Professor Martin Barker
This volume is an important contribution to the endless debates about film violence, made all the more valuable by its unequivocal starting-point, that 'violence' is not some simple thing inside films which can be safe or harmful, better or worse. Instead, Kendrick makes us look at the interwoven histories of filmmakers' strategies of representation, the changing chatter of fears from critics and moralists, but also the historical circuits of real violence (wars, conflicts, social upheavals) to which the different traditions of films he studies are responding. This is a wide-ranging study of real force, challenging us to new and detailed work.
— Professor Martin Barker, Aberystwyth University
Martin Barker
This volume is an important contribution to the endless debates about film violence, made all the more valuable by its unequivocal starting-point, that 'violence' is not some simple thing inside films which can be safe or harmful, better or worse. Instead, Kendrick makes us look at the interwoven histories of filmmakers' strategies of representation, the changing chatter of fears from critics and moralists, but also the historical circuits of real violence (wars, conflicts, social upheavals) to which the different traditions of films he studies are responding. This is a wide-ranging study of real force, challenging us to new and detailed work.
Steffen Hantke
Film violence, as James Kendrick shows, has been part and parcel of cinema from its earliest stages of development —just as the discussion about it, from its popular acceptance to its legal suppression, has been ongoing. In a clear and direct style, Kendrick takes us through the twists and turns of nearly a century of critical debate about film violence. Without falling into academic jargon, he offers a theoretically sound definition of what film violence actually is, opting out of the simplistic and partisan 'but I know it when I see it' definitions that stifle so much public discussion. He provides a thoughtful and knowledgeable overview of violent films and what their makers, viewers and critics have (had) to say about them, mapping out the dominant critical positions as well as illustrating (and complicating) them by looking at individual films. The chapters that, respectively, examine violence as a matter of cinematic genres (like the western, the horror film or the action film), and as a matter of historical opportunity (films and filmmakers associated with New Hollywood, hard at the heels of the demise of the Production Code), add further perspective. The book deserves praise for its ability to grasp the fundamentals of its topic, just as the author does for getting them across with such clarity. Readers, especially those in their first encounter with the topic, will appreciate it as a useful introduction to a complicated issue - an issue that's not likely to go away any time soon.
— Steffen Hantke, Sogang University
