Entertaining Violence. Distancing the Audience from the Violent Content in Garth Ennis' and Steve Dillon's Preacher Book One

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature Works grade: 13 Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz course: British Literature language: English abstract: Violence and the media have been sharing a long history together. This is primarily because people have always been interested in the question whether violence in the media increases the aggressive potential of real human beings. Although this question according to Kunczik and Zipfel cannot be answered satisfactorily great parts of the world's population blame violence in the media for being responsible for the sway in our nowadays society (399). Nonetheless violence rapidly gains more and more importance in the pop culture which also affects the productions of media corporations (Ahrens 125). Action and horror movies often cause rushes to the cinemas and theaters worldwide. Bookstores sell thousands of thrillers every year and the names of authors such as Steven King or John Sinclair are famous throughout the globe. However also smaller markets like the comics market are crowded with whole series containing a huge amount of violence and are therefore recommended for mature readers only. One graphic novel which filled itself to the brim with violence cursing and things most would never dream of publishing (Batson Vertigo - The Birth of an Imprint) is Vertigo's Preacher (see fig. 1) by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. The protagonist priest Jesse Custer accidentally merges with a mysterious creature called Genesis. From that point on he possesses the power of God. Together with his ex-girlfriend Tulip and the Irish vampire Cassidy he starts a horrible and dark journey across the USA in order to find God who has abdicated heaven's throne. As already mentioned Preacher contains a lot of violence which makes it according to Korsun the most intense adult comic in ages (44). Hence the intensity of violence is located to a large extend in the degr