Violent Entertainment
Is TV getting more violent?Are we being desensitize to horror and violence? Does something need to be done?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing the Gunpowder Plot and its depiction on BBC TV. So Chris can you kick us off please, why are we talking about this, what's going on?
Speaker B:Well so there's been a TV series to coincide with the 5th of November and the famous plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, a BBC TV series going, sort of dramatising the events and in the first episode of this TV series and it's drawn a lot of complaints subsequently, a priest is found hiding in someone's house and they then show his hanging, drawing and quartering in pretty graphic detail and then there's also a scene where a female heretic has her back broken by having weights placed upon her and it's basically, it was on at nine o'clock on a Saturday evening and this has drawn a lot of complaints and the production company making the show is Kit Harrington's production company of Game of Thrones fame, Jon Snow and he's obviously now starred in two things which have been quite quite graphically violent and just got me thinking we do seem to be on a trajectory where TV gets more and more graphically violent.
Speaker C:Can you just explain, what exactly do you see in this depiction of the, what is on screen?
Speaker A: t if we think back sort of to: Speaker B: f you look at things from the: Speaker C: , I think for each year since: Speaker A:well isn't that one per Spartan because they all die so that would be one for one
Speaker C: Days of Sodom from: Speaker B: the Daily Mail headline in in: Speaker A:them sorry let me come in just because I think there is something interesting here which I think they're probably broadly speaking is a greater desensitization to to to violent scenes on tv and video games things like that I think there probably is okay but I think also what's interesting is the world um if you're for an average western person the world is a much safer place now than it was 10 years ago 20 years ago 30 years ago certainly compared to 60 years ago um and so um you know the crime crime levels have been dropping all over the the western world and so I won I'm just wondering I mean I think on the one hand I think when you get a moral outrage with these sorts of things and that this will this will provoke people into doing crimes and so on it's just clearly not the case but I'm just wondering um is there a connection between um audiences enjoying this sort of stuff more because there's less of this stuff in our lives
Speaker C:I don't think there's a I mean most people aren't going to have experienced violence of most people go through their entire lives without seeing a murder I don't think that's changed I don't I mean I think there's a number of things you can point to you so you're suggesting it's a demand thing I think they're also it's worth thinking about supply effects you know the fact that it's much easier technically uh to depict death now on screen it's just you know there's much better special effects very cheap now to um to have people dying and and so you know it kind of makes sense on average that you would see more of that in films um
Speaker B:I also think there's you know competition with you know if you look at um if you look at if you look at YouTube and depiction of real events and you look at uh you know um extremist propaganda for example we we see more we see more of that real violence I think through our our news broadcasting and you know some um as the entertainment industry goes global you know we in Britain in particular we've always had quite a censored environment for for violence and you know depictions of um of sex uh but in other parts of the world the threshold is is you know much higher and so as the entertainment market grows globally I think that appeal to you know those cultures might find it strange if you didn't have a particular portrayal of of violence I think
Speaker C:that may be yeah although I I don't think this view that we become more licentious necessarily and I think my you know if I think back to some of the films I watched as a kid in the 80s you take something like um Jaws which is uh you've all seen Jaws right really terrifying it has a fairly graphic depiction of uh well there's a severed head in one scene and there's another um and there's you know fairly graphic depiction of someone being eaten by a shark in quite slow motion you know they're munched one bit at a time uh it's really horrible and that was a pg you know well the equivalent of a pg it was an a when it came out I there's no way I just think there's absolutely no way that would get an a rating now or pg rating likewise with um uh Temple of Doom which you know famously has a heart has a heart being ripped out that was a pg Raiders of the Lost Ark where the all those guys faces melt at the end uh pg uh Ghostbusters pretty damn scary pg you know I don't think I think these days we would be shocked if that happened I I actually think despite what the numbers say I think there is something about the quality or the um or the kind of level of um of scariness or or horror that that we uh have become less accustomed to seeing um and find more shocking now I cannot back that up with any stats other than a few of these anecdotal uh statistics because people haven't nobody's gone through and said oh this is a really horrible kind of death you know the face melting kind of death strikes me as much more
