Essay, Research Paper: Violence

Enjoying Violence
There are many different views on how violent films and music affect people.
Personally, I believe violent films and music do not affect people, but some studies show
they do. There are also various reasons why people want to see violent films, and why
artists and producers continue to produce violent films and music.
From the article “Film Violence and Subsequent Aggressive Tendencies,” they
write that even in the 1920’s and 1930’s people were affected by watching and reading
things containing violent behavior. The authors write that media violence induces crime
and juvenile delinquency. Through their experiments, when a film is being watched, the
emotional state of the audience plays a big role. When preschoolers watched the
aggressive behavior of adults in a movie, they later reacted to mild frustrations. Violence
in films does not just affect youngsters, but people of all ages. In the same study Lovaas
and Walters experimented with the same idea. Their final conclusion was that, “stimuli
presented on the movie screen can arouse previously learned aggressiveness habits,
producing overtly hostile behavior.” As you can see through these experiments, people
can and sometimes do react to violence in films.
Most often, however, people do not react to the violence in films and music.
People who have been raised “properly” and who have word structure will most likely
not react to the violence that is put out there on films and in music. On the other hand, if
you were raised in a violent situation with faltering vocal structure, violence could
majorly affect you. Aggression is normal in all of us. But when aggression turns into
violence, the people behind the violence are probably troubled already.
The hit single, C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me), by hip-hop
artists Wu-Tang Clan, best describes why people make violent films and music; its the
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money says Danyel Smith, “Tough Talk on Entertainment.” Rappers rap about shooting
people and gunfire in songs. Films show people being shot to death. Do you really think
the listeners and viewers are going to go out and shoot someone or something? The
producers are all about making money too. In the article “Tough Talk on
Entertainment,” rapper Ice Cube summed it up in an interview. “His work is for young
people and if his audience wanted something else he would give it to them.” These
people are about making money and by doing that they have to produce things that
people want. I guess violence is in right now.
When films and songs show violence or have violent lyrics, I believe that this is
quality. Violence in the media, in this case films and music, does not cause violence, but
merely reflects the truth of the society we live in. Any reasonable person can see that
only “disturbed” people are the ones reacting and this is why we have all the violence we
do.
So why is there so much violence in the media? There are many reasons why
people enjoy going to violent films. From “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” Stephen
King writes, to show that we can and that we are not afraid. Another reason is to
re-establish our feelings of essential normality. We also go for fun. This fun, in a
twisted way, we get when we see others threatened, sometimes even killed. Basically,
horror and violent films appeal to all that is the worst in us. People enjoy the suspense
and the reaction of others. Many reasons come to mind why I go to see violent films, but
Stephen King sums it up in his article, “If we share a brotherhood of man, then we also
share an insanity of man.”
I realize that violence in films and music can affect people. I thinks that if people
blame films and music on their actions, they are ignorant. Yes, you may get ideas in your
head, but if you act upon those ideas then you must be mentally ill. The producers and
artists do it for one main reason, the money. If people didn’t enjoy violent films and
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music, then why is there such a high demand for it?
*Final Note
As I stated earlier I do not believe that violence in the media has a impact on the
violence in society. When people blame song lyrics and movies on their actions, I do not
believe them. Their minds were already disturbed, they just finally decided to go and
create the violence. If we are trying to stop all the violence that is going on, we should
do it by harsher punishment, not by taking away what people enjoy watching and
listening to. This paper was a little on the tough side for me. I did not agree on what
most of the articles were writing about, so therefore I do not have many facts to support
my opinions on the subject. We need to stop focusing on the “fake” violence and start
dealing with the reality of violence.


Word Count: 831