Revenge « Wisdom of the Capybara

From EconLog:

My interpretation is that action movies rely on our strong moral intuition about the righteousness of “making the bad guys pay.” Like a lot of art, action movies work by bypassing sanctimonious propaganda and showing (not saying!) important truths that, on some level, we already know. Truths like: Someone who kills the murderer of an innocent child deserves a medal, not a jail sentence.

Can it be justified to seek revenge? Or was Lucas right to change the title from Revenge of the Jedi to Return of the Jedi?

Previously, Benji and I got in an argument over whether violence depicted in the media is responsible for our social ills, or a reflection of them.

amuirin Says:

July 2, 2007 at 6:53 pm

This is interesting to me, I was just in a discussion about torture and if there was a justified use for torture in the case of terrorists and getting information for pending attacks.

I don’t believe society can afford to allow torture to be an acceptable tool, because who discerns when it’s okay to use it? How can you make a distinction between good and bad people if the acts of the goodguys are just as monstrous as those of the bad?

It raises some tough moral questions.

skepticalmind Says:

July 2, 2007 at 10:11 pm

I actually take issue with the initial assumption here. I don’t think most people disapprove of revenge, even “officially.” I certainly don’t.

I think revenge-seeking is an inherent part of being human. Furthermore, revenge underlies our entire criminal justice system. After all, we don’t seek to “rehabilitate” criminals. We don’t even bother to pretend that we do by calling prisons fancy names anymore. Rather, when someone commits a crime, we seek revenge against that person in an acceptable way by using the law. The end result is that we either put people to death, or we imprison them as punishment.

To me, this makes perfect sense. If you break society’s laws, society seeks revenge against you. The only difference in the movies is that individuals are so strong that they don’t need society’s help.

Wanderluster Says:

July 3, 2007 at 2:29 am

@ Capy
So far the positions laid out are “Media is the cause of social ills.” and “Media is a reflection of social ills.”
I would go so far as to say that Media is a relief from social ills. I think the reason why action movies appeal to us when the good guy gets revenge on the bad guy is because at some point each of us has gotten screwed over and we would have liked to have gotten revenge, but due to socialization and undesired consequences, we didn’t seek that revenge. Instead, we choose to seek katharsis in watching a movie about revenge and by putting ourself in the place of the hero, and reap the rewards without suffering the consequences.

@ Skepty
“To me, this makes perfect sense. If you break society’s laws, society seeks revenge against you. The only difference in the movies is that individuals are so strong that they don’t need society’s help.”
I definitely agree with this. Our lack of power probably accounts for why we seek kathartic revenge rather than the real thing. The more power we have, the more likely we are to seek the real thing when we are wronged, which brings up an interesting question about gun laws:
If posession of guns were illegal, there would be fewer people who had the power to seek real revenge and and there would be more people who would settle for katharsis.
If guns don’t kill people, and people kill people, then do people with guns kill more people?

@ amurin
I find it difficult to split the world up into good guys and bad guys for precisely this reason. I find that when people get swept up into struggles larger than themselves, the side they choose to fight for tends to resemble nothing else so much as the side they have chosen to fight against.

July 3, 2007 at 2:36 am

Wander – your point about gun laws is an interesting one, but I think it overlooks the crucial argument of the 2nd Amendment crowd. Namely, they intend to use their guns so that they never have to seek revenge. In other words, they will prevent the crime in the first place by shooting the criminal! Then, they never have to seek revenge in the first place.

While I’m not over-eager to go buy a handgun, this logic also makes perfect sense to me. Wouldn’t you shoot a criminal in self-defense?

July 3, 2007 at 4:50 am

Skepty, good point, and I bear no ill-will against the second amendment people. In general, I don’t like government regulation. I have no idea if I would shoot a criminal or not… probably, human nature and all, but I imagine I would feel really guilty about it afterwards, which indicates to me that it would have been an immoral action.
As opposed to ethics, which I consider to be centered on the self and shame, which I consider to be the result of failing in one’s ethics; I consider morality to be centered on society and I consider guilt to be the result of failing society through immoral action.
As such, ethically, I see no problem with the logic of preventing the need for revenge through self-defense, but morally speaking, the second ammendment has become something of an oddity, since originally it was intended to facilitate the militia in order to protect the state, but now, as the all-volunteer professional army has taken the place of the minute-men, it seems to serve mostly to protect individuals.
To rephrase, ethics are centered on the good of the self, whereas morals are centered on the good of society.
So, in my opinion, and just in my opinion, the second amendment benefits individuals while it harms society. Of course, on the other hand, I think we Americans in particular have peculiar relationship between the individual and society wherein we try to gain both the benefits of being an ethical people and a moral people despite the large areas of mutual exclusiveness between ethics and morals. Perhaps the second ammendment is just a consession by the state to the individual.
Since an answer to Capy’s original question just jumped out at me from my semantic quibbling over morality/ethics… I’ll offer it up:
@Capy: Ethically speaking, personal revenge can be justified to the extent one has the ability to carry it out (the advantage of the strongest), but morally speaking (wherein the state is strongest) personal revenge cannot be justified. As Skepty suggested above, revenge is reserved for the state, not individuals to extract.
My argument is that the way in which Americans bridge the gap wherein their ethics are mutually exclusive to their morals is through katharsis found in film.
Having said this, Lucas was right to change the title from Revenge of the Jedi to Return of the Jedi because the Jedi are a moral people whose lives are so dedicated to service to the state to the extent that they must utterly abandon any sense of ethics. As such, personal revenge for a Jedi can never be justified; a lesson hard learned for Anakin Skywalker.

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July 3, 2007 at 11:47 pm

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