Over the last century technology has advanced into our everyday lives. It is a way to communicate, play, work and in the last decade a way to define and express yourself. But with constant access to a world of information, what is the effect it has on us? Have we over exposed ourselves and has it caused a change in our behaviour?
In 2005 a site was set up call Reddit.com, Reddit has since become a widely used site and finds it way onto social media everyday. It is user operated web news service, people can create a user and post links to whatever they want. The site organises these links into categories called subreddits, these range from r/aww; which is full of everything adorable, to r/wtf which is just reems of images to shock people and make them question wtf? A particularly graphic page is r/fiftyfifty which is a subreddit created to be like a game. The caption will have two options and you have to click the link to find out what it is, for example 'Shat on cock NSFW/L| Cat in sock'. This is a page with continuing popularity despite its gruesome nature and with over seven million page views a month it shows that people are not repelled by the graphic images. We are approaching violent images in a more curious way rather than labelling them taboo.
This 'game' is something you choose to participate in though but the graphic nature of it is like what we see every day on the news, movies, art, documentaries. In the past a like for the extreme and violent was considered morbid and suspicious but now a whole explosion of horror takes hold of the country. New movies are made each day pushing the boundaries on what can be shown, movies banned for their violent content are sought out specifically and praised for their gruesomeness.
"In psychology, desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure." (Desensitization (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2015.Desensitization (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)
Horror films are trying new shock tactics, charity campaigns push images of poverty in our faces and disasters are documented in detail and available to read at any time. With the human nature to always improve, always push the boundaries have we pushed ourselves too far and are now so overexposed to information that we no longer feel a personal emotional response to it.
.png)
.png)
I've compiled a short time line of popular horror films over the years and the age certificate system as it developed and changed. Nosferatu was under the A certificate but at that time there were no restrictions on who could see each one. The certificates were used to give the viewers the decision before they watched rather than instructing what can be watched. In 1975 the BBFC's secretary Stephen Murphy informally viewed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). He said it was " a good, well-made film but felt strongly that the level of terrorisation, particularly towards the end of the film, and the film's focus on 'abnormal psychology' was unsuitable for a BBFC X certificate to be issued." (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | British Board of Film Classification. 2015.The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | British Board of Film Classification. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/texas-chain-saw-massacre.) At this point I feel the reason that the movie was rejected for even an X certificate is because the age limit on X is 16+. In Britain and in America 16 is considered legally a minor and the content of the film was something they would not feel comfortable showing to a minor even 16+. Therefore with a rise in horror production skills and new movies being made there was a clear need for a higher age certificate. 1982 saw the release of the first age certificate system most like ours today, the AA was replaced by a 15 rising the age restriction by a year and PG was placed so that younger children's viewing can be decided by parents/guardians.And finally an 18 certificate so that films could be made that were strictly for adults and therefore loosened the boundaries on horror content.
What we can take from these time lines is that over the years as Horror has developed as a genre, the skills involved in making a horror film have developed and improved as well. Therefore the BBFC has been forced to consider what movies should people be allowed to see. They had to question if children of the time needed to be protected, they changed from labelling the movies to enforcing strict guidelines. There was a moral standing issue and by restricting the adult content for the adults only their hearts were at rest.
With age certificates being made with children in mind surely this moral sense to protect our young shows that we are not a nation of desensitized zombies, we think and care. But by sheltering them from it with strict restrictions are we creating a taboo and manifesting our own fears into the children. The argument against desensitization is a culture of over sensitization. In Herbert Blumer studies of children's fright reactions to movies (1933) ( Jennings Bryant, Dolf Zillmann, Mary Beth Oliver, 2002. Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. P287-88 Routledge, 2002) 93% of the children were frightened of the videos they had seen, in a more recent study there was only 75% of children affected. The drop in numbers of children affected is a large amount, this could be down to a desensitized response. But it could also be down to other factors, such as the integration of classic horror characters. When the first study was taken horror characters such as vampires, werewolves and witches stayed mainly in the horror genre but in recent decades many classic characters are featured on shows with little horror; such as the count on sesame street. In this way children are introduced to these 'monsters' early on and can understand that it is an imaginary character. In this sense we have become desensitized to the original horror design, werewolves and vampires are child's play in today's society.
