Natural Born Killers Essay Research Paper Violence
Natural Born Killers Essay, Research Paper
Violence is a changeless on our screens whether it be an anvil falling on
a sketch character, a war zone on the intelligence, a battle in an action film
or a saloon bash in a soap opera. But does this screen force green goods
behavioral effects in the viewing audiences? This is one of the most frequent
and hotly debated statements in mass media. Is it the instance that
audiences are effected by what they see and that the manufacturers of media
texts are inciting or increasing violent behavior, or make audiences
hold the ability to understand what they have seen without being excessively
influenced? It has to be ascertained as to whether audiences are
passive or active. This topic has caused contention within several
of different schools of idea and political orientations over the old ages. They
hold either broad or lone little fluctuations of sentiment so it is
hard to come to one definite decision as each 1 besides has valid
and apprehensible accounts. It is hard to deny that & # 8216 ; the
whole point of communication is to act upon one another by conveying
information & # 8217 ; ( Vine, 1997 ) , but to what extent does this influence take
control? To look into this affair and come to a decision as to
whether or non screen force does incite violent behavior in the
reader, we will be critically looking at two of the major ideological
theoretical accounts every bit good as utilizing some specific media texts to formalize and/or
criticise these theories.
First there is the Hypodermic Needle or Hypodermic Syringe consequence. This
theory has it & # 8217 ; s root in 1950 & # 8217 ; s America when dominant concerns and the
so authorities wanted to detect how far the public were influenced
by what they saw on telecasting. The Hypodermic Theory came from this
Media Effects theoretical account, which had a heavy accent in psychological science.
Businesss and the authorities likewise wanted to cognize how much & # 8216 ; media is
purportedly & # 8216 ; injected & # 8217 ; into the consciousness of an audience & # 8217 ; via
telecasting ( Price, 1993 ) . They wanted to cognize if through this
comparatively new medium the populace could be persuaded unquestioningly to,
for illustration, ballot for a certain political party or purchase a specific trade name
of rinsing pulverization.
The Hypodermic theoretical account proposes that the media has a really direct and
highly immediate consequence on the general populace, who accept the
injected message without inquiry due to their passivity. It is the
thought that manufacturers of media texts can carry us to make what of all time they
privation and we will unimpeachably follow. When we bring the topic of
force into this field, a follower of this political orientation would state that
the violent behavior witnessed on screen would be influentially
accepted by the audience without inquiry. For illustration, if a reader was
shown the ill-famed and much discussed movie & # 8216 ; Natural Born Killers & # 8217 ;
( Oliver Stone 1994 ) , the Hypodermic theoretical account would state that due to it & # 8217 ; s
alleged glamorisation of motiveless force, where the chief
supporters are seen as romantic common people heroes who get off with their
offenses in the terminal, the reader would merely take in the message, accept
it and so violent behavior would stem from that. & # 8216 ; Natural Born
Killers & # 8217 ; is noteworthy for the fact that the narrative spins the thought of
heroes and scoundrels onto its caput. Traditionally those who commit the
force are the scoundrels who are punished for their offenses, while the
constabularies are seen as heroes who save the twenty-four hours. In this case the constabulary
are overly violent, so one of them is a liquidator himself, and these
authorization figures end up being punished. The chief characters of Mickey
and Mallory Knox ( Woody Harelson and Juliette Lewis ) are the & # 8216 ; natural
born slayers & # 8217 ; who violently slaughter without evident ground, yet due
to Mallory & # 8217 ; s opprobrious upbringing and witty one-liners they gain sympathy
and, in a sense, likability.
One of the Hypodermic theoretical account & # 8217 ; s mistakes is that it assumes the audience
will take in what they & # 8217 ; ve seen and will be influenced by it in a
negative manner. There are positive facets which can act upon but these
are mostly over-shadowed and handily forgotten. This theoretical account would
state that the baffled messages of right and incorrect within & # 8216 ; Natural Born
Killers & # 8217 ; would shoot the reader to accept the force of the movie and
so copy the behavior. If the slayers had been seen finally
punished in the terminal, it would be a positive reading, as the reader
would cognize non to mime as penalty is where that behavior leads.
