By Bruce Goldfaden
“And by that destiny to perform an act,
“Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come,
“In yours and my discharge.” [1]
What keeps us anchored to the past even when we have the power to shape the future?
In 1903, the black-and-white silent film, The Great Train Robbery, set the stage for an entertainment media business model built in a big way on a persistent fascination with idealizing violence that has thrived under the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and free expression even when the content has graphic, gruesome images.
If The Great Train Robbery’s 7 murders and killings and ~30 gunshots in 10 1/2 minutes weren’t enough, the movie ends with one of the robbers resurrected to point his gun at the camera and fire six gunshots with smoke filling the screen or what was intended to be into the audience’s face [in this longer version]. This “breaking of the fourth wall” was produced to make early moviegoers feel as if they were being directly threatened. [2] Twenty years later, in 1923, there was “the first commercial screening of short motion pictures” with sound. [3] And, on May 16, 1929, the new Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences® held the first Academy Awards®. [4]
That same year, 1929, also marked the beginning of a lesser-known event that would define a century-long tension between entertainment media and the numerous people concerned about the graphic, gruesome images and their effects on real-world behavior. After only two decades of film, alarm bells were already sounding.
The Payne Fund Studies, 1929–1936, were the first rigorous attempts to study the effects of entertainment media on behavior. The studies examined how movies influenced children and teenagers, revealing that films could steer youth toward positive or negative actions. One study found that “…children who watched more movies…performed worse in schoolwork, were rated lower by their teachers, behaved less cooperatively, more deceptively, with less emotional stability and with lower levels of self-control.”
Not much has changed since the Payne Fund Studies’ reports nearly 100 years ago except for the number of experts who are also concerned about the effect of media violence, including video games. Medical and psychological associations, scientists and academic researchers, joint statements and consensus reports, research organizations and institutes, advocacy groups and nonprofits, in addition to Congressional hearings, have all reported that media violence can cause aggressive behavior or worse. Or, to cite the 1972 Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence, “The evidence does indicate that televised violence may lead to increased aggressive behavior in certain subgroups of children, who might constitute a small portion or a substantial proportion of the total population of young television viewers.” [6]
And, 35 years later, in 2007, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) agreed. In their report, Violent Television Programming And Its Impact On Children, the FCC said, “We agree with the views of the Surgeon General and find that, on balance, research provides strong evidence that exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behavior in children, at least in the short term.” [7]
Seven years later, in the 2014 revised edition of Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill, authors Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano pointed out that video games now provide realistic simulations of violence that closely mirror military training exercises. [8] Grossman went as far as to label violent video games, in an article a year earlier, as “murder simulators” that train youth in aggression. [9]
In 2022, in the Journal of Communication, Karyn Riddle and Nicole Martins provided a 20-year update on the National Television Violence Studies, noting that television violence has increased and is often paired with humor or heightened realism. They concluded, “Overall, the violent messages conveyed in media should continue to spark concern.” [10]
And, with all of these reports warning us about the real-world effects of media violence, what do the crime data reveal? Violent victimization has increased 12%; rape/sexual assault have increased 55%; aggravated assault has increased 10%; and violent crime excluding simple assault has increased 13%.
Real-world violence, including school violence, and media violence, including video games, are part of Indecency USA’s psychological indecency, the serpent’s tail of the three-body-part, monstrous chimera with the lion’s head and the goat’s body, described in the introduction, part 2, and part 3. The chimera of our political, cultural, and psychological indecency is hovering around us, the omnipresent negative energy attempting to strip us permanently of the essential moral and ethical principles of compassion, goodwill, and kindness.
Violence. Always violence. Why are we, as a society, so fixated on committing these acts in real time and watching them unfold as entertainment? We seem captivated by violence, as if these acts stimulate us in some way. We’re the richest country in the history of the universe; yet, in this land of opportunity, we’re masters at an alphabet of psychological indecency against one another: attack, berate, crush, destroy, eviscerate, flatten, gouge, hurt, invade, jab, kill, lacerate, manslaughter, nullify, oppress, pillory, quash, rape, shoot, torture, undermine, vilify, waste, (e)xpunge, yoke, zap.