Scooby doo originally aired in 1969, it introduced a new monster or ghoul each episode and with it exciting escapades to catch them. Introducing so many possible fears to children could have been a big risk to the moral standing to protect them. But the cartoon introduces them to a routine plot line structure where the bad guy always looses there fore leaving them to enjoy the antics under the assumption that all will end well. It also showed that all the monsters and ghosts/ghouls were no more than people dressed up and there is no such thing as the monsters they portrayed. Shows like this develop children's experience of horror or as close to horror at that stage, more like ghost busters sci-fi than full blown horror. This shows that the cartoon industry branched out by using other genres but diluting them down to children levels.
These cartoons are the first step on a ladder of restrictions and as children age they can progress to the next level, see more content and understand it. But then by creating this hierarchy do we make children feel like it is their right and obligation to view more, then for every level of horror they watch are they not just expecting that there is something that is one step further. In this way does it justify watching gruesome content because we have grown through the levels and earned it and there's always something worse. Although even with age certificates in place who is to say they are being enforced at home; therefore there will always be some children who see adult content before the age when the government deems they are ready.
In the news there is constant stories of terror and turmoil and its all something we are exposed to at some point in our daily life. The focus on the negative as being more news worthy than the positive means that we are bombarded with horrible truths about the world and it has taught generations to fear each other. For example; hitch-hiking, a couple decades ago hitch hiking was a well used way to get from point A to B. But since then with rising stories of serial killers and rapists, hitch hiking has become something of a horror story. People prefer not to hitch hike any more because our awareness of strangers has been raised, 'Stranger Danger' is implemented in our children's minds, we cannot trust people we don't know and therefore we fear them.
In an interview with Sue Coe she talks about how she saw a man at 1am and he was screaming that he was blind, 'I analysed my fear: "what I'm frightened of is someone who is so vulnerable they can't see"' 'My heart beat and I thought 'He's scary. He's like got a knife or a gun or something' but it's confronting why don't we treat each other like brothers and sisters' (Coates-Smith, W, 2009. Sue Coe in New York. Varoom, 09). Sue Coe highlights an issue of trust that we has so ingrained in our fears that it has become part of our culture. Technological advancement has broadened the scope of our media coverage, with more coverage there is logically more negative stories. Now news stories frequently blaze into media frenzy where the story is updated every news instalment with little change yet somehow more tension. The news has shown us a biased view on the world where the focal point is on terror and destruction. Fear sells and with over 70% of the British population tuning in regularly it has become the norm to consume fear.
The more a news story is run the more noticed it gets. The more eye catching and shocking is bound to remain in peoples hearts. As a nation we want to be sympathetic and caring to the rest of the worlds needs but although we achieve that mentality do the ends justify the means? Trust among us had diminished to the point that legal steps have been taken to protect people from possible legal allegations in almost every occupation. Parents ingrain into their children a fear of white van men coming and offering them sweets, of someone taking them in crowded places or paedophiles talking to them on the internet. Although these are possibilities and we have to warn them of the dangers, the news coverage of these events send out urgent messages of suspicion and emotionally exaggerate the likelihood of it happening. This slow transition into fearful has made it hard to judge whether the ends justified the means because as we climb the ladder in technological development we step further away from our past. It becomes unclear how we lived before.
But maybe the bombardment of news has also kept us in check to see the story to the end. We want an ending to it, closure, justice. In this way has it not sharpened our senses to wrong doing. Now we are ready to 'out' someone if they are morally wrong. For example racism, while still around in Britain, is fought against. There is an american based show called what would you do? in it actors stage a conflict, in this instance; a waitress acting racist towards a black family. The idea is to provoke the unknowing public into intervening, in this case a multitude of people stood up. One woman told her 'You're really walking on a line here (...) politically majorly incorrect' 'Insensitive racists' (Police and Predator Channel. (2014). Mother Of Eight Children Criticized For Large Family - What would you do?. [Online Video]. 20 January. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpoxQhGm6jA) . politically incorrect is a phrase we have learned from media, in the coverage of the steps we take to reach equality. People learn from news coverage and they have been showed that if you think something is wrong you can get justice.
In the 50s a scientist named Harry Harlow had been doing experiments with infant monkeys questioning does love exist?(Michael Baker. (2010). Harlow's Studies on Dependency in Monkeys. [Online Video]. 16 December. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I.) In his main experiment he gave the monkeys two surrogate mothers; one made out of wire which had the milk, and one cotton one without milk. In all cases the monkeys chose comfort over food. In another experiment which he call the pit of despair baby monkeys were brought up in isolation for a year in a box with sloping sides so climbing out was impossible.
