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
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The other day I was at a local grocery store. I saw two men looking through the sale bin of movies. As I watched, one man picked up one movie and began reading the back. “…PG-13 for rape scene,” he read and then looked at his friend and said, “It should be a good one.” What kind of perverted mind would think that a rape scene makes a movie “good”? The same mind that has been subtly taken captive by a nihilistic entertainment industry that tries to convince its consumers that violence is pure amusement.
This bloodshed-saturated culture ridicules the importance of life itself by making into something we laugh at for our own entertainment. When My Bloody Valentine came out last January, I had several friends that went to see it in theaters. Many came back after the movie saying that they laughed throughout the entirety of it and thought it was very funny. A movie in which a man kills twenty-two people is found humorous and people try to say that there is nothing wrong with the amount of violence being shown. Value is robbed from life when someone can kill ten or twenty people in the movie and still be a likeable and fascinated character. People have become calloused to what death and pain really mean. They have taken movies as a removed from reality; however, they are only it is only beginning to effect this world where violence has real consequences.
In the military, assassins are trained by forcing them to watch murders
The main purpose of the article written by Gerald Jones is to change the public perception of violent media for kids. He argues for this by saying violent media can actually have positive effects on young people because a violent media help the young people to gain self-knowledge and sense of potency through heroic combative storytelling. In addition to this, when young people are growing, watching a media action full pool of blood, killing, stabbing, screams of agony and pleas for mercy help them pull out of the emotional trap by plunging themselves into violent story. Jones also believes that violent media are a positive influence on children because pretend to have a superhuman power helps children defeat the feeling of impotent that inescapably
After reading “Violent Media Is Good for Kids” by Gerard Jones and “When Life Imitates Video” by John Leo, Both articles have opposing views on violent media for kids and use pathos and logos to persuade a readers reasoning on violent media. Gerard Jones believes that violent media is good to help children express their feelings and not hide them. John Leo believes that killing games can lead to violent behavior and possible imitation of what kids see in violent games such as Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. There are many reasons why violent media can be good and bad for children and teens there really isn’t a right side.
4. Irony and Satire do contribute to the desensitizing of audiences due to the fact that the meaning of violence is completely abandoned and viewers see only the comedic side of the scene. For example, in Pulp Fiction Jules recites from the Bible before killing his victim, completely turning the attention of viewers from the meaning of the young man’s impending death, and in the scene entitled “The Bonnie Situation,” the cleanup of the killing is focused on more than the senseless, meaningless act itself. Modern violence in movies, in Sobchack’s words, have become “excessive” in violence and that when they elicit screams, they also elicit laughter. Too much violence becomes so outrageous and “over the top” that gore and the quantity of death are expected, and that is considered funny by audiences (432). As a result, violence does not seem real anymore.
Society has been subjected to many violent acts over the course of its history. Although violence is immoral and wrong, somehow people everyday condone and commit violence for countless reasons. Many Hollywood films glorify mindless violence to their advantage and captivate audiences through its entertaining shock value and rake large box office profits. Car chases, crashes and glorified gladiator sword fights are all familiar scenes in which violence is portrayed in an unrealistic glamorised manner.
In his book, More Than a Movie: Ethics in Entertainment, F. Miguel Valenti examines nine “hot buttons” of violence – “creative elements that filmmakers use to manipulate viewers’ reactions to onscreen violence.” (99) These elements, posited by researchers conducting The National Television Violence Study (Valenti, 99) are “choice of perpetrator, choice of victim, presence of consequences, rewards and punishments, the reason for the violence, weapons, realism, use of humor, and prolonged exposure” (Valenti, 100) .
If we stipulate then that, to some degree, violence in our folk, fairy tale, mythic and biblical traditions is a good and natural reflection of our psyche's connection to the interior realms of our unconscious, then why are we so adamantly convinced in our culture that violence and sexuality in modern film and television is sending us all to hell in a hand basket?
