Critic’s Notebook:  Ray Rice video shows where we draw line on violence

The new fall season hasn’t even begun, and already we’ve seen this year’s most important piece of television: the Ray Rice video.

Caught by a casino elevator security camera, the Baltimore Raven’s player punches Janay Palmer, his then-fiancée, now wife, in the face, knocking her against the wall and unconscious. Then he matter-of-factly drags her mostly into the hall.

Just a few moments of film, but a hundred and one ramifications.

Certainly for Rice, who after receiving a mere two-game suspension in July for the attack, was suspended indefinitely from the NFL. Also for the NFL, now being excoriated for its initial leniency, made even worse by Commissioner Roger Goodell’s absurd attempt at an explanation: that they hadn’t seen the video.

Surely a simple description of “the event” — he hit his fiancée so hard in the face that she lost consciousness — should be enough. For the NFL, for Ravens fans, for the general citizenry.

But it wasn’t, was it? Although Rice was charged with aggravated assault after the incident seven months ago, the public outcry didn’t hit the high decibels until TMZ released the video of the knockout blow three days ago.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but too often it takes a video to shake a nation. Too often we either don’t believe each other or our imaginations fail us. We need to see it — police brutality, a nation in revolt, a man hitting a woman — to believe it.

Bam, and Janay’s head hits the wall, her body slides to the floor. Her head bounces on her neck, this way and that; with just a little more force, or a different angle, Rice could have killed her.

He didn’t, mercifully. Janay Rice is alive and well and blaming the media for ruining her husband’s career, sparking, of course, another wave of commentary about the psychology of abuse, the meaning of privacy, the slipperiness of intent.

And the general outrage; in terms of promoting the awareness of violence against women, the Ray Rice video is up there with the works of Susan Brownmiller and films like “The Burning Bed.” Members of the NFL may have initially thought the situation was more complicated than a man viciously beating a woman, but the video makes that a difficult position to take; it is simply horrifying to watch.

Which, ironically, is rather reassuring. Despite the oft-criticized escalation of fictional violence, we are still appropriately horrified by the real thing. The Rodney King beating, the shooting of Iranian protester Neda Agha Soltan, the James Foley beheading, a recent video of teens in Delaware attacking a mentally disabled man, all shocked us, galvanized us, broke our collective heart.

And now this.

Police procedurals, franchise films, video games all regularly feature violence, especially against women. To the consternation of many, rape has become the new favorite plot twist.

In many highly regarded dramas, the leading men, and women, regularly commit far more egregious and sadistic crimes than what happened in the casino elevator. And yet the audience usually forgives and is often more concerned with motivation than the repercussions.

But we are not hardened, as many fear, nor are we inured. Apparently the human brain remains sophisticated enough to separate fact from fiction.

Those who saw the punch Ray Rice delivered knew it was not a metaphor or a symptom. There was nothing artistically evocative about the moments that followed, as he dragged his lover’s inert body out of the elevator, leaving one shoe behind, nudging her legs with his foot and attempting to hoist her upright.

If this was Rice hitting bottom, OK, but our first reaction was not, as it often is with an antihero, concern for the damage he had done to his own soul.

Our first reaction was “Oh, my God, is that woman all right? That man is crazy/abusive/out of control and something has to be done because that was just awful.”

Which is precisely as it should be.

On the screen as on the page, we use fiction to sort through our fears, to examine our failings, to reexamine traditions and redefine the characteristics we admire and those we abhor. In doing so, things can get bloody and violent, disturbing and occasionally depraved.

But what we accept in fiction is not the same as what we accept in fact, and as the reaction to the Rice video shows, we are, thankfully, very clear about the difference.