And, we’re masters at another “m” word, murder, with a murder rate far surpassing those of the other Group of Seven (G7) nations of “advanced democracies.” [13]. We kill at a rate that is 229% higher than Canada with the second highest murder total and 2,861% higher than Japan with the lowest murder total.
Of course, we all know about violence in our nation’s public schools. CNN reported September 20, 2024, “There have been at least 50 school shootings in the United States so far…as of October 15 [2024]. The incidents left 24 people dead and at least 72 other victims injured…” [15]
But, another type of violence within our public schools—the internal crimes committed by students against students, another cause of our psychological indecency in Indecency USA—rarely makes headlines even though the numbers are staggering and despite the billions of dollars we're spending to educate our youth. Whether we're succeeding is an open question.
In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per elementary and secondary student, 38% more than the average $11,300 for OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. [16] Despite the billions spent, US students ranked 18th in the top 20 countries academically measured by the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test of 15-year old students in science, reading, and math or in the 10th percentile. The 10th percentile.
All of the 17 other countries that finished ahead of the US academically spent less per public school student except Switzerland. [I could not find data for Hong Kong whose students finished sixth]. Only students in Sweden and Belgium, both spending less than the US, scored lower than US students in this top 20 ranking. [17] [18] But, if US public school students don’t excel at academics, many students excel at crime at a level that is hardly believable. The US Department of Education reports “…about 857,500 violent incidents and 479,500 nonviolent incidents were recorded by U.S. public schools.” [19]
Overall, the US Department of Education has documented 1,337,000 violent and nonviolent incidents in public schools, which rank in the 10th percentile academically. Given these troubling statistics, we must ask: Is media violence intersecting with school violence? What is the return on investment (ROI) for public school education if schools are not a place of safety and learning? And, perhaps, the most important point: How many children are deprived of their potential before their adult lives even begin?
Concerned that violent behavior is caused by violent video games, California passed a bill in 2005 to prevent minors from buying them. The bill defined violence as “killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.” This description highlighted the explicit, graphic nature of video game content. Although the bill’s goal was to protect children, the Supreme Court in 2011 affirmed by a 7-2 majority that video games are protected speech under the First Amendment. [20] [21]
In 2020, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a resolution stating there is insufficient evidence linking violent video games to real-world violence. But, the APA also said video games can increase aggression, underscoring ongoing concerns about their psychological effect. This nuanced position reflects the complexity of the media violence debate in which the distinction between aggression and actual violence remains contentious. [22]
And, so the controversy continues nearly a century after The Great Train Robbery of 1903; the Payne Fund Studies, 1929–1936; the 1972 Surgeon General’s report; the 2007 Federal Communications Report; the 2014 revised edition of Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill; the 2022 A Content Analysis of American Primetime Television: A 20-Year Update of the National Television Violence Studies; the attacks and deaths in our nation’s public schools; and the 1,337,000 internal violent and nonviolent criminal incidents in schools. Despite all of these reports and tragedies, the discussion about the effects of media violence is unresolved.
But, another expert believed we were missing the point: that media violence has negative effects in how we view the world and our attitudes toward the world. Media expert George Gerbner [1919-2005], who pioneered the Cultural Indicators Project [23] to analyze how television shapes public perception, claimed the totality of what we watch cultivates a belief that we live in a mean, dangerous world not that media violence causes violence. For more than 25 years, he studied more than 3,000 TV programs and coined cultivation theory to describe how long-term exposure to violent content can cultivate or distort our view of reality.
