L ate in Claire-Louise Bennett’s novel Big Kiss, Bye-Bye , the unnamed protagonist goes to Montevideo to participate in a ‘panel discussion about violent scenes from movies’. She had hesitated to accept the invitation:

I avoid as much as possible celluloid depictions of violent behaviour for the reason that it unnerves and depresses me gravely to be confronted by the cruelty that human beings have a perversely inventive and unlimited capacity for. I know very well that evil exists. Some years ago I met a serial killer in fact, though he was simply a carpenter as far as anyone knew at the time, and perhaps this brush with an innocuous looking exponent of unmitigated wickedness is why I generally prefer to expose my consciousness to artistic works that are in collusion with the sublim

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