As I sat in Alexander Hall at Invitation to Excellence, I looked around at the faces as the segment from The Dark Night played. I was struck by the faces of the students in the room—some were amused to an extent and the others were nearly expressionless—as they watched Batman pound The Joker’s head onto a table. The thought “how has the gore of movies desensitized our culture to the violence around them?” ran through my mind as I watched the students, products of our culture’s repugnant media.
Statistics show, according to the American Psychiatric Association, that by eighteen years of age, an adolescent in the United States will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence. These figures are staggering. It would help explain why people slow down their cars when they see a car accident: to them it is only entertainment. Through the media, we, as a nation, are extinguishing the correct emotional responses to the tragedies around us. I heard a story of a man who was sitting in an airport. It was right after the tsunami had struck the coasts of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and many other lands near the Indian Ocean back in 2004. As he sat there, he saw a news station play footage from the devastation in Sri Lanka. After watching the recording for a little while, he looked around he realized that no one seemed to be paying attention to this tragic event. However, right after this a celebrity break up came onto the news station and the man noticed how everyone’s attention was quickly attentive to the story. As a nation, Americans have become desensitized to the violence all around them; it is only entertainment to them.
By making violence a form of entertainment we have become nihilistic in a sense. The violence found ...
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... movies with violent acts of murder repeatedly; they think that seeing this carnage before them does not affect them. However, they are wrong. They become calloused and unable to sympathize with the hurt and pain around them. They may find that it is hard to understand how to cope with a death when you have used death for entertainment for so long.
There are certainly other ways that the media has desensitized people to violence, I have only scratched the surface of this question. Yet, I believe that is necessary that someone looks into it deeper, because if not we are still in the predicament of making light of death and life itself. Something has to change where next time a see a violent scene with other teenagers, they would look away or something in them would click that what they are viewing is right, that they would stop just staring right back at the screen.
2. According to Sobchack, contemporary screen violence greatly differs than portrayals of violence in years past. Today, violent scenes are careless and lack significance because we as audiences have become calloused and desensitized to any acts of violence. She states that there is “no grace or benediction attached to violence. Indeed, its very intensity seems diminished” (Sobchack 432). Senseless violence, gruesome acts, and profound amounts of gore are prevalent in movies today, and because even this is not enough, it must be accompanied by loud blasts and noise, constantly moving scenes to keep audiences stimulated and large quantities of violence for viewers to enjoy what they are watching. Decades ago, it was the story that was engaging to audiences and filmmaking was an art.
As violence becomes more common place in todays society, instead people search for something to blame. Experts tend to employ violent video games a scapegoat. They believe that kids that play video games with glorified violence are likely to be violent in real life. Author Gerard Jones disagrees with these ideas and composes a convincing argument against it in his article "Violent Media is Good for Kids." (Jones, 1) I believe this article is written well, considering it makes important points and uses his life experiences to tell us about it. In his thesis, it says that comic books which critics assume are immature and gloried violence actually teach pacifism and tolerance. Jones goes on to say that humans must learn to how to handle
Representations of violence in the media (defined as through news, film, and television) throughout history have contributed to desensitization to violent actions.
According to John Davidson's essay Menace to Society, "three-quarters of Americans surveyed [are] convinced that movies, television and music spur young people to violence." While public opinion is strong, the results of research are divided on the effects of media violence on the youth in this country. Davidson wrote that most experts agree that some correlation between media violence and actual violent acts exists, yet the results are contradictory and researchers quibble about how the effects are to be measured (271). Moreover, Davidson is not convinced that the media is the sole problem of violence, or even a primary problem. He points out that other factors, such as "poverty, the easy accessibility of guns, domestic abuse, [and] social instability" may have a greater impact on a child becoming violent than the influence of the media (277). Even though other forces may be stronger, media violence does have some adverse effects on the members of society. If senseless violence on television and in movies had no effect, it would not be such a hotly debated topic. What type of effects and whom they affect are the most argued aspects of the discussion.
