Popular belief suggests that excessive exposure to mediated
violence directly causes people to become more violent. In the film Mean World Syndrome based on George
Gerbner’s research on cultivation theory in media, he explains that viewers do
not become more violent, but they perceive the world as a violent place with
increasing crime rates. In reality, statistics show that crime rates are
dropping and lower than they have ever been. So why do Americans fear violence
more than ever? According to Gerbner, television is the primary storyteller of
our time, surpassing the family, religion, schools, and oral history. An
interesting point he made about media content is the easily understood “violence
plot” that focuses on action rather than dialogue, which conveniently
translates internationally. Americans see violent images constantly from cartoons
to the local news. The film shocked me when they mentioned that children see
8,000 murders by elementary school and 200,000 violent acts by 18 years old.
The funny thing is these violent images are given to us
through only several media conglomerates. Viewers receive a steady stream of
repetitive images, rather than diverse content. Certain groups are targeted to
present viewers with a narrow minded image. Latinos, Arabs, African Americans,
and immigrants are all given false representation on television, which gives
people a false perception. The lack of diversity given to these cultures causes
viewers to believe all Latinos are gangsters, all Arabs are terrorists, and all
African Americans are thugs. Gerbner addresses the fact that the lack of
contrasting images is inherently our fault because as viewers and consumers we
give so much power to money hungry commercial business. I wished the film gave more attention to the media outlets and what drives them to show so much violence,
but this film is based on viewers’ reaction to violent media.
Ultimately this film concludes that heavy users of television
and other media live in a state of fear. Mediated images cloud their sense of
the world and leave them with a distorted vision of reality. People become scared
in a culture of meanness and turn toward security and lack of privacy to live
in a sheltered fearful state of mind. Gerbner does not go much into the
solution for this problem of living in a “mean world”, but as viewers we should
look at the facts and make judgments based on our lived experiences and
relationships rather than focus on mediated representations.
