Viggo V Violence

TIME Magazine does a 10 questions column with random people. A few months back they had one with Viggo Mortensen, and it touched on a subject I've been pondering heavily lately:

Q. Many of your films deal with a significant amount of brutality. What's it like to explore violent characters? Frank Pennisi, BAYSIDE, N.Y.

A: A lot of time the violence expressed onscreen is a metaphor for what's going on inside. I take it seriously, and I respect directors who depict it responsibly. There are a lot of directors who make too much of a joke about it. That lets the audience off the hook.

It's been clear to me for a long time now that most physical violence in our movies is not intended to correlate to actual physical violence in our lives. So, it a metaphor. But a metaphor for what? "What's going on inside" feels a bit vague. Last night JT and I caught a T2 revival at the Cinerama, and I was struck by the heavy-handed and conscious use of feminist and pacifist rhetoric in the dialogue. But I don't believe that the movie is really about either. It doesn't even feel like the film makers are consciously aware of what they're talking about. When the two terminators are throwing one another through walls with blank expressions on their faces, what's being engaged inside us? The endless footage of vehicles and building exploding and being demolished feel quickening and cathartic and hedonistic in our action films. But what is it a metaphor for in our internal landscapes? Is it just Nietzsche's Ubermensch: an unfeeling, unstoppable superman? What is it that we want to destory, and what is it that we want to be indestructible?

I got my first comment in a year last week. Any theories about what violence in our films is intended to speak to?