The video hosted by Bill Moyer that we watched in class on March 4th involved violence in the mass media and the effects that it may have on children in modern day society. Video games sometimes display graphic violence as well as violent verbal messages that often convey a message of appeal to children. Movies often combine humor, violence, and/or sex in order to be more appealing to the audience. Usually two or more of these factors are used. Whether it is through these sources or as something as simple as the evening news, violence is everywhere in the media today and displays messages of approval that American society may not realize.
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,
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.
Some people, mostly men, enjoy viewing or hearing about acts of violence. Some even find it exciting to participate, on one level or another, in violent acts. Television programs, movies and music capitalize on this fact by showing or describing gratuitous acts of violence. Even news programs see the importance in covering violent interpersonal crimes in their broadcasts to gain high ratings. Western society is interested in conflict, and enjoys being a third party audience to such violence. The problem with this is that by consuming too much violence through th...
Goldstein, Jeffery (1999). The Attractions of Violent Entertainment. Department of Media & Communication University of Utrecht.
But incidents like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are predictable; they are not a random act of brutality because such violence is a learned behavior. Americans glorify violence and this attitude is illustrated through the tolerance of violence portrayed through the media. And although distinguishing between violence as pure entertainment and violence as social criticism is important, good intentions can still lead to terrible outcomes. The effect of viewing violent films has been insufficiently considered, yet plays a significant role in encouraging aggressive behavior.
The negative influence television has begun to have on children is unreal. Americans seem to ask themselves what brings on such things as the Columbine shootings, eleven-year-olds murdering toddlers, and an increase in teen rapes. Then, these same people allow their children and teenagers to watch movies like Saw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Frailty. Irving Kristol is part of the American Enterprise Institute and in 1994 wrote an essay pointing out proof of these influences on teens and children. He used a report done in the United Kingdom on what they called "video nasties" (Kristol) and gave evidence of negative behavior in children who had watched such vulgar and violent shows. He again...
Gerard Jones' essay, "Violent Media is Good for Kids," has an epic tone that is straight out of the comic books that he writes. It is a passionate, well-written appeal to pathos that should be very effective at grabbing the attention of his readers. In the course of developing this appeal, he also includes appeals to both logos and pathos, making his argument something more than a simple tug on the heartstrings. Though not without its problems, this essay presents a strong argument in favor of the benefits of violent media such as comic books. Recent events have driven the debate over violence into the center of the national attention once again. There are many arguments in favor of removing all violent media from the reach of children. This essay offers food for thought for anyone considering that idea.
Television violence causes children and teenagers to be less caring, to lose their inhibitions, and to be less sensitive. In a study on the connection between violence and television done with 1,565 teenage boys over a six-year period in London, William Belson, a British psychologist, found that every time a child saw someone being shot or killed on television they became less caring towards other people (Kinnear 26). William Belson also discovered that every time a child viewed this violence on television, they lost a fragment of their inhibitions towards others (Kinnear 26). In addition to William Belson’s study, studies done by many scientists and doctors show that seeing violence on television causes viewers to become less sensitive to the pain of others (Mudore 1).
With the explosion of technology today, access to the media is at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere, and almost 24/7. Video games, movies, cartoons, daily news, websites, music videos, and even in commercials, violence is everywhere, and it becomes harder and harder to avoid. Violence in the media has been increasing and reaching dangerous proportions. According to Report of the Media Violence Commission, the effects are remarkably consistent regardless of type of medium, age, gender, or where the person lives in the world (336). Many studies and researches reveal the empirical evidence that links violence in movies and television shows to aggressive behavior in children, teenagers, and adults. Increasing aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, and fear are three types of negative effects contributed to by violence in movies and television shows. The article, “The Influence of Media Violence on Youth” emphasizes that violent television shows, films, and music reveal unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood aggressive and violent behavior in both immediately, and in the long term (Anderson, Craig A., 81). Violence now has gone into the mainstream. The Hunger Games, one of the top grossing films in 2013 replete with blood, gore and violence. The Walking Dead was once voted highest-rated entertainment program on TV with horrific violent scenes, killing from stabbing into the heads, bloody corpses, and disturbing, haunting images shown in most of the scenes. CBS’ Criminal Minds is television show with series of scary scenarios showing the violent murders of psychopath people. Worst of all, Silence of the Lambs deals with a psychopath who ...