Violence in the Media

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SIMULATED VIOLENCE

A DISCUSSION ON HOW WE DISCUSS VIOLENCE AND MEDIA

Ryan Stocks

The year is 1980, and John Lennon is dead.

In retrospect, as we learn more about his life, Lennon has become somewhat of a controversial fgure, but this doesn’t change the fact that at the time this was kind of a big deal. People wanted a reason, something to blame. Mark David Chapman, Lennon’s killer, gave a multitude of reasons for why he did it - most of them relating in some way to his faith - but perhaps the one that has stuck in the public consciousness the most is how he resonated with 1951 classic Catcher in the Rye. On the night he shot Johnathon, Chapman was found with a copy of the book, which he had signed with “This is my message”. Later, during his court sentencing, Chapman quoted a passage from the book to the court. As you can quite possibly imagine, this wasn’t great for the book’s reputation, and greatly contributed to how we remember the case. Since that fateful day, the connection between media and violence will be made time and time again. But the question remains to be answered; is it fair?

“From a certain point of view, cinema was fast becoming a pit of sin and indulgence.”

Although the case of Chapman and Catcher in the Rye certainly didn’t help, people have been talking about the implications of media for as long as there has been media to discuss. If you wanted, you could take this back to like, the bible, but let’s keep it a little more “this millennia”. So let’s take it back to the 1920s, just as the golden age of Hollywood was dawning, an era dubbed pre-code Hollywood. An era between the mainstream adoption of sound pictures yet before the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (or the Hays Code) censorship guidelines, which would come about in 1930, however, would not be properly enforced until 1934. At risk of sounding stupid, this era really was the wild west of cinema. During this era the screen was practically unregulated, for better and for worse. Whilst it is true that perhaps some regulation was required, pre-code Hollywood was far more open to things that would take nearly a century to be properly revisited in a mainstream flm environment. Political commentary was far more common, female characters were depicted with more agency than one would expect, and homosexual relationships were depicted as something other than a punchline - something that the industry still hasn’t fully caught up with. To be clear the representation wasn’t good but it was… there.

However as the popularity of the medium increased so too did the calls for regulation and censorship, particularly from religious groups. From a certain point of view, cinema was fast becoming a pit of sin and indulgence. In 1933 the American Roman Catholics established the Catholic Legion of Decency, a group that was launched to lead

a campaign against the “immorality” of American cinema. This, compounded with rising fears of a government takeover of flm censorship led the major studies to place more importance on the upholding of the code.

So here we are, it’s 1934 and the shape of the flm landscape has been changed in a way that will be felt for at least the next 100 years. Surely no other new medium will experience rapid growth leading to concerns over its contents and how that afects the audience.

Right?

“During this era the screen was practically unregulated, for better and for worse.”

Wrong. The year is 1992, and videogames are starting to really get big. Whilst nowhere near the astronomical heights of the industry today, it’s a far cry from the dead state of the industry not ten years prior. Anyway, it’s 1992, and a certain video game release for the Sega Genesis is about to shock the world so severely that a new ratings system would be established just to stop poor innocent children from ever being exposed to media like this again. So what was the game? Mortal Kombat, right? Wrong. No, this satanic game carried the name Night Trap, and it was released unto the world like a wolf in sheep’s clothing on the 15th of October 1992.

Night Trap is essentially an interactive - and I use that word lightly - B movie. The player is tasked by defending a house of young women against masked intruders, who are later revealed to be vampires. It’s cheesy, it’s corny, and it’s entirely tame. However in 1993 this game, along with the infamous Mortal Kombat became the scapegoats of the industry during the 1993 congressional hearing on video game violence. Hearing

“Rising fears of a government takeover of flm censorship led the major studios to place more importance on the upholding of the code. “

leader senator Joe Lieberman claimed that the game featured gratuitous violence, and encouraged sexual aggression against women. Lieberman also admitted to never having played the game, but hey, why should someone be knowledgeable about a piece of media they’re discussing at a congressional hearing, right? But I’m getting away from the point. This game was bad, like… really bad, but it wasn’t harmful. Night Trap was about as clean as a game in 1992 could get, but the premise sounds just evil enough that it worked as a convenient scapegoat to sell as a villain to a room full of out of touch senators. So from these hearings came the Video Game Rating Act of 1994, which would itself lead to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, or the ESRB. A board which would rate videogames on their content. Games would be given a rating from K-A for Kids to Adults (later changed to E for Everyone) to AO for Adults Only. Despite the questionable more measly $6 billion industry exploded to being worth over $300 billion, the conversation was sure to return. And return it would, like with the flm industry in the 30s, the video game industry would become a

common scapegoat for anything bad. In 1998, four students and a teacher were killed in a shooting. What was the reason? Well the murderers had played Goldeneye for the N64, so that’s probably the cause. In 2012, videogames were blamed for the horrifc Sandy Hook shooting. Initially, the shooter was misidentifed as the shooter’s brother, who had posted on facebook about his liking for the game Mass Efect. In response to this, angry mobs brigaded the game’s facebook page, calling its creators “child killers”. After the correct man was identifed as the shooter videogames were again blamed, with early news reports citing the games Starcraft and, bizarrely, Dance blame for the El Paso shootings on video games, saying “We must stop the glorifcation of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence.” I’m not trying to say that there is nothing wrong with how violence and other topics are depicted in video games, there’s a whole, very long conversation to be had there. It’s an important issue to discuss especially with the rapid expansion of the industry. But that conversation isn’t being had, not really. Instead the same tired rhetoric from over 30 years ago is being recycled over and over again as a way to avoid having to talk about any of the actual issues present in our entertainment media.

