The Consumption and Risk of Fictional Media Violence: Session Notes 19/11/2014

What pleasures and anxieties do you associate with your consumption of FMV?

Genre Relative to Likes
Action - The more destruction ad fighting the better.
Horror- Some gore is too much but some is watchable.
Psychological thriller- violence that mentally confuses you.

What constitutes justified violence?

Victim, Hero, Villain
Can teach us what society feels about fictional violence.
Anticipation of violence built up as enjoyable.
Anxiety over the possibility of the violent act happening to them.
Realism with in horror movies/ FMV has a rather big impact on how the audience react to what they're watching.
Debate around on of the main drivers as to why people watch things that happen to people in a film/ fictitious world. People can be ethical about those who watch these types of things.

Thinking and Feeling 

Thinking

Ethical                                 Cognitive and Attitudinal
Political                               Ethical and Moral
Ideological                           Ideological and political, social, cultural and economic.

Feeling

Skin                                     Affective and sensation
Muscles                               Multi-sensory
Visceral                               Physiological
                                            Emotional and Visceral
                                            Embodied and Bodily

What are your boundaries and thresholds with respect to your consumption of FMV?

- Rape
- Eyes
- Heels
- Pulling things out of eyes
- Genitals

Risk Thermostat ( Hill 1999)

-Everyone takes risks
-Risk interactive phenomena
-Balance Potential risk and benefits
-Watching violence = Risk activity
- But watching violence = voluntary
- Thermostats set to certain levels depending on individual

Boundary testing and self censorship (Hill, A 97) 

-Threshold types and contexts of violence, viewers find disturbing can be social ( collective) or personal ( subjective)
-Self censorship methods used to watch or not watch violence, i.e. physical/ mental barriers.

What are connotations of these words?

Effect- Fear of being scared
Risk- The understanding of the effect that will occur when watching violence
Influence-issues with people repeating acts in real life.
Harm-long lasting, lingering awareness of fear.

The debates that are linked with these worlds, have shifted in some respects from Effect to Influence. Relationship between texts and consumers cannot be simply defined. Change from it will definitely have that impact to, it could have that impact which has created a debate between risk and harm.

How impactful is FMV on audiences?
People watching violent acts and committing similar acts in the real world. E.g. James Bulger case, questions at the time were raised as to whether media influences on the killers were the cause of their actions.

Who is the Most Vulnerable (othering and stereotyping) 

People that are deemed to be the most vulnerable when it comes to viewing violence vary from peoples perceptions the most common being;

-Children
-Teenagers

However this then sets these groups in to being stereotyped, a child is not born afraid, fear is learnt. I can be debated that in fearing about how others will react to forms of Fictional Media Violence we can distance ourselves from our own fears concerning FMV and how it influences us.

What is Fictional Media Violence? Lecture Notes 12/11/2014

Defining Fictional Media Violence 

Base Definitions 

1. What is Fictional Media Violence?

Violence that is choreographed in a fictitious world. 

2. How does it differ from real violence?

It is created to look real in the world that it is embedded in. 

3. What is mediated real violence?

e.g. Documentary footage of a fight is mediated but still not real violence. 

4. Do these categories Overlap?

Potentially. 

What is Fictional Media Violence?

How does FMV effect audiences?

Does FMV create the sense that we shouldn't be watching due to links with violence in the real world? 

-A case that is strong for this particular point in my opinion would be the film Man Bites Dog, which is a student film, that is shot in a way to replicate a documentary, which depicts a man who professionally kills people, for the thrill of it. That I think creates some of the biggest possible scenarios where it questions whether or not you should watch the events that are filmed. 

-Over exaggerated violence, that creates a scenario that clearly is fake is not necessarily as questionable. 

- Strong Violence- has an impact upon the narrative 

-Weak Violence- violence that has no impact on the narrative. 

Violence: Oxford English Dictionary 

"1. Behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something."

"2. Strength of emotion or of a destructive natural force."

-Subjective Violence, person on person violence.

-Ignores objective violence- real violence is the causes of the definition. Fail to look at the context that lead to those actions, e.g. events that lead to the London Riots. 

Most media representations work more in the realms of subjective violence. 

Mediated Real Violence 

-Real Violence Mediated through media institutions and their production processes e.g. TV and Newspaper reports which form a distinct media text from actual events. Texts designed to inform, educate and entertain and can sell brands/ products, e.g. Ebola Documentary: real incident, real world but invited to see it in a particular setting. 

- Real Violence thats been recorded/ documented and remediated via the web and social media. 

e.g. Combat images/ video, Execution video/ images/ CCTV.

These are designed to inform, educate and entertain, and are becoming more common. 

Fictional Media Violence 

- 'Fictional' representations of violence that have been created by media producers/ institutions.

- Texts operate across platforms and employ formal/thematic codes. 

-Texts are designed as entertainments and are marketed and often sold to audiences. 

