Violence in the media and Its Effect on Society
"It was a scene straight out of Oscar-winningAmerican Beauty"
This quote sums up my view on the media. It's a quote out of a
magazine article about Kristin Rossum and the murder of her husband.
The media is a source of communication. It includes television,
cinema, video, radio, newspapers e.t.c. It is inescapable.
The media plays a large role in society; it defines your life and the
way you think. I will be proving this by analysing case studies I have
done on films and magazine articles. The aspects I will be discussing
to represent the role that the media plays in promoting violence
within society are how the media presents the violence, how the
audience responds to the violence, other factors which contribute to
violence in society, my case studies and what they proved and finally
how the media protects society.
The media presents the violence in many ways. I will be explaining
these ways by analysing two of my contrasting case studies as
examples. There are many different narrative contexts that the media
have to take into consideration. They are the fictional setting, the
character involvement, the form of violence and the physical setting.
The fictional setting is the type of programme or film. My case study
examples are Beauty and the Beast, which is a cartoon, and Enemy at
the Gates, which is a historical film. There are many other fictional
settings, for example, British crime drama, western film/TV series,
science fiction, comedy, romance, and thriller.
The character involvement is who is committing the crime and who is
receiving the violence for example the character involvement in one of
the scenes in Beauty and the Beast is a beast and a male (Gaston). The
character involvement in Enemy at the Gates is German soldiers and the
Soviet Union.
The form of violence is the type of violence being used. Some examples
of types of violence are shooting, stabbing, an explosion, a fight and
physical. In Beauty and the Beast the violence is mainly physical
American society emphasizes violence in the media. Television shows, movies, and video games, are all outlets researchers often place blame when considering the effects media has on violent behavior. Television shows, movies, and video games frequently revolve around violent plots, characters die in gruesome ways, and violence against others is common place. “Social learning is the branch of behavior theory most relevant to criminology. Social learning theorist, most notably Albert Bandura, argue that people are not actually born with the ability to act violently, but that they learned to be aggressive through their life experiences.” (PG. 161)
Gina Marchetti, in her essay "Action-Adventure as Ideology," argues that action- adventure films implicitly convey complex cultural messages regarding American values and the "white American status quo." She continues to say that all action-adventure movies have the same basic structure, including plot, theme, characterization, and iconography. As ideology, this film genre tacitly expresses social norms, values, and morals of its time. Marchetti's essay, written in 1989, applies to films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Rambo: First Blood II. However, action-adventure films today seem to be straying farther away from her generalizations about structure, reflecting new and different cultural norms in America. This changing ideology is depicted best in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), which defies nearly every concept Marchetti proposes about action-adventure films; and it sets the stage for a whole new viewpoint of action in the '90's.
The world today has a variety of problems and violence is one of the most
The media and entertainment play a very crucial role in our perception of violence in society. Exposure to violence in the media, including television, movies, music, and video games helps us construct our own perspective on violence. According to Joel Best, his theory on random violence states that random violence and violence, in general, is patternless, pointless, and leads to the deterioration of society. Many examples can be given from national and international media coverage on various random violence acts. There are many sides to the debate about whether or not violence in the media affects us and how prevalent it is in our society. The focal discussion is the influence of violence on people through the mass media: movies, television,
Bang! Bang! Little children running and screaming; terrified that they are going to die. The shooter walks into the room heavily armed, with a crazed look in his eye. There’s a women near a closet and small group of 1st graders behind her. He starts to go toward the little room to finish what he started. Then the young woman steps in front of the unstable gunman to shield the students from harm. A fatal shot is fired and the young teacher lies dead. That woman was Victoria Soto, a hero in the Sandy Hook Shooting, who risked her life to save her students from that delusional man, Adam Lanza. The horrific incident that took place on December 14, 2012 took the innocent lives of 26 students and teachers. Lanza did have a mental illness, but that isn’t all to blame. The shooter was known to play and watch violent movie and games (Aliprandini and Finley). This shows that media violence can be linked to aggressive behavior and that violent media can affect the minds of some young children and teens. Studies in the past decade have helped prove that sometimes the media can be bad for kids. The outcome of playing first-person shooter games could end up in innocent lives dying like in Newtown.
