Читать книгу Sociology of the Arts - Victoria D. Alexander - Страница 55

As Chapter 3 indicated, concerns about the effects of consuming popular arts have been longstanding. Many researchers and concerned citizens are particularly worried about violent media begetting violent behavior. News reports often draw a connection between shocking acts of violence and violent content. For instance, after the tragic shooting of a teacher and students at Columbine High School in 1999, blame was directed toward the musician Marilyn Manson and his band. The teenagers‐turned‐killers were fans of Manson’s music which was said to be dark and satanic. When it emerged that the perpetrators were fans of the film Natural Born Killers (1994), which included graphic violence, the film was also named as a cause of the massacre (see Illustration 3.2). Sensational effects like these resulting from exposure to specific cultural products are rare (or possibly non‐existent).¹ However, parents, policy makers, and scholars remain anxious about the potential effects of music, film, and television violence. Concerns arise over the possibility that consuming violent fare can lead individuals (especially children) to act aggressively. A related concern is that fictional violence might induce a tolerance of violence at the societal level, regardless of whether or not it directly spurs individuals to behave more violently.

A classic, often‐cited study of the effects of televised violence was reported by the psychologists Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1963). In a laboratory experiment, subjects were children 3–5 years of age. They were shown one of three things, (a) a violent act in real life, (2) a film showing a violent act by a real person, or (c) a film showing a violent act by a “cartoon character.” A fourth, control group saw no violent acts. Then the researchers examined the child’s subsequent behavior to see if they imitated this violence. The goals of the study were “to determine the extent to which film‐mediated aggressive models may serve as an important source of imitative behavior” (p. 3). The authors reported that they were motivated to undertake the study after they read in the San Francisco Chronicle about a boy who had knifed another after seeing the movie Rebel Without a Cause on television.

Illustration 3.2 Film Poster for Natural Born Killers (1994). A bad influence?

(Author’s collection; photo by author.)

In the real‐life aggression situation, an experimenter, who served as the model, punched a five‐foot‐tall “Bobo doll” and then performed the following distinctively aggressive acts:

The model sat on the Bobo doll and punched it repeatedly in the nose. The Model then raised the Bobo doll and pummeled it on the head with a mallet. Following the mallet aggression, the model tossed the doll up in the air aggressively and kicked it about the room. This sequence of physically aggressive acts was repeated…interspersed with verbally aggressive responses such as, “Sock him in the nose”…“Hit him down”…“Throw him in the air”…“Kick him”…and “Pow” (p. 4–5).

For the human film situation, the same experimenters were filmed exhibiting the same behavior as in the real‐life situation. In the “cartoon” situation, a female experimenter dressed as a black cat performed the same behaviors as above, “except that the cat’s movements were characteristically feline,” (p. 5) and the verbal aggression was articulated in a high, squeaky voice.

After viewing the aggression (or not, in the case of the control group), the children were frustrated (toys were taken away) and they were taken into a room with a different variety of toys including a three‐foot tall Bobo doll, a mallet, guns, and some “non‐aggressive toys” like teddy bears. Their behavior was coded for its level of aggression. The researchers found that all three experimental conditions provoked levels of aggression higher than that found in the control condition. Indeed, 88 percent of the subjects who saw human aggression, whether live or on film, exhibited some degree of imitative aggression, as did 79 percent of the subjects viewing the cartoon. In addition, boys behaved more aggressively than did girls. Importantly, there were no statistical differences between the amount of violence in children exposed to the real life and the human film situations. The authors concluded, “The finding that children modeled their behavior to some extent after the film characters suggests that pictorial mass media, particularly television, may serve as an important source of social behavior” (p. 9).

This experiment and similar ones that followed have been extensively evaluated. In terms of its “internal validity”—the accuracy, reliability and validity of its procedures and measurements—this study holds up well. Subjects were assigned to experimental conditions in a way that rendered the four groups comparable, and efforts were made to minimize differences from child to child that were not part of the experimental design. Statistical analysis was applied, demonstrating that the differences found were due to actual differences, not random error. However, as Felson (1996) points out, the aggressive behavior found in experiments may be a “sponsor effect” (where subjects assume that experimenters who show violent fare condone it) or evidence of experimenter bias (where compliant subjects try to help out the experimenter) rather than a true “modeling effect.”

The experiment comes under more fire in terms of its “external validity”—how well its lessons might be related to real life. The first question is whether the study measures genuine violence; aggression usually denotes a behavior with the intent to injure a person (Bandura, Ross, and Ross point this out themselves). The Bobo doll, also known as a “Punchy Clown,” is an inflatable toy resembling an overgrown, fat bowling pin with a protruding red nose. It has a round, weighted bottom, so that when it is tipped over, it rights itself immediately. In other words, it is designed to be a punching bag! So, the “violence” measured was directed toward an inanimate object, not a person, and did not damage the toy, which in fact was devised for aggressive play.

We can also ask if the aggression exhibited by the children might simply be a short‐term response, whether this response would obtain in the longer term, and whether it would transfer to social situations or to more serious aggressive acts. While a large number of experiments have supported the findings of Bandura, Ross, and Ross, other studies have not found a link between televised aggression and subsequent behavior. A few studies have even suggested that televised violence can act as a safety valve for aggressive individuals, helping them let off steam. However, there is continued debate over these studies and how effectively they actually measure each aspect of the issue (Ferguson and Savage, 2012).

Paik and Comstock (1994) performed a meta‐analysis on 217 studies of television and antisocial behavior, from both psychology and sociology, since 1960. A “meta‐analysis” is a quantitative method which allows researchers to aggregate findings from multiple studies in order to draw stronger conclusions than would be possible for each study alone. Their key finding is that there is a highly significant, positive association between television violence and antisocial behavior, when antisocial behavior is broadly measured (including aggression towards toys or objects).

