What I've noticed about ViolenceKelton Sheridan Originally I was going to talk solely about how much violence is in advertisements these days but as I was researching I stumbled onto something much bigger than just advertising: violence is everywhere. In movies, games, commercials, music, basically everything. The three main areas I will focus on are aggression in advertisements, gaming, and shows.
What initially caught my attention was this Youtube video called “Every violent act in the 2010 Super Bowl.”
I watched it and afterwards I was like wow because I had never really thought about most of those clips as violent. “Violent” seems like such an extreme word but really just because the person isn’t gushing blood doesn’t make it any less violent. Although there was this one ad that I found that was surprisingly violent. Its of this woman who keeps abusing her husband until he drinks Pepsi Max and then it’s all good until he looks at this other girl and then the wife throws something at him but he ducks and it hits the girl square in the face. It seems that a lot of ads are of women being the abusers as though violence is alright as long as it’s not the woman being abused. I don’t know, it’s just a theory. But before I looked further into this I was wondering about how this would impact “the youth”. I mean, my brothers and I are really aggressive towards each other but I never thought it was because of a subconscious predilection towards violence. Then I found some research done on teenagers and I was pretty surprised. The scientists tested 42 kids and 40 parents. The kids ages’ ranged from 8 to 12 and were divided between genders. The main reason for the study was to determine how violence in TV affected kids. They also tested 165 additional children to see if their thoughts turned aggressive after watching violent commercials. Before starting the experiment the scientists defined violence as "actions depicting intentional harm to victims who would not wish to be harmed." What I didn’t realize before reading the summery of this experiment is that kids are exposed to violence since the time we start watching TV, let alone just advertising.
Cartoons are pretty violent if we really want to get into it. Granted, I don’t think kids are going to try to drop anvils on each other, but the aggression is still there. Although when I got to be in my early teens, I did watch female empowering shows like Sailor Moon where Sailor Moon and her all-woman team save the world from various evil villains, many of them women as well, and the men are the mostly-off-to-the-side romance. What I’m saying is that it seems the majority shows are violent, but a lot of the time there is a distinct difference between good and bad. Even now as my choice of shows have changed from beautiful anime characters to more realistic shows, I have also noticed that many shows are based around murder. My two favorite shows Bones and Castle are both about the government solving violent murders of some sort. One of the most popular shows on television is Dexter, which is about a serial killer who only kills people who kill, which is a really gray area but come on, the main advertisement of the show is Dexter with a blood-smattered face. Even Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family, which is supposed to be a less-adult version of just regular ABC, is about four girls’ best friend being killed and then plotting revenge on them. I really don’t know what this is implanting in my subconscious but I’m almost ashamed to say it has made me think murder and death are common things that just happen, which I guess they are but I don’t want to become heartless. I don’t even know if I want to touch the shows about vampires (mostly because I watch all of them…) but I think you get the point.
Now getting back to the violence in ads. Choosing to watch a “violent” show is one thing, but being subjected to all this aggression in everyday advertising is another. While I was researching this topic in particular, I thought many of the photos taken were artsy and pretty cool but then I started thinking about what this meant for our society. Mostly all of the websites I found (cite) on this subject said the media is to blame. I guess I agree with part of that. The media has definitely taken horrible things, like domestic abuse for example, and exploited them and society, who will do anything an advertisement says, accepts it whole-heartedly. Talk about messed up. What I really want to know is why did advertisement agencies decide that violence would be a good idea to promote? This one website I found said something I thought was pretty interesting: “People seek comfort in having risky sex, and violence. They do it for various reasons, to prove themselves, to try to maintain control in an otherwise seemingly restrictive and confined society, boredom, or even pure escapism from life’s hardships.” http://socyberty.com/society/the-obsession-with-violence/#ixzz1HFKuDG62 This kind of sounds like something you see when reading about someone who cuts themselves or is anorexic, making this weird obsession sound like a disease or something clinical. It does seem to have gotten to that point though… http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/13th-street-ads
What I’m really worried about sounding like is one of those people who just rag on media about
everything, blaming the media for all that’s wrong with society as a whole when in actuality, people need to take some responsibility for themselves. I mean, let’s get extreme. A man is on trial for abusing his wife, if we’re going to blame the media, he could say oh I saw it on the TV so I thought it was okay. Just like any form of hierarchy, the top always has to set the example for those “beneath” them, in this case the media is definitely on some of the higher tiers. But I really think people need to start educating themselves and get educated by others to not crumble under the media’s pressures and become individuals, with the ability to think for themselves.