While violence is not new to the human race, it is an accumulative epidemic that is taking over today’s society. With firearms, ammunition and explosives becoming more accessible, this is resulting into more violent behavior and less serious consequences. Violence in the media plays an imperative role in the etiology of violent and hostile behavior in the world today. While it is difficult to determine which age group have experienced more televised violence, studies have shown that the consequences of aggressive and violent behavior have brought a great deal of human agonizing, suffering, pain and financial destitution to our society, as well as an atmosphere of apprehension, distress and doubt. Research indicates that violence in the media has not just increased in quantity; it has also become more explicit, sexual and sadistic. Most acts of violence in media and on television are laughed off and there are no consequences for these actions.
There is a strong agreement among American society that violence in the country is on the rise. It is easy to see why this is a strong argument among the American people, especially because of the rising popularity of violent video games and television programs. However, as these violent video games and television shows are creating their own place in our society, the reports of violence among children are escalating. This correlation has been studied extensively in the scientific community in an attempt to discover whether media violence does negatively impact children but there has yet to be a consensus. There is a split between those that believe that children are becoming more violent because they are exposed to violent media and those that believe that correlation is not causation, who argue that media violence does not have any notable effect the youth.
The media holds an enormous amount of control and influence over society and the way
According to Craig A. Anderson and Leonard Berkowitz (2003, pg 81), for more than five decades, Americans have been concerned about the constant portrayal of violence in the mass media and the harm that these portrayals might do to youth. Reflecting to this concern, several major researches have been carried out to examine on the association between immature media users’ exposure to television violence and their aggressive behavior.
A massive amount of violence is being displayed in the media and has become harder to avoid. Violence is everywhere. We experience it in various ways, such as rap music, television, or first person shooter video games. We hear rap music and remember the vicious lyrics. We constantly watch celebrities commit crime on television and observe people being slaughtered multiple times a day. Youth can virtually do the slaughtering of the other characters while playing first person shooter video games. These forms violence in our media is overwhelming. To hear, to see, and to virtually experience the negative actions have a negative affect on the youth, especially if more than one of these influences are being experienced by the same individual.
Video games have become a part of our culture in America as well as around the world. There are a large variety of video games to be played such as sports, non-violent, and violent games. The most dominant genre of video games that out-sells all others is the violent video game. It is hard to explain why they outsell all the other genres, but one reason may be because they allow users to turn their aggression into something simple which may result in less anger for that person. Video games have more recently started to be used as recruitment tools for branches of the United States Military with games such as “America’s Army.” One of the most popular video games of all time was Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Despite being one of the most violent video games ever, it sold a record numbers.
“It’s not just what the media do to us, but what we do to the media
According to Gerard Jones, violent media can actually have positive effects on young people because children will feel rage and anger just like anyone else. He explains that children need to experience anger so that they can learn to understand and control it. Jones also believes that violent media are a positive influence on children because it can make the child braver. Jones explains how violent media can help a child view the problems around them and help motivate them to fix it, just like a superhero would. Jones makes some good points. For example, he brings up the quote of Melanie Moore, an urban teen psychologist, who said, “Children need violent entertainment in order to explore inescapable feelings that they’ve been taught to deny,
Media is something used in the daily lives of society for entertainment. The media ranges from music, movies, and video games. However there is a lot of controversy over whether or not violent media promotes violence in real life. Most of society believes it is just used for entertainment, nothing else. Others believe, with the recent shootings and bombings, that the violent media links to theses events. Violence in media is just a risk factor that can cause aggressive behavior among observers. So to an extent, violent media does cause violence in real life; however, knowing the difference between reality and fantasy is also a factor.
Has there been an increase in violence in American media, or is it just that there is more information being produced and consumed? Between 24-hour news cycles, Facebook, Twitter, and many other types of social media, information is available more quickly than ever before. Who is to blame then? Is it the video games, books, radio, music, TV, or the fact that we are getting our information faster and in many more forms that is to blame? Jim Morrison, the front man for the Doors, strikes a chord when he says, "Whoever controls the media, controls the mind." Is it possible that media has a greater impact on violence today (Gyln, 2016)? I would also like to look at the motivational and emotional benefits of video games. Given today’s cell phones,