The Media and the Commodification of Violence

McQuail (2000) describes the media as a means of communication that operates on a large scale, reaching and involving virtually everyone in the society to a greater or lesser degree. Media is a plural of medium, which means a channel or vehicle through which something is carried or transmitted.  We have the print, electronic and digital media.  The media primarily informs, educates and entertains the society.  Violence has always been a subject of interest in portraying media content because every aspect of media seems to use violence as means of drawing attention.  Despite the consequences of violence in any society, the increase in media content portraying violent acts gives rise to questions being asked as to why the popularity of violence in the media? Is the media using violence to increase its audiences or for other pecuniary purposes?

Overview of the Various Forms of Media

1.         Broadcast: Radio and television programs are distributed over frequency bands that are highly regulated.

2.         Film: Films are produced by recording people and objects with cameras, or by creating them using animation techniques and/or special effects. Films entertain, educate, enlighten, and inspire audiences. Any film can become a worldwide attraction, especially with the addition of dubbing or subtitles that translate the film message. Films are also artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them.

3.         Video Games: A video game is a computer-controlled game in which a video display, such as a monitor or television, is the primary feedback device. There always must also be some sort of input device, usually in the form of button/joystick combinations (on arcade games), a keyboard and mouse/trackball combination (computer games), a controller (consolegames), or a combination of any of the above.

4.         Audio recording and reproduction: Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical or mechanical re-creation and/or amplification of sound, often as music. This involves the use of audio equipment such as microphones, recording devices, and loudspeakers. Music videos can accommodate all styles of filmmaking, including animation, live action films, documentaries, and non-narrative, abstract film.

5.         Internet: The Internet is a more interactive medium of mass media, and can be briefly described as "a network of networks". Specifically, it is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP).

6.         Print Media: We have journals, newspapers and magazines. A magazine is a periodical publication containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising and/or purchase by readers. Magazines are typically published weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly or quarterly, with a date on the cover that is in advance of the date it is actually published. On the other hand, a newspaper is a publication containing news and information and advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. It may be general or special interest, most often published daily or weekly.

7.         Outdoor Media: Outdoor media is a form of mass media which comprises billboards, signs, placards placed inside and outside of commercial buildings/objects like shops/buses, flying billboards (signs in tow of airplanes), blimps, skywriting, AR Advertising.

 

Brief Analysis of the Role of the Media in Society

The primary function of the media system in any society is to provide information to several millions of people. The media are extremely influential. Each of the media is presumed to affect perceptions and behaviour in a distinctive way. They can affect the society and vice versa. The media are the uniquely modern means of public communication and much of their importance lies in the fact that they are a major cause of whatever modes of perception, thought, public discourse, and political action. Because of their size and the large number of people they reach, the media have tremendous impact on society. Murphy (1977) sums up societal impacts of the media in different ways as oil, glue and dynamite. As oil, Murphy (1977) asserts that media of communication keep the world running smoothly by helping individuals adjust to the reality of their lives. They keep society on and healthy by suggesting solutions that are socially acceptable. As glue, social cohesion is maintained by communication. He contends that the media gives all of us including strangers something to talk about by setting agenda of discussion and that over the years, communication builds up and reinforces the fabrics that hold a society together. Murphy (1977) also describes the media as dynamites that can rip the society apart. A good example of this is the propaganda campaigns that preceded the Russian Revolution in 1917 and Hitler’s rise to the German Chancellorship in 1933. Similarly, the media particularly the newspapers and magazines played a tremendous role in the struggle for Nigeria’s independence in 1960.

 

Various Forms of Violence and Their Consequences in Society

Smith et al (1998) defines violence as “any overt depiction of a credible threat of physical force or the actual use of such force intended to physically harm an animate being or group of beings.”  Violence is defined by the World Health Organization 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, maldevelopment, or deprivation". Violent acts can be physical, sexual, psychological and emotional.  The various forms of violence include:

i.     Self-directed violence: Self-directed violence is subdivided into suicidal behaviour and self-abuse. The former includes suicidal thoughts, attempted suicides – also called para suicide or deliberate self-injury in some countries – and completed suicides. Self-abuse, in contrast, includes acts such as self-mutilation.

ii.    Collective violence: Collective violence is subdivided into structural violence and economic violence. Unlike the other two broad categories, the subcategories of collective violence suggest possible motives for violence committed by larger groups of individuals or by states. Collective violence that is committed to advance a particular social agenda includes, for example, crimes of hate committed by organized groups, terrorist acts and mob violence. Political violence includes war and related violent conflicts, state violence and similar acts carried out by larger groups. Economic violence includes attacks by larger groups motivated by economic gain – such as attacks carried out with the purpose of disrupting economic activity, denying access to essential services, or creating economic division and fragmentation. Clearly, acts committed by larger groups can have multiple motives.

