War, Violence, and the Nation

War, Violence, and the Nation II

A Personal Blog on War, Violence, and the Nation, Part II

This is an update on my entries discussing my blog. My blog explores the topic of "war, violence, and the nation." To sum it up, I am interested in looking at how media represents war, conflicts, and violence and how these representations affect the American culture. For this purpose, I have started collecting media materials that are, in my opinion, most useful for my blog.

The first media material I am using is the video supplement on the documentary the Mean World Syndrome. The video is available on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msfu8YCCc8Q. It features George Gerbner, professor of communication studies, who was born in Hungary but had to flee the country during World War II. In this video, Gerbner explains how the media normalizes the images of violence by showing them over and again. Gerbner describes this process desensitization. The consequence of heavy exposure to violence on TV, Gerbner says, is the normalization of violent behavior. For example, the video shows a video clip where one man severely punches and knocks another down in the street. People pass by it and nobody takes care about the victim although one and half hours pass. In another clip, an adult man is severely beating an old man, a veteran of World War II, but no bystander does anything. Gerbner argues that by watching violence over and over, people start assuming that this is normal in the society.

The video explains that the glorification of violence is not only the work of movies, but also many TV programs and reality shows that emphasize the reality of what is being shown and focus on issues of violence. Gerbner argues that this long-term exposure to violence not only numbs and brutalizes the viewers but also breeds increasing appetite for viewing violence. The broadcasters of TV programs and movie producers react to this and look for ways of making the viewers keep watching. The image of violence needs to be shown continuously to keep the viewers' interests. Through heavy exposure to violence, Gerbner argues, a certain percentage of the population becomes addicted to it like to a drug. So, then the producers of violent programming and films respond to this by "increasing the dose," that is, showing more graphic and more brutal violence. For example, the video shows how sequels of some movies such as 28 Days, Resident Evil, and Rambo kept increasing the "body counts" (number of people killed in the film) in each subsequent franchise. If the first Rambo franchise had 1 body count, the second had 69, the third had 161, and the fourth had 305 body counts.

The second material I am using is an article by ABC News Good Morning America "Iraq War Images Seep into Popular Culture." It is available online at http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/IraqCoverage/story?id=759253&page=1, This material mainly explains how the war in Iraq is becoming part of America at home. It explains how an Iraq War Vet became a military consultant in Hollywood. It quotes a professor who says that as the war goes on, the stories of war will become the fabric of American culture and identity. For example, many popular television programs began to incorporate the Iraq War into their stories. These include the episodes from ER, Las Vegas, Extreme Makeover, comedy Arrested Development, and soap opera Days of Our Lives. The article quotes one producer saying: "I think people are just ready to watch . . . something that is contemporary and important and dramatic and exciting." This comment by a producer shows that war generates interest in war stories and thus people's love and glorifying of war stories. Explaining to my viewers that such breeding of interest in war stories may have very negative consequences for our culture and the nation is important to my blog.

Third media material I am using is the "war and militarism" section of FAIR [Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting]. The website is available at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=7&issue_area_id=26. FAIR is dedicated to challenging the mainstream media reporting. It has specific sections that deal with a variety of issues, but most important for my blog is the section on war and militarism. The articles here show how often mainstream media reports present wrong impressions of wars and militarism. The media often lies about the realities of war and militarism and many people accept media representations as truth and fail to see many negative consequences of wars. For instance, Pat Tillman, a former popular soccer player who went to war but became an anti-war soldier and killed in a friendly fire, was at first reported to have been killed in a heroic fight with the Taliban. FAIR helps to expose these kinds of lies of the mainstream media.