I don’t know how many medics there are in the world who are sickened by the sight of the stuff, but in the Dominic Minghella (brother of The English Patient’s Anthony) British TV series Doc Martin, an excellent doctor is sidelined to a small village where he’s endlessly badgered about his horror of handling — in every sense — the ferrous fluid
The bludgeoning L’s of the term bloodlust turn my stomach, and yet so accurately capture in sound the meaning of the word, that you just can’t argue with its bite. When you say someone’s consumed by bloodlust you’re dispensing with diplomacy; calling a spade a guillotine quite rightly. As have Donald Trump and Israel’s Netanyahu, dropping their droopy D’s to gleefully wallow in relentless bloodletting.
Curdles the blood, I tell ya.
I seem to be inclined otherwise, alongside sizeable chunks of humanity (but with our cohorts steadily shrinking, are humane humans endangered?). Bloodshed is not only an abomination but also illogical. Why should one ever have to stoop to it, when we have so many ways around, and the brains to figure these out? Perhaps we abjure our little grey cells when we see red — the contemporary status quo. Whilst those pulling our strings only know avarice, like orange goons and tech bros.
TBH, I steer clear of cinematic bloodbaths too. If the new Frankenstein had me averting my eyes when the violence reached monstrous proportions, the vampire movie Sinners will have to be shunned as well, alas, despite its lipsmackingly great cast (with a double dose of the magnificently redblooded Michael B. Jordan as the cherry on top). Like life, the screen doesn’t have to be awash in the stuff, as subtlety elevates yarns just as much. Can you think of a Hitchcock film without skullduggery at its heart, and yet, how much gore does he actually depict? Bloodlessness can be a virtue.
Viz. impossible to achieve IRL, I’ll admit, as a woman and a mother particularly. Not because we’re more violent but less — the least likely to lash out physically — born of our biological impulses and social conditioning. But blood, as you know, is the woman’s lot — not just monthly visitor but lifelong attendant, and eternally unwanted too. Then, when motherhood arrives, adding to the million test samples siphoned out, there will be blood (absolutely oodles) at the delivery. Not to mention the eagle-eyed decades spent staunching trickles, and scarily sometimes, floods, of the crimson tide from our young ’uns, as they get into scrapes or catch bugs, in their wobbly, exploratory childhood.
That women are yo(l)ked to it, paradoxically, makes us less likely to want it spilt. Besides which, who loses more in wars than mothers, where the literal fruits of their labour, the apples of their eyes, are rendered cannon fodder? But not just mothers, or even parents, and not only when it drops on your doorstep, anyone with a conscience should oppose warmongering.
Nor does a pacifist have to be haematophobic, though I have a touch of it. I don’t know how many medics there are in the world who are sickened by the sight of the stuff, but in the Dominic Minghella (brother of The English Patient’s Anthony) British TV series Doc Martin, an excellent doctor is sidelined to a small village where he’s endlessly badgered about his horror of handling — in every sense — the ferrous fluid. Worse still, as the complexity of such a situation is very likely lost in an American sitcom, that a US remake is on its way feels a complete waste of television space (packed with piffle as it is).
In my youth, it was a perilous phobia to have, as the swooning and keeling over got me into absurd scrapes. Providing blood samples for health checks was an unusually risky business, and I’ve fallen from moving vehicles taking me home, more than once, in consequence! Bouncing off the road ragdoll-like, when ejected unconscious from a rickshaw, I managed to fracture my jaw in a manner that hasn’t healed to this day.
Call it an unwanted badge of resilience, or another crack in the ol’ spirit-keg, alongside perineum tears, fugitive gall bladders, cesarean scars and what-not, it exists as proof that an eventful life is often a bloody vale, where the last thing you want is further plasma-plastering of our planet.
Blood, you see, defines us, but not in the way suggested — via shared DNA. The harping on “bloodlines”, of similar traits “being in the blood”, or sticking together with one’s clan, community, or compatriots, because “blood is thicker than water”, misses the point.
Common ground is great, but if we don’t want it soaked in scarlet, then how we approach the shedding of blood of those we see as different, is what marks us out as human. How do we feel about the widespread bloodletting around us today; do we take it or leave it? Does it feel like a stain on our conscience even when distant? Isn’t attempting to turn the hawkish from conflict like drawing blood from stone? Have you tried it, if in a small way? Or, are you deterred by the wounding slurs invariably flung at you, of “libtard” and “bleeding-heart liberal”?
Biologically speaking as well, never let those red cells drain. Bolting your greens and iron regularly will keep ’em in good nick. There’s a battle raging with the bloodthirsty for the soul of our planet, and pacifists must be armed; with our pens, placards, petitions, votes and altruism, above all! The last is our not-so-secret weapon, never wielded by those with blood on their hands, making it our exclusive preserve. Spread that goodwill to nearly everybody to harry the powers-that-be, and this study in scarlet can still return to the pleasant and green.
But we must be bleddy quick.