 

iii.        Interpersonal violence: Interpersonal violence is divided into two subcategories:   Family and intimate partner violence – that is, violence largely between family    members and intimate partners, usually, though not exclusively, taking place in the           home. Community violence – violence between individuals who are unrelated, and             who may or may not know each other, generally taking place outside the home. The             former group includes forms of violence such as child abuse, intimate partner         violence and abuse of the elderly. The latter includes youth violence, random acts of     violence, rape or sexual assault by strangers, and violence in institutional settings such as schools, workplaces, prisons and nursing homes. When interpersonal violence occurs in families, its psychological consequences can affect parents, children, and             their relationship in the short- and long-terms.

 

The consequences of violence in any society are many.  In societies with high levels of violence, economic growth can be slowed down, personal and collective security eroded, and social development impeded.  Families edging out of poverty and investing in schooling their sons and daughters can be ruined through the violent death or severe disability of the main breadwinner. Communities can be caught in poverty traps where pervasive violence and deprivation form a vicious circle that stifles economic growth.  For societies, meeting the direct costs of health, criminal justice, and social welfare responses to violence diverts many billions of dollars from more constructive societal spending.  The much larger indirect costs of violence due to lost productivity and lost investment in education work together to slow economic development, increase socio-economic inequality, and erode human and social capital.

Additionally, communities with high level of violence do not provide the level of stability and predictability vital for a prospering business economy. Individuals will be less likely to invest money and effort towards growth in such unstable and violent conditions.

Child maltreatment could lead to impaired lifelong physical and mental health, and social and occupational functioning (e.g. school, job, and relationship difficulties). Youth violence greatly increases the costs of health, welfare and criminal justice services; reduces productivity; decreases the value of property; and generally undermines the fabric of society. Youth violence has a serious, often lifelong, impact on a person's psychological and social functioning.

Beyond deaths and injuries, highly prevalent forms of violence (such as child maltreatment and intimate partner violence) have serious lifelong non-injury health consequences. Victims may engage in high-risk behaviours such as alcohol and substance misuse, smoking, and unsafe sex, which in turn can contribute to cardiovascular disorders, cancers, depression, diabetes and HIV/AIDS, resulting in premature death.  Violence may beget violence. The balances of prevention, mitigation, mediation and exacerbation are complex, and vary with the underpinnings of violence.

 

The Commodification of Violence by the Media

The commodification of violence has occurred for centuries, even millennia.  Violence has always been used for commercial business by the media. Representations of violence in the media are not new.  In fact, violence has been a key part of media since the birth of literature: Ancient Greek poetry and drama frequently portrayed murder, suicide and self-mutilation, many of Shakespeare’s plays revel in violence, torture, maiming, rape, revenge and psychological terror, and some of the most popular books of the 19th century were “penny dreadfuls” that delivered blood, gore and other shocks to the lowest common denominator.  The simple fact is: violence is a highly popular, entertaining and profitable commodity. 

Serious issues such as domestic violence and child abuse are essentially commodities for the media which is used to increase viewership or unit sales.   Entertainment industry lore has it that audiences - young men, in particular - want to see violence.  Indeed, a content analysis by Oliver and Kalyanaraman (2002) found that movie trailers exaggerated the level of violence within the movies being previewed, presumably because the creators believed that doing so would enhance the film’s appeal.

