wasseypur with real unarrayed and the maverick characters.

When it comes to violence in a rural setting, it has to be raw as well as real, as preached and

projected by the above-mentioned director, which in no time striked the kind of cult followers

for whom “intellectual stimulation, as well as sheer entertainment”, is at the apex of their

preference. As Jean Baudrillard has said that the post-modern age is being dominated by the

concept of ‘simulacrum’ and there is no distinction between the reality and its representation,

the same can be applied in terms of the killing culture that Kashyap has displayed in his films,

ranging from Black Friday to Wasseypur. Hence, the violence-ridden sequences that we

witness on the silver screen are the simulacra of the ‘real’ and as we know, today’s sensational

media culture keeps one step ahead and a bit far from the reality and the world around us, it is

the simulacrum that is at the centre that at times determines and dominates our perception of

the world. Similarly, the stylization or the aesthetics of ‘violence’ in Gangs of Wasseypur has

been accepted by few to large and in representing Indian Cinema has been vaguer in

representing the rural violence unlike in Kashyap’s representation which is also a simulacrum

and therefore it’s the raw, technicality that defines his aestheticization of violence within the

rural context . Still, pondering over Baudrillard’s notion of ‘Simulacrum’, it nonetheless can

be taken into consideration that the aesthetics of violence is no exception in the realm of

Cinema but a modification to the earlier portrayals of violence in the silver screen both in

Indian Cinema.

According to a Ted talk by Eddy Von Mueller on ‘the technology and the new aesthetics of

violence’, that is where we can compile the whole of the aesthetics of violence that Anurag

Kashyap grips perfectly and dexterously.

It’s the sight that works alongside the sound i.e both the audio and the visual effects, for the

creation of the violence that we see in the film. In the first part of the series, there are scenes
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 138

where violence is constructed slightly in an explicit manner but mostly through technology,

particularly in a scene where a friend of the protagonist, Sardar Khan, chops a human body.

And with the help of cinematography, the camera gives us a mid-shot of the movements of the

hands of the Man who is chopping down the body, the screaming in the background, later the

camera depicts a blood spilt floor signifying that the performance of the brutal act is over.

There are enough ingredients to deceive an audience and pierce their grey matter to help them

implant a horrific scene in their brain with repulsion. Such scenes of gore helmed by Kashyap

tantalizes the audience by offering them on screen the starting point of the violence but barred

them from the ‘sight’ of the whole process of killing yet it is the ‘sound’ that in fact extremely

tantalizes the audience, compelling them to be in a dilemma whether they have witnessed it

properly or not.

Throughout the whole series, the usage of ‘indigenous’ weapons that are still prominent

among the ruralites till today is what reflected in the film for killing or hurting and in the same

manner, Kashyap in his way of picturizing the violence or to make it more real, he employed

‘indigenous’ weapons (Kattha, a handmade gun). Never to forget the depiction of

Muharram.which is itself involves in self-afflicted violence caters to the director's skill in

blurring the lines between the different dimensions of violence. Also, it can be argued that

today even Journalism attracts more and more viewers by displaying the footages of graphic

violence in their crime stories though blurring the most violent parts. The best-known example

for projecting the double standards of Journalism towards the showcasing of violence in

television is Dan Gilroy’s 2014 flick, Nightcrawler, which exposes the hypocrisy of media.

More than the story, it is only the blood that attracts the viewers and it is “only when it bleeds,

it leads.”

The excessive use of violence in both the films denotes to the vitality of violence in the rural

streets of India (Wasseypur, Dhanbad) and Kashyap has displayed it in a larger than life
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 139

manner. Furthermore, in his path of the glorification of violence, we find a soothing and

satisfying violence in the silver screen and has more specifically focused on the final scene of

the second instalment of the Series, where the protagonist, Faizal Khan is rewarded with his

revenge and the antagonist, Ramadhir Singh with his punishment, thus Kashyap with the end,

justifies and distinguishes between his artificial violence and the factual carnage. But it is in

the end, that the audience witness a solacing aesthetic in the killing scene of the antagonist and

it is Anurag Kashyap’s aestheticization of the final violent scene that hints to two respective

films of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009) and Arthur Penn’s ‘Bonnie and Clyde’

(1967), who has done the same setting for adorning their final ‘gory’ scenes vivaciously.

Similarly, in the last scene of the last installment of GoW, we relish the background score, apt

for any revenge scene, the bullet holes on the antagonist’s body, blood being spurted out on a

large volume and the innumerable bullets that the protagonist fires at him, the lingering of the

man in slow motion and satisfying spark in Nawazuddin’s eyes makes the final violent scene

aestheticised.