“This was an inevitability, and a ratings board for video games was both logical and necessary.”

JUST THE FACTS

An issue often ignored in discussions around media violence is how we depict these things in our informational media, your mainstream news media and whatnot. I’m not saying this isn’t something people talk about, it is, but far too often it’s ignored in contemporary discussions around the topic. Depictions and representations in news media is extremely important, potentially even more so than your entertainment media, because a very large amount of people trust news as fact. People are far less likely to question the way something is depicted in the news compared to in a television show, because what do they have to gain from being anything but entirely truthful?

Because believe it or not, our society does have an issue with violence, and potentially one of the biggest causes for this comes from our news media, and how it tends to glorify and sensationalise violence. Recent research suggests that the contagion efect - a term

contagion is the extensive coverage that these events receive, coverage and avoiding sensation the radio, their words in the paper. ings . This isn’t to say that covering Not on the shooters, not on how of this year on this very topic, over the years, starting with a

SO IS THIS REALLY AN ISSUE?

tion matters. How you represent topics, ideas, and attitudes in your on-screen media is undeniably important. Representation in the media can be an extremely powerful thing for extremely good things. For instance, accurately depicting a diverse range of people can help validate people in their identity, it can help normalise these ideas to people as they grow up, it can change how culture evolves. But it’s a double-edged sword. Toxic depictions in media can skew the perception of things. This is why stereotypes can be so harmful, they tell people that this group of people are 2d caricatures, without depth. It’s at best even in cases where stereotypes may be based on some sliver of truth. It’s never the whole story being shown, yet it’s the whole story shown. So naturally, yes, this extends to concepts and ideologies. And yes, this traces back to the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code. The code was introduced because certain groups thought that the way certain topics were being depicted were steering people in a direction they saw as sinful. Whether they were right or wrong is not up to me, and honestly, it doesn’t really matter. It is just one of many cases where groups have recognised how rep violence it’s possible that these depictions are subconsciously psyche. And when we see the way mainstream media depicts mass shooters, It’s inevitable that in some small, possibly unconscious part of our brain, we dehumanise the tragedy of these events. This is an issue, and this is the most current issue with simulated violence.

FIND OUT WHAT SERIES OF BUZZWORDS BEST DEFINES YOU

QUESTION 1: Choose a musical artist

A oji B Mer bow Sweet Trip C Mother Mother D Wee er Radiohead The Smiths E mxmtoon

QUESTION 5: Choose a Video Game

A Undertale B eometry Dash C Animal Crossing D League of Legends E Minecraft

QUESTION 2: Choose a Musical

A I don’t like musicals, it doesn’t make sense to start singing. B: Cats C Be More Chill D Dear van Hansen E In Blind aith

QUESTION 3: Choose an Animated Movie

A nd of vangelion B: Coraline C The Cat Returns D Megamind E My eighbour Totoro

s o r f

A Black hoodie with the docs and the dyed black hair. B: Nothing C astel coloured sweaters that are too large D reen amer Shirt and cargo shorts E Vintage Victorian Clothing for living out in the woods

QUESTION 6: Choose a Social Media

A TikTok B Miiverse C Tumblr D: Reddit E: Instagram

QUESTION 7: Choose an actor

A: Zendaya B Adam Sandler C Aubrey la a D Heath Ledger E irsten Stewart

QUESTION 8: Choose a drink?

A Ari ona Tea B Sparkling Water C Monster ink D Monster Black E Sasparilla

QUESTION 9: What are you like at parties?

A Smoking a cigarette on the lawn, grungy as hell, main character moment. B Turns up late, steals small valuables, drinks bong water, ghosts. C Drinking the sweet selt ers, asks for a follow back on twitter, going home early. D “You ever seen that one wojak, y’know the one where the guy is standing in the corner as he ruminates to himself about how nobody truly knows him. So yeah that wojak is basically me” E ot drinking, trying to cue Mitski, running of into the woods and starting a coven.

A - Slowed + Reverbcore

Congratulations You’re the new nightcore, changing the music around you to refect the empty hallway of a life you live. You can see yourself in that three second looping anime gif, and you clutch your heart as the drop of a song is stretched out to be wayyyyy longer. But, like, therapy would maybe be a good choice as well. Suit yourself.

B - Weirdcore

this section is all lowercase baby. youre dry, youre creepy, youre weird as hell. several hours of noise music and thinking that a room having a single light source makes it a liminal space. But yknow, fnding that sense of community in an external interest that’s unfounded by anything else in the sphere of pop culture aint even that bad.

C - Sanriocore

You probably thought this was a bu feed qui for your Divergent faction right up until you saw you got this. But well, here we are. The great splintering of Alt Counter-Culture has led to here, where the dark rejection of society is shown through pastels and cartoon characters edited to have chains and piercings.

D - Incelcore

If you got this one and didn’t want it, I’m ALMOST sorry for you. You’re part of the great modern movement of the new “outcasts”, a community that has infated so greatly in their si e to the point where this word doesn’t even mean the defnition anymore. Whether you murder, manipulate, mansplain, or misogynise, possibly some malewife buisness on the side , your choices led you here, and y’know what little guy? I’m proud of ya.

E - Cottagecore

Reject Society, return to the great wild life we once chose to live. With creeks fowing through the woods, and our escape made from the panopticon of capitalistic society that once trapped us, we can fnally unwind and delight in the simple pleasures of nature. Until someone inevitably trips and requires urgent medical attention or everyone simultaneously realises they can’t actually get a pot to boil over an open fre.