The Art of Violence

Saw a video that made me think about

"If any human act evokes the aesthetic experience of the sublime, certainly it is the act of murder [...] If murder can be experienced aesthetically, the murderer can in turn be regarded as a kind of artist. A performance Artist or Anti-Artist whose specialty is not creation, but destruction." -Joel Black, The Aesthetics of Murder

quoted in "Philosophy of Berserk"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcFbh93tLxU

"Everything is stained red. Red as the setting sun. The sight should be gruesome and yet...it was like a painting beautiful beyond compare." -Sonia, after the liberation of Vritannis from the Kushan army.

The anime contrasts the "artful" killing of Guts on the battlefield with skill and craftsmanship that invokes the sublime, with the drab, dull institutional violence of society.

This sort of makes me want to contrast the violence of with that of Noxus, with its massed armies across the globe, chemical weapons, and what not. The latter is comparable to the stonings, mass executions, and everyday death in Berserk. At the same time though... Jhin is the assassin of a secret group within the Ionian Council, and what they do they do for political aims. How long will he remain so, before he breaks away ? To do art for art's sake?