Gerbner also coined the term mean world syndrome [24] to describe this phenomenon. In a research paper, he wrote, “Long-term exposure to television, where frequent violence is virtually inescapable, tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world...where most people cannot be trusted and are just looking out for themselves.” [25]
The documentary, The Mean World Syndrome [26], further illustrated his views. Gerbner described this situation as “a historically unprecedented tidal wave of images of violence inundating every home often with expertly choreographed brutality…a relentless, pervasive exposure…many times a day.” Yet, he clarified that the issue wasn’t about causing violence, but about cultivating fear. “The contribution of television violence into the actual committing of violence is practically negligible,” he said. “The mean world syndrome contributes to a sense not only of vengeance and repression, but to a sense of panic..."
Because media has supplanted the traditional means of storytelling with often negative ideas, Gerbner said, a new business model is required. "Commercial media ha(s) eclipsed religion, art, oral traditions, and the family as the great storytelling engine of our time...The telling of stories, the cultivation of a sense of who we are, what the world is like, has always been the principal shaper of human behavior,” he said. “The new task…is…to design a media system...that can create an environment for our children...that is more fair…more equitable…and less damaging than the one we have today.” [26]
And, so, for now, the status quo remains as our nation is inundated with violent images. Our world view has been created, in part, by entertainment media’s studios, writers, producers, directors, and animators who have a persistent fascination with idealizing violence—blood and guts and beatings and gore—on film and on television, maybe even like a tidal wave of gruesomeness. The American Academy of Family Physicians, “one of the largest national medical organizations, with 130,000 members,” is quite concerned for our youth.
“An average American youth will witness 200,000 violent acts on television before age 18. Weapons appear on prime-time television an average of nine times each hour. The violence depicted in television content is often considerable, even in programs not advertised as violent, and children’s shows are particularly violent…popular cartoons contain 20 to 25 violent acts per hour, which is about five times as many as prime-time programs. Overall, 46% of television violence occurs in cartoons [and]…are more likely to [have] violence with humor (67%) and less likely to show the long-term consequences of violence (5%). Although some claim that cartoon violence is not as ‘real,’ and…not as damaging, it has been shown to increase the likelihood of aggressive, antisocial behavior in youth…While multiple factors can lead to violent actions, a growing body of literature shows a strong association between the perpetration of violence and exposure to violence in media, digital media, and entertainment.” [27]
But, perhaps the most instructive lesson from this century-long controversy about media violence is that, despite our power to shape the future, we’ve remained anchored to the past tried-and-true patterns of violent media content and consumption. Do these patterns reinforce us, or can entertainment media begin to create in a meaningful way and we consume in a meaningful way a variety of different, more positive stories? Stories of hope and stories of humanity. As Gerbner said, “The telling of stories...has always been the principal shaper of human behavior.” Should the entertainment media status quo be part of “the principal shaper of human behavior” or should we be the ones who determine “the principal shaper of human behavior" by ending the media status quo?” How? We can influence what stories are told through our movie, streaming, and TV choices. We can ask for decency through the dollars we spend. Let us decide with our dollars: Is violent media content the right prescription for a psychologically healthy future?
And, so, our road trip through Indecency USA continues. The chimera of our political, cultural, and psychological indecency is hovering around us, the omnipresent negative energy attempting to strip us permanently of the essential moral and ethical principles of compassion, goodwill, and kindness.
Next week: conclusion
References
[1] Shakespeare, William. The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1.
[2] Wikipedia Contributors. "The Great Train Robbery (1903 Film)." Last modified October 17, 2024. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(1903_film).
[3] Wikipedia Contributors. "Sound film." Last modified October 9, 2024. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film.
[4] Wikipedia Contributors. "1st Academy Awards." Last modified October 6, 2024. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Academy_Awards.
[5] Wikipedia Contributors. "Payne Fund Studies." Last modified October 17, 2024. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payne_Fund_Studies.
[6] U.S. Surgeon General. 1972. Television and the Growing Impact of Televised Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/4uexdaaw.
