Is violence fun?

Fun psychology study of the week (actually, the journal isn't psychological per se, and neither of the authors are in psychology departments, but the methodology is perfectly acceptable from an experimental-psychological perspective, so who cares?):

Weaver, A. J., & Wilson, B. J. (2009). The role of graphic and sanitized violence in the enjoyment of television dramas. Human Communication Research, 35(3), 442–463. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01358.x

http://ge.tt/8faLguU/v/0

Weaver and Wilson took some gory episodes of five drama TV shows (one each from the series 24, The Sopranos, The Shield, OZ, and Kingpin) and, purely by removing content, produced three version of each episode: gory (mostly unedited), non-graphically violent (with blood and gore cut), and nonviolent (with no violence shown onscreen). Each subject was randomly assigned to see one version of one episode (yes, that's fifteen conditions (5 series × 3 versions = 15), but the sample size, at 481, was proportionally enormous). Surprisingly, across the board, people said they liked the less violent versions more. This held true even when controlling for gender and self-report measures of sensation-seeking and aggression.

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I'm not dead yet.

Yeah, I don't like to cringe during TV.

I just watched Django Unchained last night, so I'm of the opinion that, yeah, violence and gore and human suffering for their own sake are not fun.

Although on some level I think it's a misguided question: There's an idea that comes into film from modern art (and I guess from Derrida?) that art is supposed to make the viewer "uncomfortable"--that art should lead to questioned assumptions, confrontation, and renewal. Filmmakers often do use gore deliberately to complicate the audience's relationship with, say, a main character. You're supposed to see Tony Soprano taking a guy to the meat store to be turned into soprasetta and feel disgust toward the protagonist. You're supposed to rethink your opinion of Tony as this awesome take-no-s*** guy in light of how he's also a brutal murderer.

Audience enjoyment is actually the opposite of the intention behind the gore (except that maybe there's a little thrill from being disgusted at something, like a reminder that, because you can feel disgust, you must possess basic human decency).

Though come to think of it, I guess there are a lot of jerks in the world who really like sensationalized violence for its own sake and buy prints of paintings of Tony playing pool with three Marlon Brandos and the guy from Scarface and the guy from Blow. Because they thought Blow was awesome because it was a movie about how great it is to be a drug dealer.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

Although on some level I think it's a misguided question: There's an idea that comes into film from modern art (and I guess from Derrida?) that art is supposed to make the viewer "uncomfortable"--that art should lead to questioned assumptions, confrontation, and renewal.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsAngsty

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I'm not dead yet.