Media Violence Against Women
In the United States, as well as throughout the majority of the world, people are bombarded with information on a daily basis. The majority of the information that it seen or heard is a direct result of someone aiming the information at the masses. Whether it is a company that would like us to buy it's product, or a newspaper that would have us believe a certain "fact" that they are reporting, someone has decided how the information will be presented. This notion brings me to the issue of how our society perpetuates violence against women through the use of the media and television shows. I would argue that, because we are socialized on a daily basis to believe certain ideas, this same process contributes to the violence aimed toward women. This encompasses the concept that impressionable young men may remain unaware of the impact of this violence by the omission of certain facts from news articles. It is also important to see how the media contributes to the way in which the abused women see their role in the "creation" of this violence. Furthermore, I would reason that these media outlets create a certain type of apathy in our society that has caused many people to either blame the victim, or just turn their heads and consider domestic violence a "family" problem, thus ignoring the legal ramifications altogether. This area must be understood in order to determine how the distortion of the ideas that are being expressed, through the use of television and magazines, are directly related to the societal values being represented.
The first issue that I would like to analyze is how we as a society encourage violence against women. Images flow into our homes everyday th...
... middle of paper ...
...ved from our own lives. Only then can we decided whether these portrayals are in fact the truth, or just more rhetoric being feed to us from the patriarchal view point of modern media outlets.
Works Cited
Berns, Nancy. "My Problem and -How I Solved it: Domestic Violence in Women's Magazines". Sociology
Quarterly. 40 (Winter 1999) : 85-109
Carmody, Dianne Cyr. Entertaining Violence. New York 1998. "Mixed Messages: Images of Domestic Violence
on "Reality " Television. Ed. Mark Fishman and Gray Cavander. Aldine De Gruyter
Lemmey, Dorothy. "Collective Silence for Collective Violence". <1999 http//www.Feminista.com/
v1n12/lemmey.html : 1-6>
Roland, John. "Additional Amendments to the Constitution". <http://www.constitution.org/cons/afterten.htm>
Throughout the drama, The Crucible, the characters are faced with chilling choices as they maneuver through a world that has lost its moral compass. The crucibles, the serious tests, of their dearly held values put them in the position of having to figure out what is right and true in a world turned upside down. The value of truth is tested when lies are rewarded and truth brings suffering, shame and the scaffold of the gallows. The value of justice is challenged by a system that comes to be based on coerced confessions, unsubstantiated charges and self-serving political scheming. The value of love, be it of husband and wife or of friends and community, is put to the test where true love is exemplified by fatal choices.
Proctor concentrates on his name, because it would be destroyed of he signs. He finally comes to a true understanding of what a good reputation means, and his defense of his name enables him to muster the courage to die heroically.
In today’s society, children spend a lot of time in front of the television surfing through channels to find interesting things to watch. George Gerbner, author of Television violence; The Power and Peril, quotes, “Television, the mainstream of the new cultural environment, has brought about a radical change in the way children grew up and learn in our society” (Gebner). Children should be learning new things everyday from school and parents, not from talk shows that represent the domestic violence. Violence affects children a lot more than it would adults because children are easily convinced and more gullible. Since children are easily convinced, it is more likely for them to believe what happens on talk shows is real life and that someone is not staging the show. When watching daytime talk shows, children are watching and learning the social interactions between people who cheat, fight, steal, and are sexually deviant. Over time children could start to believe that these acts of violence are the norm. Landrea Wells a student from the University of Florida studied children and television, she states, “The general concern about violence both then and now includes the fact that there have been consistently high levels of violence throughout much of television history. Children are more vulnerable to violent acts due to the fact that they are in early stages of developing behavior patterns, attitudes, and values about social interaction”( http://iml.
