Movie Violence

For this blog post I had to recall the number of violent movies that I’ve seen and look up their ratings and in the end I’ve decided that the MPAA does put violence in its place. Many Violent movies are often rated R and for good reason because many of these violent movies include sex scenes in them as well which makes up for the R rating.

I don’t believe that the violent parts to movies are particularly harmful to children because a good parent will be able to tell them that it is just a movie and the extreme violence that happens in Movies such as Saw does not happen in real life.

However, sex is an entirely different subject. A parent can’t bring a child into a movie theatre to see a sex scene and tell them that it doesn’t happen in real life. The issue of sex should be put too much higher importance because it is a subject that can really disturb some children if not approached carefully.

Take for example the movie, Gangs of New York. The violence is obviously very excessive and the gore may have added to the R rating but it is excessive to the point where one should know that it is fake. The amount of sex in that movie however is almost appalling, that along with the obvious degradation to women that is still very real today. I remember when I first heard the title of the movie I wanted to see it and my dad wouldn’t let me just because of the multiple sex scenes in it.

I ultimately think that sex should be handled much more carefully and that rated R movies should be saved for adult themes rather than just violence.

War of the worlds

After reading page 62 of the text and listening to Orsen Welles’s radio interpretation of War of the Worlds, I can understand that the research regarding the mass panics in 1938 were flawed. The broadcast was fun to listen to but even if people had missed the first disclaimer, one would have had to completely zone out during the music and disclaimer breaks for them to not hear the disclaimers.

The radio broadcast may have been the reason that many people today assumed that there was a mass panic on that night in 1938. The broadcast said that chaos was coming and that people would die, so it is right to assume that a lot of people may have taken it too seriously. The idea of “group thought” comes to mind when hearing of situations such as this; if a lot of people believe that something is true, than it is often perceived to be true, even if it isn’t. Just because a lot of people may have misinterpreted the show and thought it was real doesn’t mean they decided to kill themselves over it.

Also, a lot of people believed that the radio broadcast had caused mass panic so it stuck that way for many years. People just assumed that those who listened panicked over the broadcast and no one questioned it. When listening to the broadcast, one has to wonder if the people already knew Orsen Welles than, why did few people recognize his voice. He did have a daily show that many must have listened to and recognized him for, but regardless people didn’t think twice about aliens attacking the earth. The show followed the basic news structure except for the multiple disclaimers warning that the show was just that, a show.

media post response

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=146589

For our post this week I read a short article about the decline in traditional methods of watching television among urban audiences. The article states that many who live in cities are beginning to get their TV fix via laptop, gaming console (Netflix or Hulu), and even from their phones.

The article went on to say that many of those who are using these non-traditional methods of watching TV are minorities. The percentages of Latinos, Asians and African-Americans watching on new platforms are much higher than the percentage of white people.

These numbers however do not surprise me. With cable becoming digital it becomes much more expensive not to mention that many cable companies offer the extra channels such as HBO and Showtime, watching TV on a television can become a financial burden. The minorities that live in cities are often times closer to the poverty line than a white person who lives in the city. This is not always true however the percentages show that there is some truth to this stereotype.

The rise of people who have begun watching TV through other mediums but TV may have the network companies re-thinking their methods of getting their programs and advertising across. Networks will need to find ways to entice their advertisers to stick to the television model because advertising on the internet is much cheaper and a much wider audience is exposed to the advertisement.

It seems that the actual television has become the odd man out and cable is becoming less and less relevant which is also making the digital high definition law, which was passed a few years ago, almost pointless if people aren’t using the boxes that are being put on their TVs.