There will be blood ... can you handle it?

Shakespeare's "Hamlet" ends with four homicides, and a stage littered with corpses after "many princes at a shot" have been " bloodily struck."

But this Elizabethan tragedy is tame compared to the bloody rampages in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and "Titus Andronicus." Or the modern, gore-spattered plays by such "in-yer-face" British scribes as Martin McDonagh and Sarah Kane.

Why, then, can some of us take stage violence in stride — but can't bring ourselves to see "No Country for Old Men" at the local cineplex?

"No Country for Old Men" is no cheesy slasher pic, but a certified must-see for film buffs. It's been showered with praise and prizes — topped off last week by a best-picture Oscar. And it's the latest from the uber-hip screen team of brothers Ethan and Joel Coen.

But the prospect of a film laced with grisly mayhem is keeping some film buffs like me away — from the Coens' movie, from "American Gangster," "Eastern Promises," "In Bruges," "Sweeney Todd," among other flicks.

If homicidal savagery alone were the sticking point, you'd think people who can't take blood-and-guts brutality onscreen would avoid it onstage.

In the theater, Stephen Sondheim's dark musical "Sweeney Todd" conveys the same grim saga of a Victorian barber-turned-serial-killer that the Tim Burton film imparts — complete with slasher victims being ground into hamburger.

My own tolerance of such stage mayhem, but hesitancy to watch "No Country For Old Men," got me wondering about the nature of violence in different media, and our reactions to it.

A history of violence

First off, I'm not protesting graphic violence on moral or religious grounds. Nor do I advocate censorship of the arts in any form. Artists have the constitutional right of free expression. And we viewers can either tune in, or turn away.

It's also true that savage deeds have fueled great drama since time immemorial. The ancient Greek theater explored such murderous taboos as patricide (in"Oedipus Rex") and infanticide ("Medea").

Sophocles and his peers pinpointed conflict as the essence of drama. And they brilliantly depicted how cycles of killing and revenge can unleash political, familial and social chaos.

But in ancient Greek tragedy, all the murders occurred offstage. Not so in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Nor in 19th-century Grand Guignol melodrama. Nor on Broadway and in regional theater today.

Vicarious violence

So do we need faux carnage to remain civilized? Harold Schechter argues that brief in his provocative book "Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment" (St. Martin's Press).

He contends that because we are "an innately violent species," grisly entertainment is always crowd-pleasing — far preferable to the public displays of real torture, sacrifice and execution we have been capable of at queasy historical junctures.

Make-believe mayhem, Schecter posits, suppresses our worst impulses by letting us "vent safely, in a controlled, socially acceptable, vicarious way, those undying primal impulses which ... need somehow to be expressed ... "

Whether enacted violence is a social safety valve or a trigger of "copycat crimes" is the crux of long, heated debate and many research studies.

But for most of us, the consumption of violent entertainment is more than a scientific, moral or aesthetic choice. It's also dictated by our nervous systems, our life experiences — and by the medium.

Big-screen realism

We expect that in a well-crafted film rife with beatings and killings, the violence will be far more realistic than what we see in a live performance.

Elaborate makeup and sophisticated visual and sound editing make for more lifelike butchery. Images of brains splattering, guts spilling, lungs gurgling can turn a movie house into a virtual ER unit.

Plays rife with carnage just can't fake us out so well. Even Martin McDonagh's "The Lieutenant of Inishmore," a savage comedy about a crazed Irish terrorist, can't convince us (for a couple of hours) that the blood is not fake and the bullets are not blanks.

Our proximity to live actors, paradoxically, makes their humanity more immediate and their stage actions more imitative and symbolic. And the ritual of actors shedding their roles for their final bows provides subliminal relief of order restored — after even the bleakest bloodbath.

Deadly suspense

Films tend to offer less comfort after a murder spree. Whether mowed down by gunfire or wiped out with more novel viciousness, the dead turn into props — undetailed, unmourned, less worthy of our compassion.

Movies are also far better at ratcheting up suspense. Alfred Hitchcock realized (as do his cinematic progeny) that it isn't the grisly deed that hits the audience hardest. It is the expertly manipulative buildup, the white-knuckle dread.

Agonizing suspense is the goal of many a filmmaker. But to what end? Cheap thrills, sure. But at best, insight into la bête humaine.

Nigel Andrews of the Financial Times is one of many critics who has trolled for meaning in the current "cinema of cruelty" wave. In his view, this spate of movie violence is about "America talking to itself," confronting its worst fears and most destructive desires.

A personal reaction

Yet even the best filmmakers pay a price for extended violence. It can be so disturbing to a viewer's neurons, so bone-chilling, that a flight-or-fight instinct kicks in. Your adrenaline spikes. Your mind freezes. And you either zone out — or head for the exit.

What others write off as scaredy-cat squeamishness may be a hard-wired sensitivity to images of cruelty. Or the lingering trauma of real violence.

Consider my own case. In my 20s, I was mugged on a quiet San Francisco street by several drug-crazed young men.

When my companion didn't hand over his wallet fast enough, one of the muggers put a gun to my temple and threatened to blow my head off. In that instant, I knew he was fully capable of ending my short life without blinking.

Before that, I had no qualms about seeing arty, grisly film fare like "Bonnie and Clyde" or "The Wild Bunch." They were only movies, after all.

But though I could still handle violent plays, and cartoonish film gore, watching realistic and extreme bloodletting became excruciating. And the suspense leading up to a vicious rape, assault or murder felt unendurable.

My own brush with violence was minor compared to what combat veterans and assault victims suffer. But to this day it prevents me from blotting out the vulnerability and humanity of every character onscreen — even the "bad guys."

That is why I'll see "Hamlet" again, but need to pass on "No Country for Old Men." And I know I'm not alone.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com