Reading Assignment Including Questions

The media as a cause of deviant behavior

Over 200 years ago the Greek philosopher Plato wanted to ban the dramatic poets from his ideal Republic. He feared that their stories about sex and violence among the gods would harm impressionable young minds. Since then new forms of mass entertainment have often attracted concerns about their harmful effects. Pearson’s careful study of newspaper reports of deviance over several decades shows that this has happened in the cases of ‘penny dreadfuls’, music hall, film, rock music, horror comics and television. In 1908 New York Mayor George McLellan arbitrarily shut all 550 New York cinemas because he thought watching films was immoral and led to idleness.

Video games and computer networks are the most recent media forms to be fretted about.

Recently many people have become concerned about eh influence of the new breed of cartoons being screened in Britain. Examples include He-Man, Go-Bots, and Thunder Cats. Imitation of these is seen as particularly undesirable because they:

·         Portray the goodies using violence to defeat the baddies;

·         Do not show the unpleasant effects of that violence (the baddies never die);

·         Give status to characters merely on the basis of strength and fighting ability;

·         Encourage imitation of the hero characters through the sale of associated merchandise (swords, clothing etc.); violence is, therefore, being positively promoted;

·         Portray women in a very stereotyped way while the white male heroes are ridiculously macho; sexist attitudes and behavior are, therefore, reinforced;

·         Associate evil with blackness and a sense of “foreign-ness”; violence towards minority ethnic groups is thus condoned.

[Can you think of more examples that portray the goodies defeating the baddies using violence?]

In addition, they are not primarily designed as entertainment at all. They have poor characterization, bad artwork and almost non-existent storylines. They are, in effect, merely advertising. He-Man, for example, was a toy produced by Mattel who then approached Filmation of California to make a cartoon about the character which would then be syndicated to the American TV networks. Mattel and Filmation are in constant touch about storylines, new characters etc. An attempt is always made to include in each episode every character currently on sale in order to maintain awareness of and desire for each of them. Thus, two profit-motivated corporations are cynically manipulating children with no regard for the effects of their products on the children themselves or the future of society as a whole, the argument goes.

‘Some of the game shows you violent moves you can later practice on your friends. I don’t find myself becoming aggressive but some of my friends do. They start fighting and think they are in a video game.’ (Guardian, 13.4.94)

[This book was published more than a decade ago; can you find some current examples where media become advertisements for the products?]

Through eroding in-built inhibitions about acting in certain ways (‘disinhibition’)

If you turn violence into entertainment you take away the shock and wrongness of it. We are supposed to have progressed since the days of Victoria, but looking at the increase in crime figures before the advent of television and after it, you will see the evidence that television does have a direct effect. (Mary Whitehouse)

This suggests that the inhibitions about sexual or violent behavior are broken down if such behavior is portrayed as ‘normal’ on the screen. This is particularly likely to happen if deviant behavior goes unpunished in films. Feminists, in particular, are concerned about the media’s treatment of women in this respect. The Women’s Monitoring Network, based in London, reviews this and other aspects of media production. They argue that:

Society generally abhors violence and yet violence against women is both treated as commonplace and exploited for its news and entertainment value and marketability. This not only reflects current social attitudes but serves also to reinforce and encourage acceptance of them.                (Report no. 2 Violence against Women)

[How does advertisement contribute to these potential threats of ‘disinhibition’?]

Investigating Mass Media

Paul Trowler

Collins educational 2001