Narrow and Broad Definitions of Media Violence (Potter 1999) (Method: Textual Analysis) 

Narrow Definition 

Serious Physical assaults 

Beating, stabbing, mutilation, Murder 

Broad Definition 

Threatening Behaviour 

Antisocial Behaviour 

Swearing, threatening 

Agression, Intimidation

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Fight Scene

I found that the Captain America: The Winter Soldier, was a far better film than the first Captain America,

it felt slightly more thought through, whilst at the same time making important links to the first film, which helped to aid the story and connect both past and present. One of my favourite parts of the film is when Captain America, and the Winter Soldier have a fight under a bridge, this fight I find to be very well choreographed, particularly the part where the Winter Soldier, is attempting to stab Captain America, and as he wields the knife he seems to masterfully anticipate not only where the knife will fall but how to go one step further and move the knife to attempt to get the best hit. Of course Captain America being the protagonist of this story, is able to win the fight to an extent and avoid being killed once again. Fight sequences like this, are not what I would call grotesque violence, they look like real, plausible fights that could exist, however it is not something that you recoil from, more keep watching in the hope that the hero isn't fatally stabbed by the villain. I find that these fight sequences intrigue audiences to continue watching, and to proceed to cheer for the hero.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Airport Massacre

When I first started playing Call of Duty, I spent most of my game playing time on the Multiplayer section of the game, which enabled me to talk to my friends whilst shooting randomly assigned enemies.

But several of my friends recommended that I try the Campaign part as well, this I started to do when playing Modern Warfare 2. And all the playing was fine until a section came up that gave me the option to skip it due to graphic scenes of violence, I believed that the violence could be no worse than the rest of the game and so opted not to skip. I did not realise that this particular aspect involves your avatar/ character, entering an airport and shooting civilians with no form of weaponry with fully loaded machine guns. Call of Duty normally in the respect of shooting fictional characters has no reactions from me, it is a game, no more. But for this particular part it had the worst affect on me. I ended up not continuing on the campaign, that did not stop me from playing Multiplayer. But I do find it curious that playing as a soldier and shooting soldiers does not bother me, if anything the more fictional soldiers I kill the higher I rank. But shooting fictional civilians is where I draw the line, this is not a way to dig at the companies that make the Call of Duty games, as I continue to play them now and will continue to play them as I think they are very well constructed games. It is more that for the entire time I have played these games that was the thing that I struggle to watch and play.

The Hostel (Warning Spoilers)

The Hostel made in 2005 and directed by Eli Roth, depicts the story of three friends who are backpacking around Europe, the film begins in Amsterdam where the three friends (Paxton, Josh and Oli) proceed to get stoned, and enter the Red Light district, where it becomes clear that Josh who has recently split up with his girlfriend, is struggling to be with other women. The three guys when they return to the hostel after a night out,  are annoyed to find out that the hostel has closed, so they go to the flat of a girl that Oli found earlier in the film, where they meet Alex, who tells them that the best girls are found in Slovakia, the boys are eager to go there and so make Slovakia their next destination, and this is the location where the film takes a dark turn, after a strange series of events Oli and then Josh go missing, Paxton finds the girls who they shared a room with, who then tell Paxton that Oli and Josh are at an Art Exhibition, Paxton demands to be taken there, where he then discovers that the "Art Exhibition" is actually a place where tourists are brutally tortured and murdered. Paxton is then captured and has to fight to stay alive. This is also the place where he learns that each type of tourist has a price, and that American tourists are worth $25,000 to be captured and then tortured. He escapes and then takes revenge on the people that are responsible for his two friends being captured and killed. He manages to leave the country with his life.

This particular film is shot rather simply, with strong sexual and extremely violent themes, it highlights the dangers that can be associated with backpackers travelling across Europe. The film creates a world where backpackers who go missing can end up in life threatening situations and as one character highlights in the film "You are very far from home." For anyone considering going backpacking Hostel is not the film to encourage travel. The set up of the film creates a rather believable yet highly disturbing scenario, each activity that the boys undertake before the attacks are things that are known to happen when people go travelling. As many teenagers believe that in places like Amsterdam it is common for people to smoke cannabis and go to the red and blue light districts. There have also been cases where young travellers have gone missing. But to contemplate that the events that take place in Hostel happen in real life is an extremely unsettling thought.

For me the film has a similar set up to the 2008 film Taken starring Liam Neeson and directed by Pierre Morel, which is more in the action genre than the horror genre, but the film similarly to Hostel shows the dangers that occur when teenagers, go travelling without their parents for the first time, all wanting to experience the wonders of different cultures, but are unaware of the dangers that are associated with such travel, these films create somewhat of a warning, that you should travel but be aware that a stranger offering to share a taxi may not be such an innocent request, and that when you travel you should be wary of the people that you meet. Making sure that any personal details that could cause you to come to harm should not be shared with people you do not know. That's by no means to say that every stranger you meet wants to cause harm to you, but that stranger danger should be always in the back of your mind.

Films like Taken and Hostel, highlight the dangers of travelling unsupervised, but also they highlight that unfortunately in the real world great evils do exist, and that we must all be careful, Hostel is very dramatised, and the brutal images that are shown ( very realistically created by the make up department) are things that make you recoil in to yourself, it is very grotesque violence that push audiences out of their comfort zone, and in many respects Hostel creates the sense of isolation and people that you think you can trust in the film, are actually leading the characters in to a trap, you hope that the three boys can fight their way out of it, because you know that there is no one else who can save them.