Grit --> Gore --> Gorn : When is it true to subject matter and when is it porn?

We’ve heard it and experienced it many times: For a creator to make an impact, to truly etch his/her message in the brains of his/her audience when it comes to art, from novels to films to comics, imagery with a high shock value is employed or simulations of actual acts of horror are conscripted to film, canvas, or words.

So we have powerful scenes that did not shy away from showing what happens in the darkness of crime, of exploitation, of sadism, of mental illness, of genocide and of perversion, in a goal to get across a theme or a message that shouldn’t be glossed over by sanitizing what is truly taking place and thus depriving the audience from experiencing the impact of what is being discussed.

Some of these attempts are lauded and praised by audiences (like most of the examples above), and some are decried as gratuitous, self-indulging fetish scenes that tell us more about the creator’s mental health than any other truth about our world or existence.

How then, do we find the line between a powerful punch to the audience’s gut that will lead to thoughtful discussions and realizations and a bucket of disgusting ooze of unsettling images that will lead people to groan, roll eyes, laugh in reaction, become irritated or disconnected from the work or all of the above?

The key is to manage to shock your audience, without the shocking scene being so extreme that it takes attention away from the reason that you put it there, the reason you need it for. If a scene is discussed more in its own accord than within the context of the story in which it exists, you have failed- you have created porn of some sort. If the scene is discussed as an example of the reason (theme, limits, dangers, ramifications, ideas, etc) that you put it there, and the discussion focuses on the theme and not the scene itself, then congratulations! You have succeeded in creating something that definitely isn’t porn (i.e. there just for the sake of it being there, and not serving any other additional use).

It’s a question I really grappled with when designing my WWII comic Without Moonlight. Given its setting (occupation by Nazis and Nazi methods of suppression) which was ridiculously grotesque and surreally disturbing at times (as research showed), I needed to decide what to show and what to sanitize. And on top of what I decided to show I had to decide how much would be “on camera” in the comic and how much would be implied.

I came to what I believe is a (sometimes precarious) balance of having most things primed and then happening off-camera, and those that do happen on camera being more symbolic of the historical truth rather than a completely faithful depiction- and I rely a lot on the discomfort of the knowledge that what is being presented in my comic actually took place, and the real extent of the happenings can be googled with whatever reaction that might procure. (Please don’t google any of that)

So how can you get a method to approach such a judgment call? Here is what I came up with to make mine- as always, it’s a series of questions:

STAGE 1- making SURE you need the shocking/gritty/extreme material:

1. What do you aim to make your audience feel? Why?

2. Is there any other way than gore/explicit scenes/extreme cruelty/ etc. to achieve that? If yes, why aren’t you using that?

I think it’s evident why if you can’t answer question 2 to your (and common logic’s) satisfaction, you run a serious risk of creating some kind of porn rather than shock value in service of your comic’s general aim.

Stage 2 involves deciding how much of the shocking/gritty/extreme material you need, but that is for next time!