Ultimately it is kids who are seen to be the most at hazard from
these effects. David Buckingham suggests that kids are regarded as
non being mentally equipped to understand that what they see is non
what they should make:
& # 8216 ; Thus imitative force, which has remained the cardinal focal point of
anxiousness in such arguments, is mostly seen as originating from the inability
to separate between fiction and world. Children copy what they see
on telecasting because they lack the experience and the rational
capacities that might enable them to see through the semblance of
world which the medium provides. & # 8217 ; ( Buckingham, erectile dysfunction. Barker and Petley,
1997, p33 )
But it is non merely kids who need protecting, harmonizing to the
Hypodermic theoretical account.
Another job arises for the Hypodermic Needle when 1 considers a
text which has a message, but the bulk of readers see another
message to the 1 intended. An illustration of this are John Ford & # 8217 ; s
Westerns, such as & # 8216 ; The Searchers & # 8217 ; . Viewing audiences have read messages of
force, racism and sexism within his movies, yet Ford denies he put
them there in the first topographic point. The Hypodermic theoretical account says that what the
manufacturer of the text intends the message to be is precisely what they say
it is and nil else, as the audience is inactive and they will all
have the same message. But even if Ford did mean those messages to
be the 1s read this does non intend that his viewing audiences are influenced to
become violent, racialist male chauvinists.
This theory & # 8217 ; s major failure is that it does non take who the audience
is into consideration. It sees the population as one mass, all
intellectually and culturally the same. It makes great premises that
everyone of us who watches force on the screen will have the same
messages and violent behavior will result. It does non take into
consideration the fact that non everybody thinks or reacts the same.
For illustration, person who works in the constabulary force will respond
otherwise to person who does non when watching & # 8216 ; The Bill & # 8217 ; . They
go active readers as they bring more to the reading than person
who has non experienced what is being portrayed on screen. If we did
non b
pealing our ain life experiences and individualism to a reading, so
everyone who has watched & # 8216 ; Natural Born Killers & # 8217 ; would hold all come
off with precisely the same feeling and this would hold instigated
violent behavior. If people were merely inactive and accepted
everything they saw on the screen and allow it act upon their behavior
without oppugning it, so they would hold all become violent to the
extreme after watching that movie, something which we know is merely non
the instance. And it is adult females, kids and the on the job category who are seen
every bit vulnerable as they are assumed to be intellectually inferior, while
those who study the effects, white in-between category males, are someway
above being effected by the media. Surly this lone goes towards what
they say is the world if the topic as it is they who say readers as
a mass will be effected, so by discluding themselves they are
confuting their ain theory. Stuart Price ( 1993 ) indicates that despite
this & # 8216 ; moral candidates & # 8217 ; still keep onto this theory with & # 8216 ; posthumous
support & # 8217 ; , and that to some extent it is a simple manner for them to
criticise and explicate something they do non like or to the full understand.
The 2nd theoretical account we will look at differs greatly from the Hypodermic
one, in that it focuses more on the reader. In the 1950 & # 8217 ; s Katz and
Lazersfield started a school of idea which transformed the inquiry
of & # 8216 ; how the media effects the reader & # 8217 ; , to & # 8216 ; what the reader does with
the media & # 8217 ; . This is what is known as Uses and Gratifications. Monetary value
( 1993 ) explains this as placing specific groups through empirical observation. Group
must be looked at to see how many people there are within them, every bit good
as their ages, gender, business, leisure chases, societal position and
so on. This differs from the Hypodermic theoretical account as it sees groups within
society as opposed to society as a mass of stray, indistinguishable
persons. In this theoretical account who and what a individual are is the key to how
they use the media text and what satisfaction they attain from it.
This brings in the thought that an person, because of who they are and
where in society they have come from, will respond otherwise to a text.