The objective of aesthetics of violence is to deviate from the traditional meaning of violence

and put the vibrancy of the ‘satisfying’ violence in the forefront, which at times veils the

extreme nature of violence and deceives the audience by making them admire the violence as

solely a piece of art. Anurag Kashyap’s projection of violence in GoW, especially in the Indian

rural context, is a sheer entertainment masquerading as a crazed carnage bash.

Evidently, both the films share an altogether different setting on screen – the rural and the

polished, and the raw and the urban. Notably, the ‘nonviolent’ violence depicts more serious

suspense through the posh setting in The Hungry, whereas Gangs of Wasseypur portrays

violence backed up by comic scenes, which, in more literary specific terms can be commented

as the comic violence. The robust nature of the rural personas of the actors, Manoj Bajpayee

and Nawazuddin Siddiqui itself in the film, helps in creating a kind of violence that is being
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 140

relished by the audience and also at the same time it stays at the limits of graphic violence,

oscillating from excitement to sheer disgust and inciting humour and horror to titillation to

compassion. As it’s a well-known fact that the guardians of state must avoid laughter, was

forwarded by Plato in his treatise ‘The Republic’. Thus the sole concept of violence, which is

non violent and polished in nature as depicted in The Hungry can be connected back to the

ancient concept of tragedy, and in the present context, we may look forward to interpreting in

the late capitalist dimensions where art is an outcome of growing capitalism, where suppression

of instincts is a common phenomenon among the urbanites as in The Hungry, opposite to the

comic scenes in GoW.

The kitchen space which portrays Tathagat, engaged in culinary arts, where he performs the art

with great sharpness and care can be related to his act murdering the humans, which to is a fact

of art for him. In this regard, we can take up a quote from Thomas De Quincy, which goes as,

“Murder is considered as one of the fine arts”. The opening scene of the film, which depicts a

feast in the grand castle, presents us with the depiction of food items, being served with the

grandeur of an elite Dawaat, backed up with sober music. The audiovisual tone somewhat

which challenges the stereotypical violent motifs in the film. Thus the very depiction of the

food, the murders which take place in a backdrop, which is not the conventional setting of

violence as depicted in films or news channels, rather the violence which involves blood, which

is artistic and involves in aesthetics.

Coming back to Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, the film goes the concept of violence

for the sake of accepting violence for the sake of violent feeling, involving the raw concept of

killings and gunshots. Set in a hardcore rural backdrop, the film, however, depicts violence in

the conventional ways, where we are made to witness bloodshed by the means of prosthetics,

resulting out of bombardments, firing, actions taken up with knives, which more theoretically

can be termed as ‘hyperviolence’, according to Joseph.H Kupfer. The evidence of hyper -

IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 141

violence is clear in the GOW series when, in the first part Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Faizal Khan

kills his friend Fazlu by tearing his throat, followed by the gushing blood from the victim’s

body and when the beheaded part of the body is tied in a carry bag and left suspended in a

doorway.

In contrast to the raw nature of GoW, Bornila Chatterjee’s ‘The Hungry’ is a beautiful

representation of refined violence or we can say it sums up both the polished and rustic nature

of the violence. It is a perfect example of urban violence performed by the Bourgeois, having

a veil and who masquerades as a ‘civilized’ being in the society in contrast to GoW’s ‘devil -

may-care’ characters. What the dominated audience perceives of the rural setting of violence

as projected by the Indian filmmakers is raw, which is of a sort of stereotypical view regarding

the characters from the rurality unlike in the sphere of Urban, where you have killings more

cooked and refined and sometimes an act of urban violence, particularly churns out the

aesthetic emotion of the audience. Naseeruddin Shah’s character shines like the character of a

consummate gourmet cook like that of Hannibal Lector (Thomas Harris), who at the end feeds

the protagonist (Tisca Chopra) her own son. Before winding up at the marriage scene, which

happens to be in the backdrop of several murders, the audience is left in a fix of ‘whodunnit’.

With the advent of online streaming video networks like Netflix, Amazon Prime

Video, Hotstar and others, there has been less importance given on the part of censorship.

Today to avoid any sort of controversy like hurting religious or social sentiments, filmmakers

filter their dialogues to scenes; hence there is a limitation in picturisation. The Central Board

of Film Certification (CBFC) has kept their hands off from this intense revenge drama and the

makers of the film has also strategically screened it out of India, in the Toronto International

Film Festival and making it widely accessible to the larger audience by making it release

globally on the Amazon Prime Video, an online video streaming network, which has the liberty

to display a piece of art as art and not the ‘censored’ art or films since in India, the limitation
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 142

of I & B Ministry stays up to the theatres and not beyond it, though these online streaming sites

have started ‘self-censorship’ of their shows to run their business well in a highly intolerable

country like ours, where art is admired till the paintings and nude sculptures but no room for

the ‘motionable’ nudity in the silver screen.

