When Trauma Becomes Entertainment: The Impact of Graphic Violence in Media

With growing discomfort, over the last few years, I’ve been noticing the surge of graphic violence in Indian media, particularly in how sexual violence is depicted. Scenes are portrayed with such brutal detail that they often stop feeling like storytelling and start feeling like re-enactments of trauma. For someone who has lived through violence, or even for those constantly navigating the fear of it, these portrayals can be profoundly retraumatizing. They can trigger old wounds or create new, intrusive visual memories, reinforcing the chronic fear that so many live with every day.

Violence as a Form of Consumption

The more I sit with it, the more it feels like violence has become a form of pornography, something we consume, something the industry keeps feeding us because we’ve been conditioned to expect it.  It’s no longer about telling survivors' stories with care or dignity. It's about making pain watchable, marketable, and even addictive.

It makes me wonder: why is sexual violence shown so graphically in the name of “real” or “raw” storytelling?  Have we reached a point where suffering must be sensationalized for it to be taken seriously?  Is it that unless we are forced to watch every brutal detail, we cannot believe survivors or relate to their pain?

The Psychological Cost of Repeated Exposure

Repeated exposure to such violence doesn't just retraumatize; it desensitizes. From a psychological perspective, I know that over time, constant exposure to graphic imagery can dull emotional responsiveness. It shifts what we recognize as violence, blurring lines between serious harm and entertainment. And in that process, we risk not just numbing ourselves to real suffering but also perpetuating a culture where violence becomes normal, expected, even needed, to create emotional impact. Repeated exposure not only dulls individual emotional responses but also collectively conditions us to accept systemic violence, particularly gendered violence, as “ordinary, inevitable parts” of life.

When Women's Pain Becomes a Male Character's Plot Device

Another layer that deeply troubles me is how violence against women and marginalized communities is so often used merely as a plot device, usually to propel the arc of a male character.  A woman’s trauma becomes the backdrop for a man’s growth, redemption, or moral reckoning. Her suffering is rarely her own story to tell. Instead, it serves to make the male character more complex, more heroic, or more "just." This framing not only erases the survivor’s voice but reinforces a deeply damaging belief, that women exist to be saved, rescued, or sacrificed for men to become better human beings. 

A Reflection of Deeper Socio-cultural Realities

The way violence, especially sexual violence, is portrayed in media isn’t happening in isolation. It mirrors larger systems of patriarchy, misogyny, and societal desensitization to the suffering of marginalized bodies. Under patriarchy, women’s bodies have historically been sites of control, punishment, and spectacle. Media often replicates this pattern, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes deliberately, packaging women's trauma for emotional impact, for awards, for ratings.

When narratives reduce a woman's pain to a device that fuels a man’s journey, it reinforces the idea that women exist primarily in relation to men, as victims to be avenged, beings to be protected, or catalysts for male transformation. This framing is not just creatively lazy; it is culturally dangerous.  It continues to uphold the belief that violence against women is inevitable, even necessary, for moral action or male redemption. It also sidelines survivors' agency, complexity, and voice, keeping them trapped in cycles of objectification and erasure, even within "well-meaning" stories.

When trauma is treated as entertainment, it numbs us not just to individual suffering but to the systemic violence that allows these stories to exist in the first place.

Moving Towards Ethical Storytelling

As a psychologist and as a consumer of media, I believe we urgently need more ethical, reflective storytelling. If the impact of a narrative depends on how violently, how graphically it portrays harm, then perhaps it’s time to question the strength of the story itself. There are ways to depict trauma with sensitivity and depth without resorting to sensationalism.

We owe it to survivors, and to ourselves, to tell stories that honor dignity, complexity, and truth.  Trauma is not entertainment. Survivors’ experiences are not spectacles to be consumed.

A Call for Responsibility

Good storytelling can build empathy, spark change, and offer healing. But only if we, as creators and consumers, are willing to move away from voyeurism and towards responsibility.

As I reflect on these patterns, I find myself asking:

• Can we tell stories about pain without inflicting more pain?

• Can we center survivors’ truths without exploiting their suffering for emotional effect?

These are uncomfortable questions. But perhaps sitting with this discomfort is exactly where real change begins.

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Hey! I’m Radhika, a counseling psychologist & movement therapy facilitator. Stories, Systems, and Self is a space where I reflect on how our lived experiences, mental health, and the systems we move through shape us and how we show up in the world. These aren’t answers, just perspectives I’ve been sitting with. Thank you for reading :)