This was touched on earlier when discoursing & # 8216 ; The Bill & # 8217 ; . An person,
depending on who they are, will hold a different reading of a text.
Sing something with the high force content of & # 8216 ; Natural Born
Killers & # 8217 ; , it helps construct personal individuality in that the reader sees it
and cognize what non to be like. The reader can judge between what is
right and what is incorrect. Our society truly condemns the behavior
of the characters and as active members of that society so do we. We do
non seek to emulate them, even if when watching it is a recreation and
signifier of escape, but that is it and nil more. It is non world
and we accept that. And the fact that readers watch the movie and make non
automatically become more violent clearly gives this backup.
However, a major job is that this theoretical account does non take the existent
media text into utmost consideration ; everything is the reader. It
does non analyze the manner of production or what the manufacturers original
messages were, merely the manner they are read. Again, in the illustration of
& # 8216 ; Natural Born Killers & # 8217 ; , it would non take into consideration the
messages manager Oliver Stone makes about the manner the media could
influence society. It is, in many ways, the opposite job from the
Hypodermic Needle, but in concurrence with that theory one can see that
it is non adequate to state that force on the screen causes violent
behavior.
In decision, if screen force produces behavioral effects on
viewing audiences, hence making a more violent society, it would be more
evident in our mundane lives. Images of force are all around us in
many signifiers of the media. If we were all effected in the same manner so
everyone would hold the same reaction. If everyone reacted to and
mimicked behavior seen on the screen so our society would be one of
changeless force in every state of affairs conceivable. This is merely non the
instance. The James Bulger slaying where two immature male childs caused the decease of
a yearling by purportedly miming a scene from the violent horror movie
& # 8216 ; Child & # 8217 ; s Play III & # 8217 ; has been blamed on screen force. However there
was no grounds, as Martin Barker ( 1997 ) explains, that the male childs had
really seen that movie even though that is what the imperativeness latched
onto. So where the effects of screen force were blamed there were
more than probably other elements which helped convey the state of affairs into
being. More than merely what such persons watch has to be taken
into consideration, but besides who they are and where they have come
from. If it was merely that force on the screen instigated violent
behavior and nil more, what of other instances such as Mary Bell, a
miss who killed two really immature kids. She had non seen & # 8216 ; Child & # 8217 ; s
Play & # 8217 ; or & # 8216 ; Natural Born Killers & # 8217 ; , but had experienced existent life maltreatment at
the custodies of her female parent. It takes more than merely watching force on
the screen to do it. An single may watch a violent movie and so
execute the Acts of the Apostless in existent life, but one would so hold to look at what
they, as a reader, originally brought to the reading.
Another instance Barker ( 1997 ) high spots is that of a adult male who killed his
kid believing he and his married woman were the scriptural Joseph and Mary after
watching the scriptural heroic poem & # 8216 ; King of Kings & # 8217 ; . While holding violent
content nowhere near that of & # 8216 ; Natural Born Killers & # 8217 ; , it shows that what
the reader was conveying to the text was non the & # 8216 ; normal & # 8217 ; reading of the
bulk of people and that more of who he was should be looked into
than merely faulting the movie, as it seems pathetic to propose that
was the original message meant by the movie shapers.
It is excessively small to state that screen force produces behavioral
effects as it is a generalisation. Besides behavior does non look to be
the right word. When watching force people react emotionally in
different ways, non behaviourally. A reader may be appalled by the
in writing and bloody force of & # 8216 ; Natural Born Killers & # 8217 ; , exhilarated
during a manus to manus combat in & # 8216 ; Rocky & # 8217 ; or even amused by the
extraordinary slapstick force of & # 8216 ; The Three Stooges & # 8217 ; . The message of
the shaper of the text, the text itself and who the audiences are as
persons are all as every bit of import as each other, and so all have
to be taken into consideration. One without the other two is non
plenty, as we have learnt since the Hypodermic Needle Effect was foremost
proposed that it takes more than merely screen force and screen
force entirely to bring forth behavioral effects on viewing audiences.