Violence and Censorship: Films and Television - Term Paper Example

«Violence and Censorship: Films and Television» We are living in an increasingly violent society, where random and mindless acts of crime are becoming rampant and more importantly are being committed by progressively younger generations. Depictions of violence in the form of films and television shows are highly responsible in no mean way for the increase in violence in society as they influence susceptible minds tremendously. To define violence would be to limit it to simple aggressive behavior exerted to destroy property or gravely injure or kill people intentionally. But, violence transcends simple physical aggression and can be an onslaught of verbal abuse, which is as psychologically damaging for people as physical violence. The influence of media in this regard cannot be underestimated, as channels are beamed twenty hours a day and movies full of violence are screened so people are exposed to them constantly with their doses of violence. In the U.S. in the 60s the back-to back assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. in April and Robert F. Kennedy in June led to a massive call for legislative efforts to control and understand violence in U.S. society. It was found that “studies show not only that teenagers watch television more than do their parents but that almost 40 percent of these youngsters believe that what they see on television is a accurate representation of the character of American life.” (Levine, 2007, 81) Panic over the influence of television violence led to regulatory debates and a call for social sciences studies for research in violent behavior and how it could be curbed. (Barker and Petley, 1997) Network executives in the U.S. asked popular shows to tone down the violence for fear of governmental intervention and asked for changes in shows which de-emphasized violence. Many agreed to re-shoot portions which had already been shot in an effort to comply with the National Commission set up to uncover the causes of violence in American society. Sponsorships of programs depicting violence were quietly withdrawn and anxieties about the impact of violent television on society peaked. Social sciences studies were in full swing to unravel the reasons behind violence and the studies led to various theories. To understand why certain individuals react to violence in the way they do or why some of them embrace violence so easily, a conscious study of the social sciences and its analysis will help grasp the subject matter better because only then better regulations can be put into place. There is general disagreement between researchers on whether violence is inherited or is it conditioned behavior. According to some, people especially children and teenagers tend to commit violence if they have had earlier exposure to violent behavior whether as a witness or as a victim. The three main theories outlining the causes of violent behavior are the Modeling Theory, Classical Conditioning Theory and Operant Conditioning Theory. The Social Learning Theory or the Modeling Theory generalizes that both conforming and deviant behavior can be produced from social circumstances. According to this theory people tend to observe others’ behavior and learn from it or they imitate others as models. Imitating others can be as effective as directly learning from experience. It all begins in the family where if the child sees too much of violence amongst parents or relations or falls victim to child abuse, then the tendency to display aggressive behavior in them is intensified. It becomes more active in certain conditions with media influence as violence shown in television can have a powerful impact on impressionable minds. But, if the motivation is weak, media does not have too great an impact. (Bandura, 1977) Attention, retention and motivation are the three main factors connecting media violence to real life occurrences of violence. Violence presented in the media tends to influence the minds of viewers and these images are stored or retained in memory for future use. But, motivation is the strongest factor linking media violence and real life occurrences of violence. Human beings do not randomly ape things unless they interpret the consequences in the shape of rewards or punishments. The reaction of parents to violence as they remember from childhood plays an important role when they are anticipating the consequences. Clear disapproval of parents in regards to violence or aggression in childhood will reduce the person’s chances of violent behavior in future. Studies have shown that when one group had been rewarded for aggressive behavior and the other group was reprimanded for the same behavior the former group tended to exhibit more aggression than the latter group. Television shows, which glorify violence in the form of characters depicted positively for exercising violence, encourage young viewers to do the same. Youngsters see only how their heroes fight; they are too young to comprehend the impact violence can have on them in the future and they think bashing up people is a good thing. Some argue that watching violence is a sort of catharsis as pent-up anger gets vented by osmosis on screen leaving little scope for real-life violence but very little evidence is there to support this thought. Catharsis theory suggests that depiction of violence through media rather reduces aggression in real life, contrary to the Modeling theory by Bandura (1977). According to the theory, pent up anger gets drained out by visualizing fantasy violence. But no evidence is found to support this notion. Rather, all experiments demonstrated the opposite behavior. Evidences in controlled laboratory conditions showed that media violence can teach and encourage violence in real life but field studies only supported the theory to a small extent. Results of a 10 year study conducted on 460 third grade children until