[7] Federal Communications Commission. Violent Television Programming and Its Impact on Children. 2007. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-07-50A1.pdf.
[8] Grossman, Dave, and Gloria DeGaetano. Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence. Paperback edition. New York: Harmony, 2014.
[9] Grossman, Dave. "Addiction to Murder: Why People Are So Drawn to Violent TV and Movies." Variety, August 21, 2013. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://variety.com/2013/voices/opinion/grossman-2640/.
[10] Riddle, Karyn and Martins, Nicole. "A Content Analysis of American Primetime Television: A 20-Year Update of the National Television Violence Studies." Journal of Communication 72, no. 1 (February 2022): 33–58. Published December 4, 2021. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab043.
[11] Bureau of Justice Statistics. “Year-to-Year Comparison by Crime Type.” National Crime Victimization Survey. Accessed October 19, 2024. https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/yeard-to-year-comparison/crimeType.
[12] Asimov, Isaac. Foundation. New York: Gnome Press, 1951.
[13] Council on Foreign Relations. "What Does the G7 Do?" Last modified May 30, 2023. Accessed October 19, 2024. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-does-g7-do.
[14] Statista. “Homicide Rate in G7 Countries in 2022.” Statista. Accessed October 19, 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1374211/g7-country-homicide-rate/.
[15] CNN. "School Shootings in the US: Fast Facts." CNN. Last modified September 26, 2023. Accessed October 20, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/us/school-shootings-fast-facts-dg/index.html.
[16] National Center for Education Statistics. "Education Expenditures by Country." Accessed October 20, 2024. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country.
[17] World Population Review. "PISA Scores by Country." Accessed October 20, 2024. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country.
[18] Teaching Abroad Direct. "Student Budgets Around the World." Accessed October 20, 2024. https://www.teachingabroaddirect.co.uk/blog/student-budgets-around-the-world.
[19] National Center for Education Statistics. Crime, Violence, Discipline, and Safety in U.S. Public Schools: Findings From the School Survey on Crime and Safety: 2021–22. NCES 2024-043, 2024. Accessed October 21, 2024. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2024/2024043.pdf.
[20] California State Legislature. AB-1179 Electronic Video Games: Sales to Minors. Chaptered October 7, 2005. Accessed October 21, 2024. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/asm/ab_1151-1200/ab_1179_bill_20051007_chaptered.html.
[21] Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011). Accessed October 22, 2024. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/564/786/.
[22] American Psychological Association. Resolution on Violent Video Games. 2015. Accessed October 22, 2024. https://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-violent-video-games.pdf.
[23] Gerbner, George. "Cultivation Analysis: An Overview." Mass Communication & Society 1, no. 3/4 (1998): 175-194, Accessed October 22, 2024
[24] Wikipedia Contributors. "Mean World Syndrome," last modified September 25, 2023. Accessed October 22, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/2p93zpvy.
[25] Gerbner, George. "Cultivation Analysis: An Overview." Mass Communication & Society 1, no. 3/4 (1998): 175-194, p. 185. Accessed October 22, 2024
[26] Media Education Foundation. The Mean World Syndrome: Media Violence & the Cultivation of Fear. 2010.
[27] American Academy of Family Physicians. Violence in the Media and Entertainment (Position Paper). Originally published 2004. Reviewed January 2022. Accessed October 22, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/dameu7nx.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Bruce Goldfaden is the founder of LSV Communications, a digital marketing agency structured on the principle of value proposition messaging to differentiate a company from competitors. He is the author of The Man of Many Colors, a parable about recognizing one's individual value to recognize this value in others to live by the Golden Rule, the correct code of conduct. The Man of Many Colors is available on amazon.com.
Copyright © 2024 Bruce Goldfaden and LSV Communications LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this essay may be reproduced or redistributed in any form or by any means—except through sharing via a link to this web page or for brief quotations in a review—without the express written permission of Bruce Goldfaden and LSV Communications LLC.
Comments