For film, then, the financial “sweet spot” appears to be films that are action rather than dialogue oriented, but still accessible to minors. This combination allows filmmakers to target the most profitable local markets while still being relevant in foreign markets due to the relative lack of dialogue and domestic-culture-specific references: action movies don’t require complex plots or characters. They rely on fights, killings, special effects and explosions to hold their audiences. And, unlike comedy or drama—which depend on good stories, sharp humour, and credible characters, all of which are often culture-specific—action films require little in the way of good writing and acting. They’re simple, and they’re universally understood. To top it off, the largely non-verbal nature of the kind of films that journalist Sharon Waxman refers to as “short-on-dialogue, high-on-testosterone” makes their dubbing or translation relatively inexpensive.

It is impossible to fully quantify how big of a role mediated violence plays in creating real life violence, but common sense tells us that cultures define themselves by the stories told within those cultures. And the stories told in most western cultures today are obsessed with violence, often of the most sordid and demented kind. Violence is legitimized through its glorification in broadcast and cable television, movies, and video games.  

Prime-time television exhibits violence every night. Research by the Parents Television Council confirms that a weapon is displayed every three minutes. Psychopaths and serial killers are often portrayed as protagonists. Women are often the targets of sick violence, as evidenced in the CBS drama “Stalker.” That show opened this fall with a young woman being trapped in a car, doused with gasoline and then incinerated while the car careened down a hill and exploded, all while the victim was screaming.

Apologists for the media industry excuse the peddlers of entertainment violence by defending the producers’ rights to exercise free expression and artistic license. But this has nothing to do with rights. This has to do with cultural leadership. As for artistic merit, it doesn’t take much creative genius to develop blood-splattered, context-free plots in which people are tortured and/or blown up.

On the impact of film violence on children, there is the tired argument that parents just need to be more responsible for their own kids’ viewing. True enough, but parents hardly have a fair fight in shielding kids from big media’s relentless violence parade in television, film, music and video games.

This excuse also ignores the impact of mediated violence on rational adults. Recent research by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania shows parents themselves become desensitized when exposed to media violence and, consequently, are more willing to allow their kids to absorb such content.

None of this is to say that violence has no place at all.  But the violence now being peddled as entertainment is too often highly graphic, and void of any consequence or moral reflection. Culture shapers in Hollywood like to get on bandwagons to speak out against bullying, domestic violence and other such actions. They are remarkably quiet when it comes to criticizing the mediated culture that perpetuates violence as an entertainment commodity. Clearly, the money generated by violent programming is more important.

 

Nearly a decade ago, a renowned professor of Communications, George Gerbner made the following comment about media violence in an instructional video, The Killing Screens (Jhally, 1994): 

“Why is violence so pervasive?  Many people say, ‘well that’s what the people want and that is because it is very popular.”  That is not so.  Violence, in itself, is not a popular commodity.  To be sure there are some good stories and some very strong stories that have a lot of violence, but their popularity does not rest in the violence.  Most of the highly rated programs on television are non-evident.” 

 

Gerbner explained that the pervasiveness of violence in movies and TV programs has much more to do with its easy global marketability than it does with its inherent appeal or attractiveness to audiences.  While humorous media content is often difficult to produce and is often misunderstood when it travels across cultures, violence is relatively cheap to produce and communicates in a universal language.  While Gerbner acknowledges that violence ‘livens up’ a dull program, he argues that it is not an enjoyable form of content for its own sake. 

While there is no particular reason to question Gerbner’s analysis about the general appeal of media violence except for the fact that violence continues to be a staple of media content, it is remarkable that so little research attention has been devoted to studying the extent to which violence contributes to the enjoyment of media entertainment.  Part of the explanation for the lack of research on this topic probably has to do with the fact that researchers have been preoccupied with documenting the prevalence of violent media content and the potential negative consequences of viewing media violence. However, given the past research indicating that viewing media violence is causally related to subsequent aggressive behaviour, it seems important to understand more about the particular dynamics involved in viewing violence.  If, for example, media violence is not particularly enjoyed for its own sake, this would suggest that viewing of violence along with its negative effects on aggression could be curtailed without sacrificing viewer enjoyment. 

