Gore and violence in Animorphs. Was it too explicit?

[Terenia]

I think Rachel is actually the best symbol of how the violence intensifies over time. You can see a mini-version of it within herself and her own personal destruction that takes place throughout the series.

[ThinkAgain]

Another thing to notice is the concept of the acceptable target.

Shoot and kill an alien, and your movie can still pull a PG rating, a PG-13 at the worst if there are worse things as well. Shoot and kill a human, and you have a PG-13 at the very least.

Look at old comic books. Nazis are acceptable targets - in fact, after the World War II, the best times of comic books collapsed due to a shortage of acceptable targets with meaning. Video games - Why do you think we kill zombies and aliens? Because killing humans can be too brutal for the tastes of some.

If you look and any given instance of detailed descriptions of gore and violence in the series, it will almost never be directed at a human - and if it is, it will focus more on the emotional aspect than the physical aspect. The violence happens to the Ani's when they are in morph, or to Hork-Bajir or Taxxons - humans are merely stunned by Ax's tail blade or just knocked out. While the Animorphs attribute it to an unwillingness to kill humans, it's also simply because if you talked about a human's guts spilling out, it's no longer in the intended age group. By the end of the series, humans and Hork-Bajir are on the same moral level for them, but they still refuse to kill humans, even ones that pose immanent threats - dracons, etc.

One of the most important depictions of violence against humans was in MM3, when Jake is shot. The most detail given is "I saw the hole. It was centered in Jake's forehead." And later, when Ax decides to kill Hessians, no explicit details are given. He says what he will do, and the chapter ends with him drawing back his tail, and a "FWAPP" sound. Violence towards humans is almost completely vague or not detailed, even though it can be completely undoubted that a human was killed. Regardless, human death is still relatively taboo when compared to the generous detail given to the deaths of Hork-Bajir or Taxxons, or the Ani's themselves while in morph.

That's pretty much how the series maintained its intended age group - it primarily used so called acceptable targets. Even in real life outside of media we have this concept. Boil a live lobster, and you're a chef, boil a live kitten and you face animal cruelty charges. Our society is very fickle and inconsistent in what it accepts and what is considers wrong - borderline hypocrisy.

_{PS: I do not condone or in anyway support the boiling of kittens, while I have boiled lobsters myself - After all, I am a part of this society and am susceptible to its practices and ideals.}

[anijen21]

I could swear that, maybe not right in the action but sometime after, one of them described the back of Jake's head being blown off, because I remember thinking "an inefficient gun in the Revolutionary War has the power to do something like that?" I don't know whether it's possible or not, but I remembered having doubt.

[Chad32]

What measure is a nonhuman, and what measure is a noncute. Part of the reason people are horrified at a live kitten boiling, but not a live lobster boiling is that kittens are cute. Yes that's probably a big reason why she could have such brutal depictions and still be in the proper demographic. A lot of people like to separate Humans from the rest of life, so when you kill a Human the ratings go  up higher than when you kill a giant space bug or a zombie.

[Dameg]

Another thing: you don't eat kittens
If it's to eat, and if you don't do useless torture, it's acceptable to me. If it's kill for fun or for fur... or if you torture an animal a long time, if you hurt it only for a little part and leave it still alive, or if you kill protected animals... that kind of things isn't acceptable to me.

But I also like games where you kill Humans ^^ If you knew how many cops I killed (for fun) or burned in their car (still for fun)... but this is games, isn't it

Anyway, it's true that they don't say when people die, except in the end (when the new Ani are killed one by one, with the military... but I'm not sure about the people in the Yeerk Pool). Little by little, the censor disappears...

[voodooqueen126]

And so gradually the bar is lowered (like theodore Dalrymple essay on DH lawrence: if Lady Chatterlery is permitted than everything is permitted)
Has anyone seen Julie and Julia (Mery Streep as Julia Child) where Amy Adams is such a coward that she can't bring herself to stab the lobster so she boils it alive! I lost so much respect for Julie (the real person that Amy Adams played): to save her own squeamishness she boiled some poor lobster alive!
Animals should be killed humanely and not be endengered weather for food or fur (especially pest animals such as foxes, rabbits and cats).
Nothing is more contemptous then someone (or organisations such as PETA) that would consider violence against an animal as bad as that against a human.
Torturing a kitten is evil
but not as evil as torturing a human (although a small part of me would cheerfully have a child murderer burned, but would be more revolted to someone who did the same to a puppy)
Killing a kitten, fox, rabbit or cane toad is good
executing a serial killer is a duty
Slaughtering a cow, chicken or pig is for food
doing the same to a human is pure evil.
We must discriminate between humans and animals, the sentient and the non sentient.
In animorphs we must remember: each species for his own (different species does not equal different nationalities)
and complete sentience (humans and andalites) retarded sentience (hork-bajir) enemy sentience (yeerks and taxxons).
How did I get so off topic?