Precisely, these dimensions can be taken as binaries of conceptualizing violence, one which is

raw, having traces of reality, portraying the real violence, and the other violence in form of art

which is coloured and polished. One, which mostly goes by the urban setting, practiced by the

rising capitalists under the veil of civilized society, which tends to publically avoid violence

and the other , the rural violence, for the sake of violence, performed on instincts, by people

ruthless of going undercover for the sake of performing violence, as its violence that glorifies

them and their character.

The aestheticisation of violence dwells, however, both in its raw and the polished ways of its

portrayal. Where Gangs of Wasseypur gives us a striking note on the violence of rural India,

where men fight without an armour, and open fire in the sun, and sometimes do miss out their

targets(the bomb scenes in the series) giving rise to comic humour, The Hungry shows us the

hideous nature of urban India, where, where violence is non-violent. Perhaps it is in this case

that we may relate Margaret Bruder’s essay, where she writes, that the concept of aestheticized

violence is not merely the excessive use of violence in a film, as the representation of violence

itself becomes a spectacle of its own, of course, boosted and supported by a tranquil setting

and serene music.

When Sayani Gupta (as Loveleen Ahuja) is brutally murdered by Antonio Ankiel (as

Chirag Joshi), the director deliberately chooses the act of violence to concentrate on the vocal

part of the character of Loveleen, as she is battered on her face and literally stuffed in the mouth

after her tongue being pulled out, which, bars the audience from relating themselves with

screams, which are an inextricable part of violent representations, in general. The last scene of
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 143

The Hungry where the newlywed couple, played by Tisca Chopra and Arjun Gupta, is

presented with the beheaded head of Tulsi Joshi’s( Tisca Chopra) son in a decorative dish

amidst other eatables. The Hungry never depicts food that is always cooked, whereas Gangs of

Wasseypur depicts the raw fleshy setting where butchers ruthlessly kill both animals and

humans bringing out the animosity suppressed in them. That which can be well related to once

again the concept of art as cooked and life as raw, by Schechner. The concept of food plays an

important part here, one which depicts cooked and table food and the other organic raw, to be

accepted lately. Therefore the basic concept if violence is not violence itself but, rather its

representation or depiction, either in a violent way or nonviolent way, according to the demand

of the audience.
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 144

Reference

Bottomore, Tom. The Frankfurt School. Routledge, 2002.

Bruder, Margaret. Aestheticising Violence or How to do things with style. 9 2004.

Gangs of Wasseypur. By Akhilesh Jaiswal and Anurag Kashyap. Dir. Anurag Kashyap.

Phantom Films. 2012.

Hart, Kevin. Postmodernism. One World Publications, 2004.

Mueller, Eddy Von. "Technology and the New Aesthetics of Violence." TEDx Emory. TEDx

Talks, 2016.

The Argumentative Indian. Allen Lane, 2005.

M, Marva. "An Analysis of Social Stratification among the Kerala Muslims in Postgulf Boom

Era, in Relation To the Factor of Caste System." Academia. Academia.edu, Nov.

2014.Web. 15 July 2016.

P, Jumna. “Imagining women in Malayalam cinema-acounter discourde.” an international

refereed English e-journal, vol.2, no1, and pp130-136.

Panikar, K. N. "Culture and Consciousness in Modern India: A Historical Perspective."

Social Scientist, vol.18, no.4, 16 June 2016, pp-3-32.

Panini, M. N. "Corporate Culture in India." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 23no.35, 25

June 2016, pp.19-25.

Radhakrishnan, R. "The Gulf in the Imagination: Migration, Malayalam Cinema and

Regional Identity." Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol43 no.2, 19 Aug.

2016.pp.17-45.
IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 145

Terence, Mitchel. “Rosy retrospection a psychological phenomenon.” Journal of

Experimental Social Psychology 1997, 421-448.

Ustad Hotel. Directed by. Anwar Rasheed. Performances by. Dulquer Salman, Thilakan, and

Nithya Menen. Central pictures 2012.

Venkiteswaran, c. “Goodbye to superstar era.” Hinduonloine.com.13april2013

Wang, Yi. "Globalization Enhances Cultural Identity." Intercultural Communication Studies.

15 July 2016.pp.83-86.