they attended 19 years of age showed that regular viewers of media violence in childhood became more aggressive as adults and more aggressive children did not tend to watch media violence when grew up (Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder, and Huesmann, 1977). But childhood visualization of media violence showed 10% difference only in later age aggression. But this small percentage is enough for social concern as it accounts for a pretty large number of victims. Children watching regular media violence become more prone to violent behavior as adults. Even children who observe violent tendencies in older siblings are more prone to getting influenced by such aggressive behavior. The positive reactions of parents towards correct behavior and moderately negative reactions towards misbehavior go a long way in curbing violent tendencies in children and they learn proper conforming behavior. Media is definitely one of the most important influences on people’s behavior. Coming to the first theory which is also known as the Classical Conditioning Theory or Respondent Conditioning Theory and how it studies violent behavior, it is seen that according to this school of thought, a person learns to connect a neutral stimulus to an important stimulus based on the time spent on it. Unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus and conditioned response were used in this theory to understand the streak of violence, which is exhibited by some people. But, first to understand the relation of violence to this theory we have to take these factors into consideration. For example, unconditioned response is something, which occurs naturally in response to unconditioned stimulus; like, feeling hungry in response to the smell of food. Conditioned response is something where the person has learned to respond to the earlier neutral stimulus; like, if, a whistle is heard regularly together with the smell of food, the sound of the whistle is associated with food and hunger is generated. The other elements associated with this stimulus and responses are acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus generalization and discrimination. (Wagner, 2008) Acquisition is the first stage where the response is first learned and then strengthened and extinction is the stage where the regularity of the conditioned stimulus slows down or disappears. Spontaneous recovery is where the conditioned response reappears after a long time but it can quickly disappear if the association of the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus is discontinued. Stimulus generalization is all about evoking same conditioned responses to stimulus, which is similar to conditioned stimulus. Discrimination is when the person is able to differentiate conditioned stimulus from other stimulus, which is not connected to unconditioned stimuli. Violence is similarly learnt when youngsters learn to connect violence with pleasure as they watch their parents or peers cheering one violent act against the other while watching television programs, which show violence. Thus they associate violence with pleasure and if continuously exposed to this their responses become more conditioned and veer towards violence. If a child sees and observes violence from a very young age, he learns to take this type of behavior for granted, as he is too young to distinguish between fantasy and reality. They associate whatever is shown on the media with actual behavior. Classical conditioning can thus be used to enhance or reduce the amount of a definite type of behavior. The Modeling theory contradicts this finding by upholding that human beings tend to interpret stimuli and act accordingly. But, advocates of the Classical Conditioning theory say that conditioning is the basis of social behavior and teaches humans to indulge in or refrain from violent behavior. Regular negative responses to violence from parents from childhood help the child to keep away from violence unconsciously in adulthood also. Poor conditioning is responsible for persons exhibiting violence. This was assessed by the response of the skin to external stimuli like a loud tone or electric shock. The lower the measure of skin conductance, the poorer the conditioning and psychopaths showed lesser levels of conditioning. But, social environment also played a significant role in violent behavior. (Wagner, 2008) Using the consequences as a means to control behavior is the basis of Operant Conditioning Theory or the Instrumental Conditioning Theory. This theory espouses the thought that people learn certain behavior so that they can get some award stimulus. For instance, an employee attends office to eventually get a salary. Similarly, the reward of satisfaction upon winning a game attracts the child to violence as depicted in video games. The basic elements of this theory are reinforcement, punishment and extinction. In reinforcement, if the response is positive, then the frequency of that type of behavior increases. For example, the child playing the video game feels pleasure after winning the game in which he has shot or killed and that is his reward. Thus, he associates pleasure with violence and is attracted towards anti-social behavior. Similarly, in films or television programs, when the hero is shown to kill the villain, it gives pleasure to the viewer and subconsciously encourages feelings of violence, which later translate into concrete violent acts. When parents punish children for any aggressive behavior the tendency to violence decreases and it helps in discouraging anti-social behavior in children. Extinction takes place when the favorable stimulus is no longer there to promote that behavior. If a person is not sure of favorable consequences he loses the momentum to perform that behavior. The theory is based on the premise that a desired behavior occurs only if it is followed by favorable results. If the consequences are not favorable, the