Does Violence in Films Cause Violence in Today's Youth?

Ladies and gentlemen,

One of the most heated and discussed controversies in media has been and continues to be violence, particularly in relation to its effects on adolescents. Many find that the exposure that children have to violent films is alarmingly high, and it may very well be a factor in juvenile delinquency. People, especially parents, certainly have good reason to be concerned: on average, an American child watches about 28 hours of TV a week; when that child turns 18, he will have seen over 200,000 acts of violence and more than 16,000 murders on screen. That excludes how many violent movies the kid sees in the cinema each month. And these numbers are constantly on the rise, for films and TV shows are continuously becoming gorier, more graphic and more shocking, meaning that media violence is increasingly sadistic, cruel and, in the fictive world, unpunished. Couple this with the fact that many crimes, including those committed by teenagers, are inspired by fictional crimes, one cannot help but to wonder whether violence in films cause violent behavior in today's youth.

 

First off, when we talk about violent movies, we need to be more specific and ask ourselves: "What constitutes as a violent movie, and what is bad about depiction of violence in said movie?" For not all violence shown in movies is necessarily a bad thing. The goal of every good producer is to come up with a film that either comments on society or reproduces an interesting facet of society, all the while holding the audience in suspense. Because of this, violence is practically unavoidable considering, whether we like it or not, violence is a global sin of society, prevalent in every city in every country, and most prevalent in war. Let's take Francis Ford Coppola's anti-war masterpiece Apocalypse Now. This film takes place during the Vietnam war, where a Marine captain and a small crew cruise through death, destruction, insanity, misery and oppression in order to "exterminate" a former US officer gone crazy, the dubious Colonel Kurtz. Is this movie violent? Quite. And yet, it's also undeniably a classic, and for all its blood and gore, many parents actively try to get their teenage sons and daughters to watch Coppola's film.

Furthermore, not all violence is believable. The violence shown in Apocalypse Now is very realistic, but in many other movies, especially in those who desire to criticize society or to simply entertain young adults with some horror, the on-screen violence tends to be highly unrealistic, and as such cannot possibly be taken seriously, not even by a child. There are limits to the audience's believability, only the audience does not complain when these limits are crossed, for they have what is called a "willing suspension of disbelief", meaning that the audience will accept that Rambo can use a machine with only one hand and they will not question the steel-like strength of his tendons. But in the back of their heads, the audience knows that this is an impossibility. For this reason, directors like Sam Peckinpah can unconcernedly cram their films with bloody violence; though, not all directors may have the same reasons for doing so as Mr Peckinpah did. Peckinpah's movies satirized society in a very cynical fashion, where the gratuity of blood accentuated the critized aspects, rahter than detracts from the story. As a result, neither adults nor children will take the depicted violence seriously and they will not be moved to violent crimes when they see a cowboy turn into Spaghetti Bolognese on screen. 

Lastly, and this is perhaps of most interest to the audience, movie violence actually plays a role in decreasing violence. Studies made by the National Bureau of Economic Research have shown that, between 1995 and 2004, the number of violent crimes committed gets smaller on days with larger cinema audiences for violent movies. That means that between 6 in the evening and midnight, a one million increase in the audience for violent films would entail a reduction of about 1.1 to 1.3 percent of violent crimes during that time period. Afterwards, that is, between midnight and 6 o'clock in the morning, the amount of violent crimes is further reduced by ane ven larger percent. There are two factors which chiefly explain this seemingly counter-intuitive observation: firstly, the cinema is a safe place where alcohol is not sold, at least not in abundance. Since most violent crimes are alcohol-induced, it stands to reason that, if most people in a city go to the alcohol-free environment of a theater, then violence in that city will decrease. Secondly, and this has most to do with violent movies in particular, individuals who have a predisposition for violence obviously prefer to watch violent movies. Thus, they are kept from more volatile activities. For example, instead of aggressively beating his neighbor's annoying cat, a potential cat-killer would be sitting in the cinema and enjoying, along with a few dozens other people, the latest Final Destination installment (or whatever it is that is shown nowadays). Suddenly, the fact that two thirds of Hollywood films are rated "R" and depict violence does not seem quite so bad any more. 

With that said, I have to say that I personally disagree with the idea that media violence, especially film violence, has a negative influence on today's youth. In my opinion, a kid is made violent by his surroundings, his family and the general society he lives in. If a kid is of a violent nature to begin with, whether he watched Sin City or not will not change the fact that he is a kid. Nevertheless, media violence can make an already aggressive kid even more dangerous or even tip him over the edge and give him some bad ideas. I therefore caution parents to monitor their children's film habits and to expose them to on-screen violence slowly and gradually until they come of age. Other people should help in as well: if you work in a cinema and a person who is very obviously a twelve-year-old walks in and wishes to see Texas Chainsaw 3D, don't let him go to see the movie (especially since it's rubbish). Hindrance of children's freedom or not, it's for the best, and while violent films are by far not the biggest causes of violence in teenagers, we should still try not to encourage kids to watch gratuitous blood and violence on screen, nor should we encourage media to promote or depict over-board violence and gore. 

Thank you very much for your attention.

[Speech written for a brief talk on the titular subject. 
Sources of information: 
- Boyse, Kyla, RN. "Television (TV) and Children." University of Michigan Health System: Your Child, updated August 2010. <http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv.htm> 
- Dahl, Gordon and Stefano DellaVigna. "Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime?" The National Bureau of Economic Research, issued 2008. <http://www.nber.org/papers/w13718> ]