1
EFFECTS TRADITION
There is a vast amount of research on the 'effects' of the media, much of it inconclusive or contradictory. Most of it relates to television rather than film or video.
Psychologists have used different methods to investigate the effects of the media, including laboratory experiments and studies of children in their ordinary lives. The most famous laboratory experiments by Bandura in the sixties involved showing young children scenes of a man attacking a large doll with a mallet. The children's responses when left alone with the doll and the mallet were then recorded.
Activity
What problems can you identify with this method? The children attacked the doll in the same way as the man when left alone with it but if the sequence showed the man being punished they were less likely to attack it themselves. However, a sequence showing twice as much violence made the children less aggressive. Can you account for these results?
Some laboratory studies have suggested that when violence is seen to be justified or rewarded people are more likely to imitate it. Other studies suggest that people are made anxious rather than aggressive by scenes of gratuitous violence. It is also claimed that real-life violence has a stronger effect than fiction.
A number of researchers have criticized laboratory studies, for example Gauntlett (1995). They claim it is an unnatural environment, and the material shown often lacks context and story and so doesn't duplicate the real experience of watching television. People may behave more aggressively in the laboratory simply because they are aroused or excited by the film content - this could equally happen if they were played white noise. Also people involved in experiments often behave as they imagine the experimenter wants them to do. The strongest criticism is that it makes no sense to detach responses to specific scenes from the meaning of the film as a whole.
Another method, used in a 1978 study of 1500 adolescent boys by Belson, is to ask young people to rate their level of aggression and then find out what sort of TV programmes they enjoyed. It is often found that aggressive children like more violent programmes. This study found the high viewers of violent TV were more likely to commit aggressive acts than low viewers. However, there were contradictions in these results too, as low viewers were more aggressive than moderate viewers were. It is impossible in such studies to say if violent material causes violence, or an aggressive personality creates a preference for violent material, though the latter view has been confirmed more credibly.
Activity
• Try devising an experiment of your own to test the 'effects' of the media. What problems do you come up against?
• Look at the contradictory research results (do some reading of your own and use other ideas from this pack if they are relevant). What predictions would this research make for the effects of viewing of:
a) a news item about war
b) a violent action film
c) a western
d) a horror film
e) a crime documentary
f) a gangster thriller.
CONTENT ANALYSIS
This method counts and codes violent incidents in the media according to the level of threat and type of interaction (e.g. verbal threat, threat with knife, physical assault etc.) to try and find out how much there is. The method is most frequently applied to television. Recent content analysis of British television showed that the level of violence had remained about the same over the last ten years. The technique is often used to create alarmist headlines - for example about the number of murders or violent assaults witnessed by children before they reach a certain age.
Activity
• In a small group or as a class conduct a small-scale content analysis of violence on television. To do this you will need to decide when you are going to watch (daytime, early evening, post watershed TV) and for how long. (For example you may decide to monitor from 4 - 5 on two days, from 6 - 7 on two days, from 9 -10 on two days and do this for three weeks.) Write a code for the sorts of violent actions you are going to record (verbal threat, threat of punch, actual punch, kick, knife threat, stabbing, gun threat, shooting etc.). Watch an extract together to ensure that you all agree on the way the code is to be applied. Think about what you are going to do about issues such as cartoon violence.
• Compile and analyze your results.
• What were the problems you experienced?
This method has also been criticized, for simplifying, (Gauntlett (1995). It is stated that it is not the quantity of violent acts but their meaning that is important to the audience. For example some content analysis has rated cartoons or routine police series as 'violent'. The method simplifies both the way films and television show violence and the way the audience understands it.
VIOLENCE WITHIN CONTEXT & GENRE
NEWS VIEWS
Moving Images: Understanding Children's Emotional Responses to Television (Buckingham, 1996) takes a different approach by exploring children's emotional responses to television. Buckingham's method was to talk to small groups of children and their parents about viewing experiences. Although there was some concern amongst parents that children might act out fights seen on television, their main concern was that children could be frightened or upset by violence. Many parents had given up the attempt to restrict their teenage children's viewing. When they were worried about media effects it was often about 'other people' not their children. This is a common view. Responses such as fear, disgust, sadness and anxiety were all common in the children interviewed.
Buckingham also found that positive responses such as excitement could be mixed up with more negative responses. The children discussed the material they had seen in detail. They understood genre and often considered the text in terms of how real it was. Negative responses, especially in non-fiction, were sometimes thought to be necessary to help them learn important information. Children were often upset by factual and news programmes, and did not seem to be desensitised to real-life violence by the fictional violence they had seen. He also found that children did not identify with the 'perpetrators of violence' - their emotional responses related to a 'fear of victimisation'. They developed coping strategies for dealing with material that they found difficult.
