doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Thursday June 13, 2002
I want to take yesterday’s blog a bit further. The film, Tough Guise, is about the linkage between masculinity, media, and violence.
One statement that was made in the movie is that masculinity and violence have become norms in our society. Do you think this is true? Is it ok that violence is a norm? Shouldn’t we be outraged whem violence occurs?
One way that this statement was supported was by talking about different kinds of violence. Violence that is perpetrated by men is rarely discussed anymore in the media. Sure, we know a little about the male-instigated crimes. We hear that a rape was committed against a woman. We know that women are killed. Do you notice that the focus is put on the woman? When Loreena Bobbitt maimed her husband, it became top level news for weeks on end. In fact, it was in the news for months. However, when a man commits as heinous a crime (for instance, mutilating a woman’s breasts or vagina) we don’t hear the details nor do we even know his name most of the time. Is it ok for men to now commit these kinds of crimes? Are we numb to the fact because it occurs so often?
Another issue is that violence is sexualized in the media. We don’t realize what is going on until it’s actually shown. The sexual tension in movies is often escalated until it reaches a frenzied peak, until the movie has aroused boys and men to their highest arousal levels, and then violence occurs. Have you ever noticed this? Next time you go to a movie, watch how the violence occurs. For instance, in Psycho, we see a woman going through the motions of getting ready for a shower. Then, she drops her clothes and steps in, fully nude (of course…who takes showers with clothes on???) to take her shower. It is at that point, at the point of highest arousal, that the woman is killed. You can see the same kind of scenario in “slasher” films like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and others.
Is it ok to link sex with violence? Does this condone the violent sexual acts that are perpetrated against women (and even other men)? Are we, as a society, saying it’s ok to rape, abuse, kill?
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I used to let my children watch R rated movies with me, if I thought it was something they could learn from. My rule of thumb though was that it could have violence and it could have sex, but it could not have violent sex.
The one exception I made was for the Jody Foster film, I think it was The Accused, about the girl that got raped in a bar. I wanted my son to understand that the phrase ‘She asked for it.’ was simply a male excuse to abuse a woman and a female’s wish to believe something like that can’t happen to her.
We’ve had violence in humanity for much longer than we’ve had films about it. *sigh* I would like to see more films that promote love and caring, so I don’t waste a lot of time watching films that carelessy promote violence against women. But then again, who am I to say that such a film might not reach one person and change the course of their life for the better by the fact that they saw something they didn’t want to become in the actions of a film I found offensive.
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No, we don’t hear about details of women getting mutilated by men. Why not? It’s just as grotesque and monstrous, yet we rarely hear about it. We know it’s happening, but it’s stifled.
On the same subject, it’s shocking to read about the violence and mutilation against women in countries like Saudi Arabia.:-( It’s part of everyday life in those countries, but we only hear bits and pieces here in the U.S. There are no answers as to why these unGodly things happen.
Whew, this is one mindbending and hot topic, Branwyn!
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Actually, there are a lot of cases in the news regarding women perpetrating crimes against men that we don’t hear about. And honestly, given the number of “battered spouse” couples I’ve known, only one has been the female getting the abuse (my sister, unfortunately) and THREE have been the men getting kicked.
Here’s something that’s not in your film though and I tend to question it. Many of the violent crimes come from minority populations, many of which are so poor they can’t go out to a movie. Their main media fix comes from TV and in most cases, these guys aren’t at home in the evening watching TV, they’re already out selling drugs or hustling ‘ho or whatever. How can you say that media drives a portion of our population when that portion of the population has extremely limited exposure to it at best.
Additionally, what is portrayed in films and what happens in real life are two entirely different things. Case in point regards a Coral Springs girl, who stabbed her adopted mother to death. Her initial idea had been to kill both of her parents. She’d seen it done in movies and it was always fast. Well…in pulling the knife out the kitchen and attacking her mother with it, she ended up stabbing the women 27 times. After she bled to death, the girl was so tired out from the ordeal that she knew she could never take her father out, so she ended up calling the police and turning herself in.
What motivated this killing was not media driven. The girl had told her boyfriend that she was pregnant by him in order to “get back together” with him. He’s broken off the relationship earlier. Her mother intended to take her to the doctor, and then to the school psychologist the next day. But she had other plans. She didn’t want this guy to drop her again, so she had intended to kill him in front of her school mates to make a statement. She was dysfunctional. Crime and punishment naver came into play with her. Since he parents were interfering with he plans to kill her boyfriend, they might as well get knifed too.
It’s a long topic and one that needs to be debated from both angels, and you can’t debate with a film, can you?
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natural born killers is a good example of the way the media glorifies violence. i’d have to agree that masculinity and violence have become norms in our society. i’ve never been a fan of that machismo bullshit, but for some reason i don’t see it as a problem that violence is such. i dunno, but it just seems that the more desensitized we become, the more we are maturing as a society. i hate anything taboo… in the 30′s (or whenever), sex, religion, so many things were taboo. so much intellectual growth is to be had if you break loose from the ties that bind… violence is always going to be there, but when we can sit here and talk about it like this, i can’t help but think we’re moving forward. don’t know to what though. about everything being focused on the woman, i don’t think that’s true… more like it is focused on the victim (a man was shot, two kids were brutally mugged at toys r us, whatever)… and i think the bobbit thing was anomaly. you mention we don’t hear about the women who are mutilated, but it’s like that happens a lot (unfortunately), how many times do you hear about a woman cutting off a man’s dick and throwing it out the window of her car. call it sensationalism, perverse humor, i dunno. every “huge” national story has some strange element in it, you don’t hear about the random crimes about women just like you don’t hear about every house that gets broken into. but -if- women commited crimes like that against men all the time, do you think we would hear about them, know their names as well? it’s just the way the media works. you have to be truly sadistic / shocking / thrilling or a famous hollywood star to get mentioned, to get the minute details. for your last point though, i think violence has always been linked w/ sex. not in the rape manner, just from what i hear, when people kill, it gets them excited. when people get in fights, it’s straight adrenaline, your senses become heightened. so i think they are just playing to what “the public” wants to hear, in that violence is “sexy”. so going along w/ this violence as sex metaphor, do you like your sex w/o a buildup? they build it up until the “climax”. it’s what people like (that like that sort of thing in the first place). i’m not one of them, just trying to get to the root of this nonsense. asking if it condones, that’s where i get vehement. and that’s also where my gripe towards society comes in. it’s not the outer shit, it’s the person. i’ve seen more violent films than you can shake a stick at, and you don’t see me killing people. but just because it is so readily available in our society, it’s a ready scapegoat, is it not? there are ohsomany more problems that are the cause of all this shit. but could they have even the smallest effect? only if you are “weak” minded, which i’m not sure is the fault of the individual. i don’t know how to solve it, i could say trite things like “better parenting” lalala, but i dunno. if pressed, i would say the media is responsible for a lot of it though.
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No, none of those things are okay. Unfortunately, because we do see them in movies and on TV all the time, it’s seems ‘normal’ and, therefore, okay.
Kids today complain about being so bored, so we’ve given them ‘killer’ movies to see and video games with so much violence it makes me want to puke. They love it and then want more.
Give me the childhood days of playing with dolls, jumping rope, playing hopscotch, and god forbid, READING. Geez, now I sound old, but I can’t help but be nostalgic. The current state of our society scares the shit of me.