Speaker B:horrible than uh an orc being shot and there's all there's also something much more um gritty about the quality of film from the late 70s and early 80s when you when you see things depicted in on you know with that that slightly grainy quality it just looks much more real well I
Speaker C:think one of the one of the um most uh horrible bits of violence and I'm only trying to recall this but it's an example of how the horribleness of a piece of violence isn't really necessarily to do with what you're seeing but it's how it's depicted and um I think it's in the Evil Dead or the Evil Dead 2 where uh someone has a pencil pushed into the back of their heel uh really graphically and it's it's horrible to watch it because you see it graphically uh I don't know if they die I can't remember I just have this image in my mind but that's that's an example where you think actually yeah this is something that is really uh horrible to watch and is not necessarily associated with the death or even with necessarily with sort of particularly violent
Speaker A:activity okay um we we've got to wrap up there um I'm not sure at the end of this what my conclusions are I'm not quite sure if we've got anywhere because I think the main thing uh the instead of our sort of presumption the violence that it is becoming more graphic and more common on on films and tv seems to be um inaccurate so no I don't I don't think it is what I'm saying
Speaker C:is I just don't know I don't I don't feel confident yeah um as confident as all as the internet does uh that things are getting worse particularly right um and the question so the question really is what if okay what if they are though you know what what does it mean and um even though uh I think um the intelligentsia you know which I include myself would like to um would like to would like it to be the case that watching violent things and playing violent video games doesn't have any real world impact the evidence suggests that it probably does and and it shouldn't surprise us that it that it probably does you know because they have an emotional impact on us and and and so that you know but there's you know that as usual with these things that it is certainly not cut and dried and it's not clear how much is um you know how much which direction the causation runs in so for example with a more violent people would tend to play more violent games and that's where the association comes from and so on um but you know the question is what do we what if anything ought we to think about doing about it you know what
Speaker A:what what does it what does it mean well as we sometimes do we have to you know um finish asking a question rather than answering it so that's our sort of springboard for another um for another podcast I think but before we continue before we sorry before we um finish um just something we touched upon there Nick you mentioned a scene that had sort of you know freaked you out by its violence or or or whatever it was um I've got two scenes from two different films that have sort of stayed with me Chris any TV or film violence that has uh made an impact on you
Speaker B:uh I've I've no but there is something from a novel that that that nearly made me faint once which was um uh the um uh All the Wild Horses uh the the novel about sort of um it's it's a kind of western but but uh you know 20th century western and uh he has a wound in his leg at some point and so he he has to um he heats his pistol on the um on the campfire and then he he pulls any pulls it out and he plugs this wound to cauterize it with the with the uh with the barrel of the of the gun and just the the the graphic way it's described just just made that reminds me actually
Speaker C:yes I think actually one of the most horrible things I've ever read uh was a short story called Guts by Chuck Palahniuk who wrote um Fight Club have you guys ever read that yes okay yeah so uh to to podcast listeners highly recommend uh you don't read it if you're a remotely uh sensitive disposition um but essentially it involves someone uh someone having part of their sort of anatomy tangled up in something and uh it is really ghastly to read I mean it's it makes you it makes you it is it's sort of where you actually feel like uh feel quite faint as a result um but there I mean again that's another example of something where you know actually the impact it has the visceral impact it has is not really related to uh there being an incident of
Speaker A:of violence as such you know I would say for me I mean almost any of the violent scenes within Saving Private Ryan just um sort of I maybe feel very squeamish especially the the bit where a bloke gets slowly stabbed to death yeah and that's quite horrible and I think the other one would be from the was the film with James Caan where he he's a writer and um misery misery where he's with the wood the wooden block and yeah yeah anyway so um we'll we'll finish there so um thank you for listening dear audience and happy happy happy dreams should you be going to sleep this evening I'm Fraser McGruer you've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. Thank you for listening and until next time, bye-bye.