frequency of that behavior decreases. For example, when cats were put in a box as an experiment, they could escape only after a long time but with practice they could make their escape much faster. Here, the positive result of escaping generated more frequency of a successful response. It was also seen that consistent favorable response following a certain behavior was not as effective for persisting with that behavior, as were intermittent rewards for that same behavior. A person may stop enacting the desired behavior as soon as he stops being rewarded for the same according to habit. It was advocated that behavior is more easily learnt by following the evolutionary pattern rather than just by conditioning. Human beings can use the authoritarian genes inherent in them to bend towards violence as the dominant authoritarian gene is satisfied through violent behavior and the satisfaction, which is derived by the violent acts, is the reward. But, sometimes the reverse is also true as in that human beings learn the expected behavior faster if punished. The Operant conditioning Theory is very significant in attempting to learn what drives people to violence. There is no apparent reward for violence as in when children or women are assaulted for no reason. The feeling of intense power, which overwhelms that person during that violent act, may be deemed as a reward. Any individual having low self-esteem tends to indulge in more aggressive behavior because he sees it as a way to improve his self-esteem and that is his reward. These individuals group together with like-minded people and with their collective low self-esteem turn into an anti-social gang to prove their power over people through violence and thus rise in their own esteem. Narcissism in individuals also tends to make them indulge in aggressive behavior because they cannot take social rejection if it occurs. In an experiment conducted by proponents of this theory individuals were first measured for the levels of narcissism and then they were either socially accepted or rejected. After this they were given the chance to vent their anger through violent video games. The finding was interesting. It was found that narcissists who had been socially rejected showed more aggression than those who were socially accepted. (Williams, 1924) The above theories clearly show how violence takes its roots in individuals and how external factors like the media with their excessive exposure of violence influence young minds. Violent family behavior or aggressive behavior seen in peers also contributes to the tendency of anti-social behavior in youngsters. The incidents of violence have increased at an alarming rate amongst youngsters and newer techniques of violence are being utilized to indulge in acts of aggression. It is imperative that children be protected from the harmful exposure to violence. As the Modeling Theory put it, violence is learnt by seeing and imitating behaviors in the immediate environment. Thus, if the immediate environment is kept non-violent, chances of children learning aggression from it also get reduced. If children are not exposed to domestic violence or child abuse they refrain from violet acts. If parents actively discourage such tendencies towards violence, children learn to keep away from it. The Classical Conditioning Theory supports this as well. The Operant conditioning Theory also propounded that if individuals are discouraged or even punished for violent behavior, then the tendency towards violence decreases. Simultaneously, if individuals are even encouraged to perform non-violent behavior they tend to keep aloof from violence. Poor self-esteem is another factor contributing to violent behavior and helping individuals regain confidence and improve their self-esteem is important in curbing violence to a certain extent in society. The study of the above-mentioned studies showed how violence can take a grip on people and how the family environment and the media are largely responsible for the spurt in violence in society. Children have impressionable minds and tend to model their behavior on their heroes as depicted in films or television shows and show signs of aggression with the slightest motivation. Unfortunately, graphic violence is an inescapable feature of any contemporary cinema or TV programs. Severed heads lying scattered around, arteries spurting blood, fragments of flesh strewn everywhere; our screen is taken up with many more such scenes of blood and gore. Knives flashing, bombs exploding and guns being fired rapidly; no ‘action’ film is without such mandatory scenes. (Prince, 2000) Children watching such scenes think they are part and parcel of life and if it is their heroes indulging in such mind-numbing violence it becomes even more credible. Such gory and bloody spectacles fill the screen and the fact that they are immensely popular simply shows how widespread is the acceptance of violence by the average cinemagoer. Movies made by the renowned director Martin Scorsese have scenes depicting heads shot apart (e.g. Taxi driver, 1976) and human beings beaten into a bloody pulp but still alive (e.g. Casino, 1995). The violence is so shot that it commands the attention of viewers and though it may leave them squirming in their seats, the fact is that somewhere those bloody scenes get registered in the memory. And in instances of individuals with already-existing violent streaks can create havoc and push them over the edge towards violence. The film industry has tried regulations and censorships in order to curb violent depictions in movies but even then there are ways of getting around the rules. (Ritcher, 2007) Violence in movies is not a recent phenomenon. It has always been there and is deeply ingrained in the history of cinema but violence in earlier films tended to be more soft and indirect. The Hollywood Production Code in existence from the 1930s to the 1960s oversaw all aspects of screen