Violence...

Violence in television and motion pictures, especially has an enormous impact on the type of audience it draws. In some cases, violence has been questioned as to whether it has been helpful to the film's plot or harmful to the viewer. For example, the Swedish Film Board once refused to show the film Casino due to the amount of graphic violence involved. They claimed that they would only show it if a specific scene with an immense amount of graphic violence was censored or cut out. Many experiments have been conducted to study the effects of violence on a film. In many cases, violent scenes were cut out of movies and the viewers watched different versions, then filled out a questionnaire about the clip they had seen. These experiments can lead to further research in film choices. It demonstrates what kind of person enjoys violent films, and who would avoid them. In some cases, the results showed that viewers choose to watch more violent films because the other aspects of the film (i.e. suspense, action, conflict, etc) are more compelling to the viewer. When violence was taken out of the films, results came back that these small cuts of graphic violence had no significant effect on its enjoyability. Violence, much like genre, plays into gender difference as well. Men tend to enjoy violence more than women do. Men tend to be better at dealing with viewing graphic violence and usually tend to be drawn to it. In every experiment and study I have researched, results showed that women did not enjoy violent films in comparison to the men who watched them. Women actually displayed that they enjoyed the cut version of the film more because the graphic violence is not present. However, cutting the violence in films actually lessened the enjoyment for men. A man will leave a violent movie excited and pumped up, ready to be the hero in his own story, but some viewers leave harboring other emotions. Especially in women, violent films have actually been proven to invoke fear into the viewers, leaving them with a feeling of disturbance. A survey was taken about the profound effect of violence on the viewer, and results showed that the average time of said disturbances from violent films lasted 3 days, including side affects such as depression, nervousness, and recurring images. These disturbances have been caused on average by films that involve dangers and injuries, fear and endangerment in others, and distortions of the normal form of something. An example of this would be The Grudge, where the children in the film are the source of fear, being distorted and abnormal looking. This will happen often with horror films and may cause the viewer to not desire to choose similar films.

My research thus far as concluded that viewers don't necessarily watch films because of the violence. In fact, in the case of horror films, some viewers avoid the more violent types of films. To the affect of violence causing disturbances for viewers, my research has positively backed this up. A student that I have interviewed previously stated that after seeing a horror film that caused bad dreams and fear for some time to follow viewing the film, she would not watch another horror film, especially along the same lines as the film that originally caused the problem. I would like to explore further into the impact of violence in films. Do viewers watch a movie because of the violence in it, or in spite of the violence in it? Is violence a main factor that draws students and professors towards or away from films? What type of personalities to viewers hold that enjoy violent films because they are violent? Violence plays a big part in whether or not a viewer will chose to see a film or even a whole genre in the future.