"Violence against women-it's a men's issue." Jackson Katz:. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
Persecution has been a round for sometime and can be traced historically from the time of Jesus to the present time. Early Christians were persecuted for their faith in the hands of the Jews. Many Christians have been persecuted in history for their allegiance to Christ and forced to denounce Christ and others have been persecuted for failing to follow the laws of the land. The act of persecution is on the basis of religion, gender, race, differing beliefs and sex orientation. Persecution is a cruel and inhumane act that should not be supported since people are tortured to death. In the crucible, people were persecuted because of alleged witchcraft.
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.
In the past century, America has made great leaps in terms of equality. With the efforts made by the civil rights and suffrage movements, all people gained the right to vote. We are even moving forward with marriage equality, and currently fifteen states recognize same-sex marriage. But regardless of all of our progressive institutional movements forward, we continue to socially oppress women. Men’s violence against women has grown to be an internationally recognized epidemic, and will continue to grow unless measures be made to stop it. Domestic violence continues to be prevalent in the lives of many families, and is the primary cause of homelessness in half of cases for women in children. Many women have been forced to alter their behaviors out of fear of being sexually or physically assaulted. One out of every three women is sexually or physically abused in their lifetimes. The first thing that comes to mind is, there are a lot of people abusing women out there. Many people with opposing ideas may claim that men can be victims of violence perpetrated by women, but in instances not used for self-defense, it is rarely part of a systematic pattern of power and control through force or threat of force. In fact, 99% of rape is perpetrated by men, but when confronting men about the issue of violence against women, it is often combated with denial. Jackson Katz writes in his book, The Macho Paradox, “We take comfort in the idea of the aforementioned child-rapist murderer as a horrible aberration. A monster. We’re nothing like him.”(Katz 30). The sad truth is that most women who are raped are raped by men they know, or even men they love. Many men have a hard time believing that saying that most violence is perpetuated by men does not...
Renzetti, C. (1999). The challenge to Feminism posed by Women’s use of violence in intimate relationships.
2.) National Research Council. Understanding Violence Against Women, Washington, DC: National Academy of Press. 1996.
Does entertainment influence society's attitude towards violent behavior? In order to fully answer this question we must first understand what violence is. Violence is the use of one's powers to inflict mental or physical injury upon another; examples of this would be rape or murder. Violence in entertainment reaches the public by way of television, movies, plays, music, and novels. Through the course of this essay it will be proven that violence in entertainment is a major factor in the escalation of violence in society, once this is proven we will take all of the evidence that has been shown throughout this paper and come to a conclusion as to whether or not violence in entertainment is justified and whether or not it should be censored.
Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is a story about Puritans, a group of people not happy with the path religion was taking and were in search of reform. The Puritans in this play live in Salem, Massachusetts and it takes place in 1692. In this story Arthur Miller tells the reader about the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials. The Red Scare was Miller’s way of addressing mass hysteria induced by ignorant people searching for trust and acceptance in the colonies. The Salem Witch Trials are an example of the society’s needs to conform to the political, social, and religious beliefs of the time. The girls and their actions in The Crucible represent the unknown and the threat to the court system. Each of the women in Arthur Miller’s play represent and display many different views and characteristics that are still present to this day.
Weiler, Jeanne. “Girls and Violence.” Electronic ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education (1994). June 1999 < http://ericweb.tc.columbia.edu/digest/dig143.asp>.
The mass media over the years has had such a profound role in creating an image on how women should be viewed. From their appearance to what their duties are in everyday life, the media has made sure to depict unrealistic images of women. These images have caused not only the male public but women themselves to believe that they must attain a certain kind of body or occupation to fit into society. Women often feel obligated and pressured to comply to this praised image of perfection.
Portrayal of Women in the Media Gender is the psychological characteristics and social categories that are created by human culture. Gender is the concept that humans express their gender when they interact with one another. Messages about how a male or female is supposed to act come from many different places. Schools, parents, and friends can influence a person.
An article by Christina N Baker, Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A content Analysis of Black And White Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazine emphasizes on how women’s are portrayed in media such as advertisements and Magazine. The author analyzes how media has a huge impact in our society today; as a result, it has an influence on race and gender role between men and women.