I grew up on horror movies and science fiction and action films and anime. A lot of it was violent. Some of it was grotesque. Bodies getting torn apart. Blood everywhere. Big dramatic fights where people get destroyed.
I still love that stuff. I never felt like I had to outgrow it just because I became more reflective about life or because I became a Quaker.
There is art inside violent storytelling. Violence should not always be avoided or looked away from. In certain contexts it deepens the experience of the person watching. When you watch horror or body horror or survival movies it appeals to something primal. It activates that part of your brain that asks how would I survive this and how do I avoid this. It is not about celebrating violence. It is about understanding danger and survival.
As a Quaker I oppose large scale violence like war and systems that dominate people. I do not believe in aggression for power. But I do believe in self defense. I believe that if someone is attacked they have a right to protect themselves. Where things get complicated is intent. Why is the violence happening. Is it about ego. Is it about cruelty. Is it about protection.
That is why Letterkenny resonates with me.
In Letterkenny and in Shoresy the violence follows rules. People square up. They look each other in the eye. They use fists. They accept what happens. And then it ends. There is usually respect after. There is rarely an ongoing vendetta.
The only time violence is truly looked down on in those shows is when someone breaks the code. If someone sucker punches another person or hits someone who is not ready that is treated as cowardly. Fairness matters.
Before any fight happens there is almost always trash talking. There is chirping and shit talking and verbal sparring. That is another form of violence. Words can wound. Words can demean.
I remember Marc Maron talking about punching with his mouth. He described how in his relationships he would attack with words because of his own anxiety and insecurity. That stuck with me. Letterkenny understands that idea. The characters use language as a way to test each other. Sometimes it is funny and poetic. Sometimes it crosses a line.
Trash talk in sports gets judged in strange ways. There is a cultural bias where Black athletes celebrating or talking trash are criticized while white athletes doing the same thing are praised as competitive. That double standard is dishonest. Larry Bird was one of the most relentless trash talkers in basketball history and he is still respected. Trash talking is not inherently good or bad and it is not racial. It is performative and contextual.
Letterkenny treats it that way. It does not pretend silence equals class. It shows that words have power and that power needs limits.
Wayne and Shoresy operate under a moral code. They are not about domination. They are about fairness and respect. They do not attack someone who cannot defend themselves. They do not escalate endlessly.
As someone shaped by punk rock and by Quaker faith that balance makes sense to me. I have been in mosh pits that look chaotic from the outside but have an internal code. You pick people up. You do not cheap shot someone. There is aggression but there is also community.
That is what I see in these shows.
I do not watch them because I love violence. I watch them because they treat conflict honestly. They show that words can hurt. They show that sometimes fists fly. But they also show that conflict can end and that respect can follow.
There is something poetic about that.
