How do we balance the realism of past and present brutality with the reality of the inevitability of death?

1. Death: not a subject for the ‘snowflake generation’?
BBC1’s new Saturday night drama is about the
Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Starring Kit Harrington (Jon
Snow in Game of Thrones), the programme has shown
graphic scenes of torture and execution which have led
to complaints from viewers and critics alike.
It was perhaps inevitable that such scenes would
appear extreme to a society that is unused to seeing
death or pain but the film makers are clear that it was
necessary to show the motivation and experience of the
plotters. Just as controversial have been recent
productions of plays such as Titus Andronicus in which a
number of violent deaths, rape and mutilation have
been depicted in graphic – and bloody – detail. Our
ancestors would have regarded gory scenes as perfectly
reflecting their own experiences of public executions
and punishments; in our more sanitised world they are
shocking and stomach-churning.
Trigger warnings, safe spaces and no platforming – it is
easy to condemn millennials for being too easily
offended and to wonder how they would cope if they
lived in more dangerous parts of the world – but whilst
some of this is undoubtedly excessive, we can’t ignore
the fact that we all have a different perspective on
violence now. Images of torture and executions in
areas such as the Middle East are too graphic to show
on TV or in the papers. We are rightly appalled at the
idea of seeing such things, yet they would have been on
regular public show in towns and cities four hundred
years ago.
The difficulty is that whilst we are rightly more sensitive
to gratuitous violence, we are losing our sense of
perspective about natural and inevitable experiences
such as disease and death. There is no getting away
from the fact that our bodies will let us down, we will
have accidents and we will reach the point in our lives
where we and those we love reach the end of the road.
So by all means let us be more humane and more caring
towards each other, let us call out inappropriate
behaviour and attitudes and let us try to make a better
world for everyone, but let us never forget that we are
on a one-way journey. And be grateful that we don’t
live in the seventeenth century.
We would love to hear about your experiences so if you
would like to share your stories, or if we can do
anything else to assist you, please get in touch with us.
enquiries@naturensbalm.com
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