Sissela Bok opens a controversial topic on violence as entertainment which explores the effect of the increasing of violence both in fiction and in real life. Not only do films, television shows, and video games evidence an escalating level of graphic violence, but daily news of war and other human brutality are as bad as well. As less time pass on doing physical activities and an increase in using electronic devices as increases, particularly by teens, there is growing concern about a possible link between violence viewing content and actual behavior. Bok draws a balanced image, naming some possible benefits from violence. One of the benefits could be the redirection of human physical and verbal aggression and the confrontation of fears in
In a greater perspective, a 2016 study, shows that teenagers spend an average of 6.5 hours playing video games per week with 71% of all video games containing violence (Frank, paragraph 3). With young adults spending such a large amount of time per week partaking in violent video games, it's no wonder that these statistics would complement each other in the sense that repetitive exposure to violence desensitizes our youth and instills the ideal that violence is a mere normality in our world. With much of the world already being acquainted and desensitized to violence, many have no problem “paying our four or five bucks to seat themselves… in a theater showing a horror movie…daring the nightmare” (King, 1).
In the article, “Violent Media Is Good for Kids”, the author, Gerard Jones, begins by providing background information about himself. As a child, Jones was taught that violence was wrong, and as he grew up, he learned that violent comics and stories aided him to become an action movies and comic book writer. In his article, the author addresses why violent media are good for children. He points out that it helps them transform better socially, explore and conquer their feelings, and improves self-knowledge. Jones purpose is to inform readers about the positive use of violent media on children. The author uses rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, and stylistic techniques such as allusions and repetitions to create his argument.
The author introduces the topic by addressing people’s tendency to be addicted to violence in movies, as well as Hollywood movie makers, yet mass shootings are basically nonexistent on screen, which seems strange “considering how much money Hollywood contributes toward depicting violence.” A reason for that would be that film makers wouldn’t make money out of subjects people feel uncomfortable with. Hollywood glorifies
I chose this topic because I want to be a videogame designer and I wanted to defend my right to create what I want. Unfortunately, after researching this topic it is clear that it is no longer possible to say violent media is completely harmless. Videogames and television do have harmful effects on children and young adults. Research has been done since the 1950’s and almost all studies show clear evidence that media violence does cause increased violent tendencies, desensitization, and antisocial behavior – which is the same as sociopathic and psychopathic behavior, it does not mean introverted.
Onscreen Violence: Desensitization I) Introduction a) Hook: How has television violence desensitized society and what has been affected by that desensitization? i) Throughout the years, onscreen violence has steadily been on the rise. Society, does not notice that the change has become increasingly gruesome. ii)
The media has a way of influencing people of all ages. Specifically, violence and horror in the media are the most debated. Why do people go to watch violent movies or horror movies? They go for entertainment without realizing the physical or mental effects. Kathy Benjamin’s “5 Scientific Ways Watching Movies Effects You” and Bernie DeGroat’s “Scary Movies Can Have Lasting Effects on Children and Teens” both mention the negative effects of movies, especially horror movies, with research or studies. However, only one of the essays, “5 Scientific Ways Watching Movies Effects You,” mentions some positive effects. Statistics have shown that watching these type movies can have short and long term repercussions.
In today’s world, there is an endless amount of information available to people everywhere around the globe. Mass media is definitely shaping our world, whether it is in a positive way or a negative way. Television and the radio waves provide us with hours of entertainment. The emergence of the Internet allows us to access thousands of pages of information within the reach our very own fingertips. But with the convenience of all this information comes along a certain level of responsibility. As a society, we Americans must decide what is appropriate information and entertainment for the masses to access and enjoy. But does today’s society give too much leeway in what it thinks as “appropriate?” Does increased
In the book Critique of Violence ,author Walter describes Violence as "The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, male development, or deprivation .The violence that is portrayed in the media has been debated for decades ,and it has rose a question about how does it influence the youth?. From movies to video games society has been accustom to seeing violence in their everyday entertainment. Since children are easy to be influence by their environment, it is safe to say that violence in the media can and will contribute to violent behavior.