The Role Of Violence In Popular Culture

Every society has their own set of values, customs, and traditions that have been accepted within the society. In the United States, violence has been accepted as part of the American popular culture. Television, movies, and video games are the most influential form of violence in popular culture in adolescents and teenagers. Violence is anything that uses physical force to hurt, kill, or damage something or someone. These are taking away the innocence from the children and are causing them to mature too soon. Children have developed a more aggressive behavior as a result of being exposed to the ample amount of violence being portrayed on television, in movies, and in video games. Children, on average, watch about four hours of television
Jeff Jacoby mentions in his article, “A Desensitized Society Drenched in Sleaze”, “…when blood and mayhem and sleazy sex drench our popular culture, we get accustomed to blood and mayhem and sleazy sex. We grow jaded.” As children continue watching violence on television, they begin to accept violence as a way to solve problems and will imitate the violence. They will also become unaware of the violence that is happening in the world and may not think that it is a problem. Children become less empathetic and more aggressive because of the violence portrayed in
Movies are also a major form of popular culture that portrays an ample amount of violence. The New York Times’ article, “Gun Violence in American Movies” written by Michael Cieply included a study of the top grossing movies from 1950 to 2012. The study focused on how many appearances of violence are in each movie. The results showed that the violence has more than doubled in that time. The researchers also found that violence in PG-13 movies have surpassed the violence in R-rated movies. The Los Angeles Times included in the article “Violence, Risky Behavior in Big Films” written by John Horn that children may imitate the behavior in the movies. Children need to be monitored on how much television and movies they are watching. Even if the show is PG-13, does not mean that there is little violence. If children continue to watch violence in movies, they will imitate the violence and will become more