The monkeys were psychotic, depressed and uninterested in the opposite gender. But Harlow had wanted to see if they could be parents themselves. So he invented the 'Rape Rack' so that they could still be inseminated. But the monkeys who did conceive were too traumatised to care for their child at all. There was public outrage and Harlow's experiments are still a subject of philosophical debate between scientist and animal rights activists. People stood up for what they thought was right and that trend has continued to grow over the decades. Although it seems our lifestyle has made us become more introvert and lone creatures we still show the instinct to protect what is vulnerable. Today many products boast 'No animal testing' as a sale point playing towards our almost 'maternal' instinct to protect.
In 1991 Cantor and Ohmdahl conducted an experiment on children ages 3-11. ( Jennings Bryant, Dolf Zillmann, Mary Beth Oliver, 2002. Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. P289 Routledge, 2002) Split into two groups the children were partook in activities; building a fire and swimming. One group were shown a dramatisation of A forrest fire and a drowning. The children exposed to the stimulus showed hesitation and significantly less excitement. This shows that people learn from what they see whether it be a real experience or a synthetic one. Therefore I assume that as we absorb the information from news and movies etc around us we inherently learn from it.
Have we learnt our fears from exposure to mass media? Are we drifting apart as a culture and loosing the trust that once united us?
The summer of 1960 Alfred Hitchcock released what is considered to be the first modern horror film; Psycho. Psycho was filmed in black and white even though Hitchcock had already moved on to colour, but he knew that bright red blood and gore wouldn't have been allowed in 1960.What they created was a new way of making horror, the gore was more realistic, the tension; heart gripping and they took you inside the characters. Psycho inspired countless horror movies with its new tactics.
Psycho toys with the audiences emotions by literally putting them in the point of view of different characters. Hitchcock keeps his audience on edge by destroying their trust in basic movie plot of good praveils by killing off the supposed protagonist. Psycho may be the first film to use a false protagonist and being the first it was the most shocking. Hitchcock considered this so important that in the cinema screening he enforced a strict no late admissions policy.
.jpg)
The poster was withholding and didn't give anything away, Hitchcock was trying to shock his audience by keeping the story a secret. Hitchcock anonymously bought the rights to the book from Robert Bloch for $9,000, he then bought up as many of the copies as he could to try and keep the ending secret. The music was a large factor in Psycho that in a pre release screening of a cut of the film, before the music was added, many of the audience reacted with mild indifference. In modern horror the wailing of the violins is a recognised cue for something climactic to happen. So much so that it has become a bore. It lets us know that something is going to happen rather than keep us on edge. Just as the previous generation out grew the early 1900's monster horror so have our generation grown out of tired scare tricks. Some smaller tricks have been learnt to try and counteract the pre existing knowledge of horror structure. In modern horror films more commonly the violins are used as a false scare. The tension will build up, the character reaches out to draw back a shadowy curtain the music reaches crescendo the curtains are drawn back fast but it is nothing. The music disappears and for a moment there is calm and in that brief lapse of guard is when the true scare comes. A prime example would be the relatively recent release of The woman in black. It used many a false scare and the jumps were relatively predictable. With such a wide library of horror open to us online nowadays we can learn the structure and predict the results, in this are we just learning from experience or are out senses dulling to the shock.
Horror culture is growing up, we've learnt the tricks and we are no longer afraid of things that go bump in the night. But as we tire of the horror we see feeling it to be less and less horrifying then what steps are we willing to take to get the adrenaline rush of fear. Now the upper barrier of horror are the films that went to far; banned films carry a sense of taboo to them and its become almost a competitive nature among horror fans to have watched them. Directors and screen righters are trying to bring their work to the next level, seeing how far the boundaries can be pushed, with this constant strive for growth will we go too far. When does it stop being a film for a fright and become a horrifying glimpse into the stretches of the human imagination, but at that point would we even flinch?
