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| 'Wait, this isn't funny? Then why the hell am I covered in brains?'
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The report "Defining Violence: The Search for Understanding," commissioned by Britain's top TV regulators and broadcasters, hardly breaks new ground in its findings. Still, we're sure that the dimwitted British find the information fascinating. It is in this spirit that we bring you the details of this report that a chimpanzee could have conducted blindfolded (take that, British scoundrels).
"Defining Violence" came to several conclusions that, despite their regurgitative quality, certainly warrant mention, especially given the recently intensified national debate on television violence. First, audiences tend to judge violence based on their personal perceptions of fairness and realism. Second, viewers (both men and women) generally agree that aggression can be entertaining. Third, violent scenes that use a humorous approach are perceived as much less offensive. And finally, some scenes (such as a rape scene) strike too close to home and are highly objectionable.
The reasons for the findings are simple. Viewers enjoy violence when it's Rambo gutting a bunch of bastards who treated him like crap, Joe Pesci waving a gun around and shooting some punk for mouthing off to him, or Mel Gibson blasting a bunch of evil South Africans. Why? Because it's payback, or it's funny, or it's justified because the bad guys are creeps. And these are scenes that will never affect the majority of our lives. But most importantly: It's violence that's totally unrealistic.
The difference comes when violence hits too close to home and blurs the line that separates reality from make-believe.
For example, survey participants were asked to label scenes they felt were overly violent and give an answer as to why. The overwhelming response was that realistic violence or "close-to-home" violence had a negative effect on perception.
The study found that after viewing graphic scenes from the American movie
Pulp Fiction, and the British film Ladybird, Ladybird, participants' sensitivity varied greatly.
Under the study's informal definitions, the Pulp Fiction scene in which a hit man played by John Travolta accidentally shoots and kills a man sitting in the back seat of a car was ranked as "Violence with a big V."
But a scene from Ladybird showing a man battering his girlfriend with his fists, feet and a beer can in front of small children was classified as "Violence with a hyper V." Aren't these British descriptions so quaint?
University of Leeds research director David Morrison explained that viewers tended to find the Pulp Fiction clip more acceptable because of its humor. "The sense of humor desensitizes it. Had it been shown without that humor, then it would be seen as being very violent," said Morrison. Conversely, the viewers found the Ladybird clip to be highly objectionable because of its more realistic and, therefore, more disturbing content.
In other words, television viewers are smart enough to know the difference between violence that is obviously fake and violence that strikes too close to home to be acceptable viewing.
The report will likely get religious fanatics talking about the end of the world and how television will eventually turn us all into Satan worshipping killers, but you can bet it will have little effect on the way TV violence is portrayed in the future. Besides, past reports on television violence, even ones with semi-groundbreaking information (unlike this pile of fluff), have done little to alter the overall level of television violence.
The survey (or, as we like to call it, the waste of paper) was commissioned by British broadcasters ITV, the BBC, and BSkyB, as well as the Independent Television Commission and the Broadcasting Standards
Commission, both TV regulators.
When reports such as this come out of Britain, it makes us wonder how those stuffy wheezebags ever controlled half the world, but sheds a little light on why we had to bail them out of two World Wars.