I’ll talk just briefly (I hope) about gaming. I’m sure we’ve all heard from one adult source or another that violent games turn you into violent people. That’s why we shouldn’t play Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, or Manhunt and if you must have the violence aspects then the only acceptable games are ones like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy.
The difference between these two groups is that the first is pretty realistic, what with the missions to get drugs or to defeat enemy terrorists, making them ‘more risky’ whereas the fantasy games are not at all real so kids are at less of a risk to become psychopaths. In a 2004 study done on some kids, the researchers learned that "adolescent girls played video games for an average of 5 hours a week, whereas boys averaged 13 hours a week"http://www.pamf.org/preteen/parents/videogames.html. They also found that kids who play video games “tend to be more aggressive”, “are more prone to confrontation with their teachers”, and “may engage in fights with their peers”. However in an article on PBS entitled ‘Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked’, Henry Jenkins explains that there isn’t really any scientific evidence that supports the theory that connects aggression in teens and video games, saying “Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one relatively narrow school of research, ‘media effects.’” Jenkins does say that although there has been the common thread of being gamers in most of the kids who have committed school shootings, kids in general are not at risk of becoming killers. He even goes so far as to say that adults are reacting badly to these so called ‘violent video games’ in that their strong hatred for these games leads to suspicion and hostility causing the kids to feel even more “cut off from the system.”
On a more personal note, both of my brothers play video games, my younger of the two in particular. Actually, in high school he was totally addicted to playing this one game. He played it constantly and even today he plays Call of Duty and all those games but he’s really not an aggressive guy. I use this as an example because he was probably on the more extreme end of the video game obsession and now five years later he’s not on his way to becoming a serial killer. http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html
To tell you the truth, I play Grand Theft Auto all the time (Halo was way to confusing, all the colors are the same) and I never feel any aggression towards the characters. Even when the cops are trying to pull me over and I have to get out and either run or shoot them, it’s not because I feel any anger towards real life cops, it’s simply because that’s how you survive in the game. Maybe I’m just really naïve but I truly think that the majority of gamers can tell the difference between game and reality, and when it comes down to it, they can separate the two.
So let me know your thoughts, I'd be real interested.
What I've noticed about ViolenceKelton Sheridan
Originally I was going to talk solely about how much violence is in advertisements these days but as I was researching I stumbled onto something much bigger than just advertising: violence is everywhere. In movies, games, commercials, music, basically everything. The three main areas I will focus on are aggression in advertisements, gaming, and shows.
What initially caught my attention was this Youtube video called “Every violent act in the 2010 Super Bowl.”
I watched it and afterwards I was like wow because I had never really thought about most of those clips as violent. “Violent” seems like such an extreme word but really just because the person isn’t gushing blood doesn’t make it any less violent. Although there was this one ad that I found that was surprisingly violent. Its of this woman who keeps abusing her husband until he drinks Pepsi Max and then it’s all good until he looks at this other girl and then the wife throws something at him but he ducks and it hits the girl square in the face.
It seems that a lot of ads are of women being the abusers as though violence is alright as long as it’s not the woman being abused. I don’t know, it’s just a theory.
But before I looked further into this I was wondering about how this would impact “the youth”. I mean, my brothers and I are really aggressive towards each other but I never thought it was because of a subconscious predilection towards violence. Then I found some research done on teenagers and I was pretty surprised. The scientists tested 42 kids and 40 parents. The kids ages’ ranged from 8 to 12 and were divided between genders. The main reason for the study was to determine how violence in TV affected kids. They also tested 165 additional children to see if their thoughts turned aggressive after watching violent commercials. Before starting the experiment the scientists defined violence as "actions depicting intentional harm to victims who would not wish to be harmed." What I didn’t realize before reading the summery of this experiment is that kids are exposed to violence since the time we start watching TV, let alone just advertising.
Cartoons are pretty violent if we really want to get into it.
