Violence isn’t as appealing
to movie audiences as expected
By Matt Holsapple
Summer
Reporter
Approximately 100 people are standing on the top
of a Los Angeles skyscraper, celebrating and welcoming an alien race to
Earth. The aliens’ spacecraft hovers over the skyscraper and opens
to shoot a beam that covers the skyscraper. The building explodes killing
countless people on top of, and inside, it.
This is a scene from "Independence Day,"
one of the top five moneymaking movies in history. "Independence
Day" also falls in line with the current Hollywood trend of making
movies with more and more violence and mayhem.
Two Purdue professors, however, suggest that the
American public may, in fact, react negatively instead of positively to
movie violence.
Cheri Sparks, a professor of psychology, and her
husband, Glenn Sparks, a professor of communication, recently collaborated
on "Violence, Mayhem and Horror," an essay in which they assert
that violence is not the highest rated commodity that people want to see
in movies.
"People assume that American’s love violence,
and we have found that this isn’t necessarily the case," Glenn
Sparks said.
Sparks said that most research into movie violence
over the past few decades has focused on its purported link with aggressive
behavior. "There are no answers to very basic questions like whether
people like violence and why," Sparks said.
Sparks said that there have been experiments that
have demonstrated that when shown materials that are the same except for
the amount of violence, most subjects either had no preference between
the two or actually preferred the material with less violence.
This is not to say, he stress, that no one enjoys
violence. He said that many people do like to see violence in some situations.
He divided these people into three possible reasons.
The first of these is people that simply enjoy seeing
violence. These people find an aesthetic appeal in seeing people beat
each other up or watching things be destroyed. "This is the ultimate
enjoyment of violence for its own sake."
The second reason is the enjoyment of violence against
certain characters. In movies, Sparks said, the audience begins to identify
with some of the characters, and therefore opposes the other ones. After
this has happened an audience is likely to react positively to violence
committed against a character it opposes. "You can even get an audience
to cheer at really horrifying things," said Sparks.
The third reason is that some people receive excitement
and pleasure from the high levels of adrenaline produced when exposed
to violence.
Sparks said, over the past several years, movies
have become progressively more violent. He said that this might be because
audiences become desensitized to violence.
"Over time, the extent that violence gives us
gratification." Hollywood has responded to that by increasing the
amount and intensity of the violence, he said.
Sparks said that this desensitization accounts for
the higher levels of violence and deaths in sequels, such as the "Die
Hard" and "Scream" series. He said that desensitization
could also occur within the course of one movie.
"A lot of people thought the end fight scene
in ‘Mission: Impossible 2’ went on three minutes too long. People
became desensitized during that one scene," Sparks said.
This summer, violent movies have dominated the box
office; "Gladiator" and "Mission: Impossible 2" have
both made over $150 million and "Scary Movie" set records when
it earned over $40 million in its opening weekend. All three of these
movies are filled with graphic violence.
Also, last summer, "Saving Private Ryan"
made over $250 million even though its opening sequence is considered
to be one of the most violent and graphic half-hours ever seen in a mainstream
film.
But, violence does not always lead to high profits.
For example "American Psycho" and "Fight Club," both
of which received mostly positive reviews, were largely ignored at the
box office after their violence was highly publicized.
Sparks said that "Fight Club" is a great
example of a movie that was harmed by its violence. "It had a big
star (Brad Pitt) and a big potential audience. The violence probably scared
people away that might have seen it."
Aaron Smith, the video manager at Von’s, said
that, for most of his customers, violence does not seem to be a particularly
negative thing. He said that he rarely hears complaints from his customers
about excessive violence, but when he does the complaints are spread about
evenly across demographics and types of movies.
He also said that the violence in "Fight Club"
did not seem to detract renters at his store. "With ‘Fight Club’
the brutality might actually have added to the appeal," Smith said.
However, Smith said that the renters that are attracted
to particularly violent movies, like "Fight Club," are "a
totally different crowd." He said that these renters tend to be predominantly
males in their late teens and early twenties.
Although some don’t like violence at all, Smith
said "I think that a lot of them (his customers) feel as long as
the violence is within a good plot setting and is handled tastefully,
it is usually justified."
Sparks agreed. "Viewers, at least in the mainstream,
have to see the violence as necessary. They only enjoy it in terms of
what it is accomplishing for the drama."
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