American Film Violence

Abstract

This article profiles the violence that occurs in the films that compose the most popular (topgrossing) genres of 1994: comedy, drama, and action. The critical features used to describe film violence are intentionality, frequency, seriousness, consequences, explicitness, and severity (damage to the body of the recipient). Scales for seriousness, explicitness, and severity were systematically applied to the films using frame-by-frame analysis. Although the initiators of violence in American films employ lethal violence in nearly half the violent events, depiction of any consequences to the recipient's body occurs in 1 out of 10 cases. Throughout, the effects of violence on the victim's body are mystified by a form of narrative that occults and minimizes consequences arising from clearly depicted intentional assaults. So far as violence is concerned, the Hollywood body is an impossible one, merely a dramaturgical figure.

Violence in Animated Feature Films: Implications for Children

“…The leastused types of physical violence were acts of hitting the victim in an undefined place, actual burning, suicide, and dragging (one of each). These findings are compatible with the research of Ayranci, Kosgeroglu, and Gunay (2004), as well as Browne et al (2002 The second-most used type of violence was verbal, where a total of 269 occurrences was observed (21.7%). Most-often used were taunting-ridiculing (n=65), followed by insulting the victim (n=45), frightening (n=37), shouting (n=31) and threatening (n=29).…”

“…The most important element of cartoons and animation films is "comedy". Violence and comedy are depicted together (Browne et al, 2002). Humor of various types is used to hide violence in most cartoons and animation films.…”

Violence exposure in real‐life, video games, television, movies, and the internet: is there desensitization?

“…The impact of television violence has been especially well‐studied (for examples, see Paik & Comstock, 1994; Bushman & Huesmann, 2001; Johnson, Cohen, Smailes, Kasen, & Brook, 2002; Wilson et al, 2002). There has been less focus on movie violence, though many of the mechanisms and conclusions ascribed to television apply (Pennell & Browne, 1999; Browne et al, 2002). Music videos are a related genre, however, one recent content analysis suggests that only 15% of the almost 2000 music videos reviewed contained violence (Smith & Boyson, 2002), and the specific impact of this music‐based medium will not be further addressed here.…”