Galtung’s Triangle of Violence and Cinema: The Fracture Beneath the Visible
Johan Galtung’s concept of the “triangle of violence” reveals that social conflict is not limited to the visible moments of eruption; rather, violence is nourished by deeper, historically embedded, and structural layers. At the base of the triangle lies structural violence, the systematic disadvantages imposed on certain communities by political-economic arrangements: inequalities in the distribution of resources, barriers to institutional access, segregations in housing and labor markets, and state mechanisms operating in exclusionary ways. This form of violence is not physical, yet it directly shapes individuals’ possibilities for life. Above it lies cultural violence, which legitimizes this structure through social beliefs, ideologies, stereotypes, and representational practices. Therefore, direct or visible violence; assault, conflict, murder, lynching, is often merely the tip of the iceberg, the inevitable consequence of an underlying order of invisible violence.
Cinema occupies a privileged position in sensing both visible and invisible violence. The camera can reveal not only actions but also the ideological functions of spaces, the institutional pressures acting upon bodies, and the dramatic rhythm of class tensions. The following four films; Parasite, System Crasher, Do the Right Thing, and La Haine, make visible, each through its unique aesthetic strategy, the different dimensions of Galtung’s typology of violence, especially the forms of invisible violence organized by the state and by society. These films demonstrate that violence is less a matter of individual pathology than a political architecture.
La Haine (1995): The State’s Invisible Violence and the Bodies of Banlieue Youth Suspended in Time
La Haine stands as one of the sharpest cinematic embodiments of Galtung’s violence theory. The film reveals not only direct violence but also the existential violence of the state; the intertwined forms of structural and cultural violence. The banlieues are spatial products of France’s neoliberal and postcolonial policies: unemployment, inadequate public services, ethnic segregation, spatial isolation, and intensified security politics. Here, the state functions not merely as an administrative apparatus but as a mechanism that produces violence.
Throughout the film, the police represent the visible face of the state’s direct violence; yet the deeper oppression lies in the structural order that necessitates their presence. The youths’ lack of future, their exclusion from labor and education, and the symbolic and material closure of the city center constitute concrete manifestations of the state’s invisible violence. Police harassment is not an isolated “incident” but a normalized form of state domination over banlieue bodies.
Cultural violence operates through media representations, public discourse, and the Republican value system. Banlieue youth—many of immigrant origin—are never fully incorporated into the category of “French citizenship.” Their marginal identities are represented as threats or problems within state discourse. The recurring “falling man” story in the film is not merely a personal metaphor but a normalized allegory of social collapse produced by banlieue policy.
The direct violence of the final fatal encounter is simply the eruption of tensions accumulated over years through the state’s invisible violence. This outcome is not accidental; it is structurally preprogrammed.
Parasite (2019): The Silent Violence of Class Architecture
Parasite is almost a didactic illustration of class-based invisible violence, conceptualized through space. Bong Joon-ho’s vertical spatial model; the Kim family in their semi-basement apartment and the modernist Park residence atop a hill, transforms Galtung’s structural violence into an architectural allegory. The Kims’ damp, foul-smelling, sewer-adjacent flat is not merely a dwelling; it is a form of confinement produced by capitalist organization. The Park home, though presented as a “neutral” ideal of modernity, offers freedom and spaciousness only as functions of economic privilege.
This spatial divide is inseparable from cultural violence. The Parks’ politeness appears “nonviolent,” yet the language they use to describe the Kims encodes poverty as an inherent trait. The recurring motif of “smell” becomes the most potent metaphor of cultural violence: poverty is rendered as a bodily trace that disturbs bourgeois sensibility. The Kims’ internalization of this cultural hierarchy reveals the impact of structural violence on the individual: self-diminishment, the desire to remain unseen, belief in fate.
The film’s climactic direct violence; the bloody garden-party sequence, is not a personal outburst but the inevitable result of spatial and structural compulsion. Parasite shows clearly that violence is produced not between individuals but by classed spatiality itself.
System Crasher (2019): Institutional Politics of the Body and the Violence Carried by a Child
System Crasher renders violence visible on the body of a child, yet throughout the film the underlying concern is not individual rage but the institutional pressures generated by the social welfare system. Benni’s behaviors; shouting, attacking others, self-harm, appear as instances of direct violence, but the film continually reminds us that these eruptions stem from pervasive structural violence: deficiencies in foster care, rigid institutional protocols, understaffed facilities, and shrinking public budgets. This system leads to the child being labeled “unmanageable.” Galtung’s notion of cultural violence operates fully here: labels imposed on the child conceal systemic failures, transforming institutional shortcomings into a supposed defect of personality.
The state’s invisible violence in System Crasher manifests through bureaucratic logic. The system that is supposed to protect the child reduces her to a case number; rather than offering love or support, it produces reports, assessments, and procedures. Benni’s rebellion is not individual deviance but an echo of the institutionalized violence inflicted upon her. Thus, the child perceived as the perpetrator of violence is in fact its primary victim; the system retraumatizes her while framing her outbursts as “personal problems.” Invisible violence is thereby reframed as an individual pathology.
Do the Right Thing (1989): Racialized Space and the Eruption of Historical Memory
Do the Right Thing is one of the clearest cinematic articulations of Galtung’s concept of cultural violence. By tracing the everyday rhythms of a neighborhood, Spike Lee demonstrates how racial inequality persists not only through institutions but through gestures, language, and regimes of representation. The oppressive heat throughout the film is more than atmosphere; it symbolizes accumulated historical pressure, fed by the everyday invisibility of inequality.
Residents’ economic precarity, their encounters with police, and their modes of representation form the foundations of structural violence. The police are not merely agents of physical violence but extensions of the state’s historical racial policies. Galtung’s invisible violence fuses with state presence: constant police patrols, disciplinary gazes upon the neighborhood, and a state discourse that frames the Black male body as a latent threat.
The direct violence at the film’s end; Radio Raheem’s killing and the ensuing uprising, is visible, but Spike Lee frames it as the eruption of historical, cultural, and structural violence. This violence is not the result of a police “mistake” but the logical outcome of long-standing state policies of racialization.
Conclusion: A Cinematic Map of Invisible Violence
These four films not only exemplify the layers of Galtung’s triangle of violence but also reveal how the invisible violence of the state, institutions, and society is naturalized as an unavoidable reality. Violence is not the product of individual anger but the organizational logic of power a political architecture shaping spaces, bodies, identities, and futures.
Parasite illuminates classed spatiality;
System Crasher exposes institutional child policies;
Do the Right Thing reveals the long history of racialized relations;
La Haine clearly articulates how state policy toward the banlieue produces violence.
These films demonstrate that invisible violence is effective precisely because it is invisible. The state’s routinized practices, spatial segregations, cultural representations, and economic regulations form the primary sources of violence. Direct violence is merely the moment the structure cracks; the real question is why the structure collapses.
Author: Nil Birinci