This research turns on its head many of the assumptions of 'effects' research and raises questions about the role of the parent in supporting their child in coming to terms with upsetting experiences, rather than about the young audience as potential delinquents.
Activity
• Conduct group or individual interviews with younger children about their viewing experiences. You might consider questions such as what films and programmes have upset or frightened them? Why? How do they respond to the news? Do they think the media has any influence on them, if so what? How is viewing controlled within their family? What do they do when they are frightened? Make sure you record the discussion.
• Did you find any evidence of 'coping strategies'? Did the young people talk about how real the material was? Did they distinguish between different genres?
• Of the research summarised which convinces you most? What do you think would be a fruitful approach to further research in this area?
• Go back to any research you did on the BBFC. What kinds of ideas about the audience can you find and how do they relate to different sorts of research? Look specifically at violence policy for evidence of 'role models', 'modelling' and views on 'perpetrators of violence' and 'empathy for the victims'.
MEANING
The greatest criticism of effects research is that it fails to take sufficient account of meaning. Many 'violent acts' take place within a story line that overall condemns violence, or within a genre that the general public does not really consider violent. Context and story, the type of film we are watching, how we are watching it and the values we bring to it are all important to our understanding of 'violence'. Some of the judgements we make about the meaning of 'violence' are value judgements about the validity of the violence depicted.
ART OR ENTERTAINMENT?
Many people think that the context of violence is relevant to whether or not it is justified. Some representations of violence are seen as worthy, educational or artistically justified, whilst others are described as 'gratuitous'. In other words some representations 'explore', whilst others 'exploit'. The BBFC often uses context as a defence for strong scenes of violence, perhaps for passing a film in a lower category. Thus films such as 'Platoon' (Oliver Stone, 1986), 'Schindler's List' (Steven Spielberg, 1993), 'Amistad' (Spielberg, 1997), 'Saving Private Ryan' (Spielberg, 1998) and 'La Haine' (Mathieu Kassovitz,1995) were all passed 15 rather than 18. These films, it is argued, deal with important social issues - the reality of war, the slave trade, Nazism and social exclusion.
Activity
• Watch the opening of 'Saving Private Ryan'. What cinematic techniques are used to make it seem real? How did you respond to this sequence? One critic called this sequence 'pornography of violence'. What do you think he meant?
• When Saving Private Ryan was released critics focused on whether the film exploited as well as explored its subject matter. What do you think?
• Another criticism that has been made of the BBFC is that it makes allowances for 'arthouse' films, safe in the knowledge that they will only reach a limited audience, whilst they are very strict on mainstream popular entertainment. Do you think this criticism is valid? Do you think the distinctions art versus entertainment, exploration versus exploitation hold? Think of examples to back up your opinion.
GENRE
People also react to cinematic violence according to the film's genre. David Docherty (1990) found in research for the Broadcasting Standards Council (BSC - now Broadcasting Standards Commission) that audiences find some representations of violence more upsetting than others. Cartoons, comedy, westerns, science fiction and war films were ranked low, whilst more realistic genres like crime dramas were seen as more alarming. This kind of result has been repeated in more recent research. For example the majority of people do not consider the formula violence of James Bond films to be violence at all.
Researchers have identified the idea of 'modality'. This means the judgements people make about how close to reality a media product is. For example science fiction or spy thrillers are very clearly perceived as fantasy, whilst crime dramas might be seen as 'more real', though in fact both are fictions constructed according to certain conventions. The conventions of different genres are also clearly understood by audiences.
Activity
• Watch a short section of violent action from different genres of films e.g. science fiction - 'The Fifth Element' (Luc Besson, 1997), action - 'The Rock' (Michael Bay, 1996), western - 'Unforgiven' (Clint Eastwood, 1992), war film - 'Saving Private Ryan' (Spielberg, 1998), horror - 'Mimic' (Guillermo Del Toro, 1997), or 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' (Jim Gillespie, 1997). As you watch write down details of edits, use of music, use of camera angles and movements, type of violence. How typical of each genre are the clips you chose? How would you define the style of each clip? How do you respond to each clip?
• Create a product i.e. planning/storyboarding for a short film, promotional material for the same etc. that either uses or deliberately breaks the conventions of a particular genre in the treatment of cinematic violence.