While prominent researchers like Gerbner, Cantor, and Goldsten clearly suggest that violence is not particularly popular, few studies have attempted to directly explore the extent to which violence might contribute to enjoyment in a program or movie.  One recent meta-analysis on the effects of media ratings revealed that ratings of violence tended to cause potential viewers to become more attracted to the material, but this finding does not rule out the possibility that viewers use the violent rating to infer the presence of other sorts of non-violent content (e.g. sex or exciting action) to which they are attracted.  Two notable exceptions from most studies on the appeal of violence (published 20 years apart) reported data from experimental investigations that were designed to determine if violent versions of media presentations were enjoyed more than their non-violent counterparts.  Both of these experiments found evidence in favour of the notion that violent content fails to contribute to the enjoyment of a program or movie.  Taken together, the available data seems to point consistently against the idea that media violence is an enjoyable commodity.

If, in fact it turns out that media violence is not enjoyable in and of itself, how does one account for its continued prevalence in mainstream entertainment?  Sparks and Sparks (2000) provided an analysis of the appeal of media violence that offered several plausible accounts for its enjoyment that do not involve the enjoyment of violence per se.  For example, these authors pointed out that violence could be confounded with other variables like production quality or sexual content.  Alternatively, viewers might experience a number of post-viewing gratifications such that they report enjoyment of a program or movie even though the violent content itself was not experienced as pleasurable.  One example of this possibility involves excitation transfer.  If violent content triggers arousal and a particular plot-line is resolved favourably, viewers might experience a sense of relief that is intensified by residual excitation.  According to the theory, since arousal intensifies any emotion and decays slowly, any new emotion will be more intense than it ordinarily would be if it occurs during the time when arousal from a prior event has not fully decayed.  

 

Thus, arousal from a violent film might intensify feelings of relief following the film and cause it to be recalled as particularly pleasant even though the violence itself was not enjoyable.  Of course, it is also possible that violence may trigger negative emotions in some viewers such as disgust, anxiety and upset.  These emotions may sustain themselves even after viewing is finished. 

Theorizing Motives for the Commodification of Violence by the Media

A common theme that emerges in many theories of the appeal of violence in the media is that images of bloodshed and aggression are not intrinsically attractive to most audiences, but that there are other pleasures that accompany exposure to violence. Such explanations may be categorized into three interrelated categories.

One set of explanations focuses on gratifications related to intense emotions and arousal, such as voyeurism and curiosity about taboo actions (Sparks & Sparks, 2000), rebellious tasting of the “forbidden fruit” of violence, the intense absorption provided by highly engaging, arousing content, and the arousal-based enhancement of happy endings. Such gratifications related to arousal are often argued to be even more compelling for subgroups such as boys and young men, and sensation-seekers.

A second set of explanations focuses on social gratifications, such as bonding while viewing intensely disturbing material, or the playing out of traditional gender roles of masculine bravery and feminine timidity.

A third set of explanations focuses on the content features that often accompany violence and that are argued to be the source of appeal, such as the pleasure of seeing villainous characters get punished and heroic figures get rewarded.  Additionally, Wakshlag, Vial, and Tamborini (1983) reported that violence that is followed by the restoration of justice and order is appealing to those who are anxious about their own safety, because such material can offer vicarious relief from safety-related concerns. Other authors have noted the appeal of suspense, conflict, and action, all of which may co-occur with violence and which may explain why viewers seek out violent content.

Taken together, a growing body of evidence suggests that violence may increase viewing interest because it signals the presence of other desirable content characteristics and viewing experiences. Indeed, research by Oliver et al. (2002) found that the level of violence in movie previews did not enhance anticipated enjoyment directly, but instead did so indirectly by altering perceptions of other qualities of the films. That is, those who saw thriller previews containing more violence thought the films would be more suspenseful, and those who saw comedy previews with more violence thought the films would be more humorous. These perceptions, in turn, predicted anticipated enjoyment and desire to see the films.

 

Conclusion

It is apparent that since time immemorial, violence has always been part of media content. The media sees violence as a highly popular, entertaining and profitable commodity and can be effective in performing their functions of informing, educating and entertaining the society.   Violence in the media increases viewership and thus raises profitability.  Violence in movies has much to do with its easy global marketability than it does with its inherent appeal or attractiveness to audiences.   Be that as it may, the argument that audiences are not so attracted to violence in films but rather to other pleasures that accompany exposure to violence could effectively counter the belief that people patronize media products that have high violent content.  It behoves on media producers to always consider the interest of the society vis-a-viz the messages they churn out and balance things up so that the impact of their content does not destroy the health of the society they are trying to serve.

 

 

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