Paik and Comstock’s work demonstrates that experimental studies show a stronger magnitude of effects than those based on surveys, and laboratory experiments greater effects than field experiments or “time‐series studies” (which examine naturally occurring situations), but all types of studies showed positive effects in their aggregated analysis. They also found that cartoon violence and fantasy violence had stronger effects on antisocial behavior than realistic‐fictional or newscast violence, a finding which might be related to the finding that preschool subjects (who watch more cartoons) demonstrate higher levels of antisocial behavior than adult subjects. Effects were highest in magnitude when antisocial behavior was measured as aggression towards objects and intermediate when measured as verbal aggression. It is notable that the lowest magnitude effects were shown for violence towards persons and criminal behavior.

Felson (1996) argues that violent behavior may be associated with media consumption, but that the violence stems from other sources. This is a “problem of spurious correlation,” where a third variable (such as abusive or neglectful parents) is a causal factor in both of the measured variables (media violence and violent behavior). Further, as Ferguson and Savage (2012) argue, cross‐sectional studies (surveys that look at one point in time) that find more aggressive individuals associated with more violent media fare lack a “temporal order.” That is, it is not clear which comes first. In addition, Felson notes that audiences are likely to choose materials that match their values and interests. This “selective exposure” provides an alternative interpretation of any correlation between violent audiences and violent television.²

Further, the reviews by Felson and by Ferguson and Savage point out that the story line of most television shows suggests that “crime doesn’t pay” and criminals are punished in the end; indeed, consequences for illegitimate violence on television are greater than they are in real life. This suggests that if viewers are sensitive to the moral of the story, television violence might reduce real‐life violence (an idea which was supported in Paik and Comstock’s meta‐analysis). Overall, the review articles find that many studies lack validity as they suffer from numerous problems with measurement, data, and statistical models. A meta‐analysis finds strength in numbers and can demonstrate differential effects of different kinds of measurement of key variables. But it is only as good as its constituent analyses. Ferguson and Savage state that demonstrated effects of televised violence range from small to trivial, and “the best studies, particular those which use outcome measures for the most serious aggression, produce the weakest effects” (p. 137). Felson concludes that “exposure to television violence probably does have a small effect on violent behavior for some viewers, possibly because the media directs viewer’s attention to novel forms of violent behavior that they would not otherwise consider” (p. 103).

So, careful reviews and meta‐analyses of a wide range of studies show that either there is little to no measurable effect of violent media on aggression or crime, or else that it is devilishly hard to establish the connection empirically. Nevertheless, this has not quelled concerns about media violence. Centerwall (1993) argues that small effects should not be discounted because they aggregate to many more violent attacks at a national level. He claims that if television had never been invented, “there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults” (p. 64). He argues that children are powerfully affected by pictorial violence, unlike adults, and that small children cannot distinguish between real and cartoon violence in the same way that adults do and that they are less sensitive to the motives of people who are violent. In this way, he believes that television violence is a public health issue, like smoking and road traffic accidents. He suggests that parents limit television for their children. But, he says, parental vigilance is not enough.

Television violence is everybody’s problem. You may feel assured that your child will never become violent despite a steady diet of television mayhem, but you cannot be assured that your child won’t be murdered or maimed by someone else’s child raised on a similar diet. (p. 69)

He advocates what we now call parental control devices to allow adults to lock out violent shows based on a rating system, similar to one used for movies. There have been similar calls for rating systems of popular music as an aid to keep songs with violent or sexually explicit lyrics away from kids.

In a very interesting study, Harkness (2013) studies Chicago gang members who rap in the gangsta style. Harkness describes how gang members use raps posted to YouTube “to insult and goad one another” (p. 152), and his article starts with the true story of one young rapper murdered in the course of one of these online contests, apparently by a rival gang. Harkness does not make a shaping (or reflection) argument about street gangs and gangsta rap—he is interested in the cultural practices of the rappers and the “microscene” this creates—however, the two worlds were deeply enmeshed. Here is a place where violence in life and in music converge. Does this give us reason for concern? (That is, beyond that micro scene and the potential perpetrators and victims therein, who surely deserve compassion.) Savage (2008), a criminologist, argues that those who work in the field with offenders do not talk about media violence as a cause of violent crime. Instead, they focus on situational factors such as poverty and concentrated disadvantage, adverse experiences such as child abuse, and individual traits such as addictions and significant psychiatric issues. “Serious offenders” she writes, are not simply “individuals who watched too much TV as young children” (p. 1125).

Other professionals may come to a different consensus. For instance, Philo (1999) argues that teachers regularly cite violent media as a problem in their schools. He studied reactions of 12‐year‐olds to Pulp Fiction (1994), a film that is rated “18” in the United Kingdom. One‐third of pupils in the studied class had seen the movie, despite being seven years too young with respect to the movie’s classification. The children were able to recall many of the movie’s scenes in great detail, including gruesome ones, and they thought that several of the characters in the film were “cool.” Philo wonders if the casual acceptance of the Pulp Fiction story by children shows how a worldview “with no empathy for victims” becomes “part of ‘everyday’ values” that can promote pernicious behaviors such as “bullying at school or intimidation at work” (p. 51).

Finally, what of the people who consume popular music, movies, and television? Ourselves. We are, for the most part, non‐violent members of society. As Ferguson and Savage write, “Our moral values deter us from behavior that might really harm another person. Even under highly provocative circumstances, people can almost always refrain from committing violence” (p. 133). The media effects literature suggests, in essence, that other people succumb to television violence (but not us). Most of us are not violent, but are some of us just a little bit of a bully? Or might it be that we are more tolerant of violence in society?