One way of watering down the effects of violence is to approach it in a more lighthearted way. I don't mean to say that you laugh when somebody has their arm sawn off, but you can diffuse fear with humour.
“What we need to do is really improve energy efficiency standards, develop in full scale renewable and alternative energy and use the one resource we have in abundance, our creativity.”
“Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Nonperformance can always be explained away.”