A factor in my theory of desensitization is the access we have to the internet. Sites such as Reddit are just hosts compiling information on any subject we could dream of but when you've seen it all it doesn't have the same glory as before. The internet was a revolutionary invention but now it is taken for granted. There are pages of specifically gory and nauseating images or videos that are there just to test your nerve or satisfy your sick curiosity. These images are open to view whenever you want with only a small (warning:gore) label next to it. This is not a site that's locked away in the depths of the internet with 6.175 billion page views per month (reddit.com: about reddit. 2015. reddit.com: about reddit. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.reddit.com/about/.) it is a very popular site among this generation. If this is something that's popular are the people viewing it doing it as a game, are they just curious or are they trying to shock themselves or friends. Its become a joke to send each other spam of horrible pictures, a prank made possible by the developments made in technology. It seems that in these pictures of torture and horror the spectacle is always a step away from real, your watching from behind a screen where it's safe. In this way have we become desensitized to the suffering of others.
In conclusion I think that the advancements in technology has changed and shaped our society. Technology is a part of our everyday lives and we have whole lives stored inside it. But when half our life is happening on a screen are we becoming disconnected from reality? Horror films have adapted to satisfy our need for fear, it tests us and makes real life seem less scary but have we learned all the tricks in the hat? To what length will we go for that shock? I think that desensitization is happening because as we experience things we learn from them. But we have filled our minds with stories of horror real and fictitious and what is left is a mind distrusting of it's fellow man and unaffected by the real life conflicts.
Bibliography:
(Desensitization (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2015.Desensitization (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)
(The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | British Board of Film Classification. 2015.The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | British Board of Film Classification. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/texas-chain-saw-massacre.)
( Jennings Bryant, Dolf Zillmann, Mary Beth Oliver, 2002. Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. P287-88 Routledge, 2002)
(Coates-Smith, W, 2009. Sue Coe in New York. Varoom, 09)
(Police and Predator Channel. (2014). Mother Of Eight Children Criticized For Large Family - What would you do?. [Online Video]. 20 January. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpoxQhGm6jA)
(reddit.com: about reddit. 2015. reddit.com: about reddit. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.reddit.com/about/.)
Research:
Desensitization (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2015.Desensitization (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)
Desensitisation theory. 2015. Desensitisation theory. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.slideshare.net/05lewis/desensitisation-theory.
Media influence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2015. Media influence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_influence.
20 Most Controversially Violent Films Ever Made - Page 2. 2015. 20 Most Controversially Violent Films Ever Made - Page 2. [ONLINE] Available at:http://whatculture.com/film/20-most-controversially-violent-films-ever-made.php/2.
BBC News - How Psycho changed cinema. 2015. BBC News - How Psycho changed cinema. [ONLINE] Available at:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8593508.stm.
Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research - Google Books. 2015.Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research - Google Books. [ONLINE]
Modern horror films reflective of desensitization to violence in audiences - Greensboro Horror Movie | Examiner.com. 2015. Modern horror films reflective of desensitization to violence in audiences - Greensboro Horror Movie | Examiner.com. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.examiner.com/article/modern-horror-films-reflective-of-desensitization-to-violence-audiences
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | British Board of Film Classification. 2015.The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | British Board of Film Classification. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/texas-chain-saw-massacre.
13 Terrifying Modern Horror Comics :: Books :: Lists :: Paste. 2015. 13 Terrifying Modern Horror Comics :: Books :: Lists :: Paste. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/10/13-terrifying-modern-horror-comics.html.
Mad Scientists – Harry Harlow’s “Pit of Despair” for Baby Monkeys | UA Magazine. 2015. Mad Scientists – Harry Harlow’s “Pit of Despair” for Baby Monkeys | UA Magazine. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/earth-environment/harlows-pit-of-despair-for-baby-monkeys/.
Harlow Dead, Bioethicists Outraged | Speaking of Research. 2015. Harlow Dead, Bioethicists Outraged | Speaking of Research. [ONLINE] Available at:http://speakingofresearch.com/2014/08/03/harlow-dead-bioethicists-outraged/.
Cruelty to Animals in Laboratories | Animals Used for Experimentation | The Issues | PETA. 2015. Cruelty to Animals in Laboratories | Animals Used for Experimentation | The Issues | PETA. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-laboratories/.
10 Famous Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today | Mental Floss UK. 2015. 10 Famous Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today | Mental Floss UK. [ONLINE] Available at:http://mentalfloss.com/article/52787/10-famous-psychological-experiments-could-never-happen-today
Psycho (1960) - Trivia - IMDb. 2015. Psycho (1960) - Trivia - IMDb. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv
40+ Amazing Reddit Statistics. 2015. 40+ Amazing Reddit Statistics. [ONLINE] Available at: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/reddit-stats/.
No comments:
Post a Comment