content. A whole list of rules elaborating what could be shown and what could not be shown was in existence and these regulations placed a certain amount of constraints on moviemakers. Scenes depicting violence were curbed or were not in-the-face and it did help prevent ultra-violent movies during that period. The Code fixed that in movies showing crime, brutal killings could not be shown in details, murders could not be glamorized so as to encourage imitation and firearms and its use would be shown with restraint. The restraints against firearms during that period are in sharp contrast to today’s cinema where in the name of high-tech, senseless gun explosions and firings are shown unabated. It is no wonder that so many school shooting incidents are occurring at a shocking rate. Youngsters think that a gun is the answer to all their problems and inspired by the genre of violent movies and TV shows they have no hesitation in picking up guns and indulging in shootings without thinking of the consequences. During the existence of the earlier Code, filmmakers had to comply with the rules because otherwise no major studios would touch their movies, which lacked the Code seal of approval. (Prince, 2000, 2) Filmmakers of course continued to get around the regulations like in Scarface (1983), which depicted murders in, cold-blood. But, the remake of Scarface in 1984 post -Code depicted more gory violence than the original. Torn flesh, spraying of blood and peppering the gangster hero with bullets were shown in minute details and that too, very flamboyantly. The difference in concealment of gore and the open display of physical carnage was a result of the modified Hollywood Code, which gave an indirect nod to explicit violence being permissible on screen by simply stating that filmmakers use discretion in showing violence and by the Ratings category. Film violence tends to glorify aggression most of the time and the youth particularly are vulnerable and easily taken in by screen violence. This has definitely led to a rise in teenage crime. (Brody, 1977) Therefore, studies have proven conclusively that constant and excessive exposure to violence in the form of TV shows and films makes the children (as they are the most vulnerable) more prone to violence. Children nowadays are as it is watching TV constantly and programs depicting violence stays in their memories. Besides, the plethora of violent toys in the market and the fad of marketing toy guns etc. as part of promoting any action film are also extremely responsible for aggressive tendencies in youngsters. They think it is ‘cool’ to tote around a gun because their hero does that too and later it develops into a full-fledged aggressive trait. The video games culture also promotes aggression with their violent games and which children get addicted to in a massive way. The British Board of Film Classification is also an independent, non-governmental organization set up to regulate films and videos so that vulnerable viewers are shielded from the adverse effects of potentially harmful viewing while at the same time respecting the freedom of choice of adults. It provides information so that the public is empowered to select appropriate viewing both for themselves and those in their care. (Nicholas, Price and Backhurst, 1998, 31) Violence in movies had prompted the attempts to use social sciences methodology to try and understand how violence in films affected the audience and by way of various experiments it was shown that youngsters were most likely to be influenced by what was depicted in the media. Films glorifying gangsters or showing the underdog triumphing over the villains by means of violence only heightened the perception that using violence to achieve something was perfectly permissible. Teenagers were inspired by gangster movies like ‘The Godfather’, which enticingly wove a glamorous story of the Mafia and turned Marlon Brando’s character into a cult figure. (The Godfather, 1972) To curb this menace in society, every section of society including the media would do well to look inwards and act as responsible citizens in providing a safe and conducive environment for the youngsters to discourage violence in society. References 1. Bandura, A.,1977, Social Learning Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., p. 27 2. Barker, M. and J. Petley, 1997, III effects: the media/violence debate’, London: New York : Routledge 3. Brody, S. 1977, ‘Screen violence and film censorship: a review of research’, Stephen Brody, London : H.M.S.O. 4. Casino, directed by Martin Scorsese, (Columbia Pictures, 1995) 5. The Godfather, directed by Francis.F. Coppola, (Paramount Pictures, 1972) 6. Levine, E. 2007. Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television, Duke University Press 7. Lefkowitz, M., Eron, L., Walder, L. and Huesmann, L. (1977), Growing Up to Be Violent: A longitudinal Study of the Development of Aggression, Pergamon, New York 8. Nicholas, J., Price, J. and S. Bakhurst, 1998. Advanced Studies in Media: Communication and Production, Nelson Thornes 9. Prince, S. 2000, Classical Film Violence: Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1968, Rutgers University Press, 2003 10. Prince, S. 2000. Screening Violence, Continuum International Publishing Group 11. Ritcher, A. 2007. Post-Soviet Perspective on censorship and Freedom of the Media, UNESCO, Moscow, available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001537/153744e.pdf (accessed on December 24, 2008) 12. Scarface, directed by Brian de Palma, (Universal Studios, 1983) 13. Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese, (Columbia Pictures, 1976) 14. Wagner, K.V., 2008, “Principles of Classical Conditioning”, available at http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/classcondbasics.htm (accessed on 15 June 2008) 15. Williams KA. (1924). The reward value of a conditioned stimulus. Univ Calif Publ Psychol. 4:31-55 Read More