[Galladerotom]

Applegate really did a good job of exploring animals psychies (spelled wrong) and exploring the ethics of sentience and science. For example in "the evperiement" she explores the nature of free will and its role in sentinence.

[KitsuneMarie]

Question for Dino:

Out of curiosity, in the kill-counting project, did you consider hosts and Yeerks to be two separate kills? I'd be interested in seeing who had the most and fewest kills, and whether the characters maintain those positions over the course of the series (discounting the outlying spikes in which Yeerk Pools were flushed or otherwise attacked).

[DinosaurNothlit]

Question for Dino:

Out of curiosity, in the kill-counting project, did you consider hosts and Yeerks to be two separate kills? I'd be interested in seeing who had the most and fewest kills, and whether the characters maintain those positions over the course of the series (discounting the outlying spikes in which Yeerk Pools were flushed or otherwise attacked).

Yes, killing a controller is counted as two kills.

I need to post in that project again . . . it's been a while since anyone has been working on that, and I've read and taken notes for several more books since the last time I posted.  I think I may be the only one who's even still working on it at all, so we would welcome any new help.

[Chad32]

I remember someone mentioning that Tobias probably wound up killing considerably more hosts than Yeerks because he would slash out there eyes. So the host may be put down for being blind, while the Yeerk would just go to another host. Somethin for him to angst aout if he ever thought about it.

[Myitt]

One of the most chilling and memorable moments on the subject of gore and killing, for me, was the scene in Megamorphs #4 when Jake confronts a dying human-Controller who had been crying out for help.  Even though the killing wounds were caused by a Hork-Bajir, Jake recognizes that his own tiger mauling has clawed up this 20-year-old guy's head, so that his ears are mangled.  I think he was described as being so pale his skin was white and sweaty, like a white candle.  The Yeerk can't even get out of the kid's head, and just basically sits there asking for a blanket because he's cold, scared and in pain, and he and his host are going to most certainly die.

And Jake forces himself to walk away.

Of course, Jake himself was missing one of his tiger legs.  It'd almost be funny if it wasn't so damn serious 

I think that's what K.A. was going for most of the time, even if things were cleverly worded to avoid graphic descriptions--but still, especially with alien kills, there was an awful lot of blood spilling and throats being ripped out with teeth.  The Animorphs did try not to kill humans as much as they could help it, although it became harder to avoid as time went on.  Cassie got a piece of Hork-Bajir flesh lodged in her human teeth in #19, that was another small but memorable (and gross) moment that I think highlights the tiny things that made their battles so nightmare-inducing.

[matthew]

No, I don`t think any gore or violence in animorphs went over the line. But, KA seemed to try to avoid the word`kill`.

[Galladerotom]

No, I don`t think any gore or violence in animorphs went over the line. But, KA seemed to try to avoid the word`kill`.

Yeah that was probably a bit of habit for her, at first I think she wanted to keep it simple but then she realised that their was going to be blood.

[Uza-chan]

Maybe it was because I first read the series when I was 14, but I always thought she could put more in to it. I could always think: ooh, spilled guts. But I never really cared or felt in the way that books are supposed to, you know? It never pulled out any emotional: OMG, GUTS! YUCK! from me.
It was just stated in the book, but it never felt like it was happening, you know? Like when you read about a certain gory scene, you're supposed to think wow, how painful. Or at least, that's how it was for me. If something was described well-enough, I'd actually start thinking about what I would do if it happened to me. And how it would feel to me and whatnot. But for Animorphs: I felt really disconnected from the book with the gory stuff I just read over the sentence and went on.

But then again, maybe I'm over thinking this. 

[adeon222]

Gore and violence??? WHA???

I mean, yeah, I guess that some of the stuff talked about was gross, or disturbing... but no more so to me than the idea of an alien slug controlling my body...

To me, the line is drawn between gore and violence just for the sake of gore and violence... and gore an violence for the sake of being real and making an accurate point...

SAW, Friday 13th, etc... unacceptable levels of gore and violence (because it's there just because...)
Saving Private Ryan... more accurate... (possibly just as stomach-churning, but at least there's a reason for it...)

In Animorphs, I thought that a good job was done of describing just how bad it was for the Animorphs at times... What they went through... what they were forced to make others go through... It's all part of making the story real for us...