Mean World Syndrome

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.