Violence and Popular Culture
Violence exists and has existed in all societies. In contemporary North American society, we also see violence frequently in media–from news to films to video games. These representations have been blamed for creating a culture of fear and inspiring real violence, particularly among youth.
Media analysts argue that the question of media and violence must shift from a focus on violence in media to a focus on violence in our broader society. They argue that we need to make interconnections between class, gender, race and inequality in the debate on violence. This can be a difficult shift to make because contemporary media is rife with overt and subtle instances of violence. Violence is portrayed in the news, music videos, reality TV crime shows, films and video games.
In the wake of the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, media pundits discussed (Opens new window) whether video game consumption was producing violent people. While this is an interesting question, in this module we do not focus on whether violent images produce violent people. Nor do we examine whether media imagery has become increasingly violent. As one scholar (Opens new window)puts it,
Violence has always figured prominently in storytelling. Violent imagery has been around since hunters began scratching accounts of their exploits on the walls of caves. . . . Artifacts of Egyptian, Sumerian, Minoan, and Babylonian peoples all depict violent events, as do classical works of the ancient Greeks written 3,000 years ago. . . . The books of the Old Testament, written during the same period, are filled with accounts of genocide, war, human sacrifice, and, of course, various plagues. And as Mel Gibson so eloquently reminded moviegoers with his hugely successful film, The Passion of the Christ (2004), the biggest story of the New Testament culminates in rioting, ritual torture, and public execution. Perhaps more to the point, these grizzly stories have been repeated for centuries to children and adults alike as important works of history and religion. (Trend, The Myth of Media Violence 12-13)
This is not to deny that exposure to violent images may contribute toward violent behaviour.(Opens new window) But in a sociology course like this one, our job is to examine the role popular culture’s representation of violence plays in the maintenance of cultural hegemony.
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