Even Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family, which is supposed to be a less-adult version of just regular ABC, is about four girls’ best friend being killed and then plotting revenge on them. I really don’t know what this is implanting in my subconscious but I’m almost ashamed to say it has made me think murder and death are common things that just happen, which I guess they are but I don’t want to become heartless. I don’t even know if I want to touch the shows about vampires (mostly because I watch all of them…) but I think you get the point.
Now getting back to the violence in ads. Choosing to watch a “violent” show is one thing, but being subjected to all this aggression in everyday advertising is another. While I was researching this topic in particular, I thought many of the photos taken were artsy and pretty cool but then I started thinking about what this meant for our society. Mostly all of the websites I found (cite) on this subject said the media is to blame. I guess I agree with part of that. The media has definitely taken horrible things, like domestic abuse for example, and exploited them and society, who will do anything an advertisement says, accepts it whole-heartedly. Talk about messed up. What I really want to know is why did advertisement agencies decide that violence would be a good idea to promote? This one website I found said something I thought was pretty interesting:
“People seek comfort in having risky sex, and violence. They do it for various reasons, to prove themselves, to try to maintain control in an otherwise seemingly restrictive and confined society, boredom, or even pure escapism from life’s hardships.” http://socyberty.com/society/the-obsession-with-violence/#ixzz1HFKuDG62
This kind of sounds like something you see when reading about someone who cuts themselves or is anorexic, making this weird obsession sound like a disease or something clinical. It does seem to have gotten to that point though…
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/13th-street-ads
What I’m really worried about sounding like is one of those people who just rag on media about
everything, blaming the media for all that’s wrong with society as a whole when in actuality, people need to take some responsibility for themselves. I mean, let’s get extreme. A man is on trial for abusing his wife, if we’re going to blame the media, he could say oh I saw it on the TV so I thought it was okay. Just like any form of hierarchy, the top always has to set the example for those “beneath” them, in this case the media is definitely on some of the higher tiers. But I really think people need to start educating themselves and get educated by others to not crumble under the media’s pressures and become individuals, with the ability to think for themselves.
I’ll talk just briefly (I hope) about gaming. I’m sure we’ve all heard from one adult source or another that violent games turn you into violent people. That’s why we shouldn’t play Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, or Manhunt and if you must have the violence aspects then the only acceptable games are ones like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy.
The difference between these two groups is that the first is pretty realistic, what with the missions to get drugs or to defeat enemy terrorists, making them ‘more risky’ whereas the fantasy games are not at all real so kids are at less of a risk to become psychopaths. In a 2004 study done on some kids, the researchers learned that "adolescent girls played video games for an average of 5 hours a week, whereas boys averaged 13 hours a week" http://www.pamf.org/preteen/parents/videogames.html. They also found that kids who play video games “tend to be more aggressive”, “are more prone to confrontation with their teachers”, and “may engage in fights with their peers”. However in an article on PBS entitled ‘Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked’, Henry Jenkins explains that there isn’t really any scientific evidence that supports the theory that connects aggression in teens and video games, saying “Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one relatively narrow school of research, ‘media effects.’”
Jenkins does say that although there has been the common thread of being gamers in most of the kids who have committed school shootings, kids in general are not at risk of becoming killers. He even goes so far as to say that adults are reacting badly to these so called ‘violent video games’ in that their strong hatred for these games leads to suspicion and hostility causing the kids to feel even more “cut off from the system.”
On a more personal note, both of my brothers play video games, my younger of the two in particular. Actually, in high school he was totally addicted to playing this one game. He played it constantly and even today he plays Call of Duty and all those games but he’s really not an aggressive guy. I use this as an example because he was probably on the more extreme end of the video game obsession and now five years later he’s not on his way to becoming a serial killer. http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html
To tell you the truth, I play Grand Theft Auto all the time (Halo was way to confusing, all the colors are the same) and I never feel any aggression towards the characters. Even when the cops are trying to pull me over and I have to get out and either run or shoot them, it’s not because I feel any anger towards real life cops, it’s simply because that’s how you survive in the game. Maybe I’m just really naïve but I truly think that the majority of gamers can tell the difference between game and reality, and when it comes down to it, they can separate the two.
So let me know your thoughts, I'd be real interested.