WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Over the years, the depiction of violence sequences in movies have increased. The protagonist is often shown to go on a killing spree to seek revenge, leaving a profound impact on audience, especially children.
'Characters in non-crime movies are also talking more about killing and murdering today than they did 50 years ago,' noted corresponding author Brad Bushman, professor of communication at The Ohio State University.
'Not as much as characters in crime movies, and the increase hasn't been as steep. But it is still happening. We found increases in violence cross all genres.'
Led by The Ohio State University, a new research analyzed dialogues from over 160,000 movies from the website OpenSubtitles.org to determine how the discussions of killing and murder has evolved in English-language movies across all genres produced between 1970 and 2020.
'We designed this to be a conservative estimate,' explained lead author Babak Fotouhi. 'It is likely there was more violence in the movies than what we calculated in terms of the dialogue.'
The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, revealed that around 7 percent of the analyzed movies included the verbs like 'kill' or 'murder'. Even though, the usage of such verbs have fluctuated, their overall use has increased over the decades, among both male and female characters.
'Movies are trying to compete for the audience's attention and research shows that violence is one of the elements that most effectively hooks audiences,' Fotouhi observed.
Similarly, a previous study co-authored by Bushman revealed that gun violence in PG-13 rated movies, with overall violence in these films surpassing that found in R-rated films. The study also found that fictional violence more than doubled between 1950 and 2013.
The latest study emphasized on the importance of media literacy and mindful consumption, particularly among children as increased exposure to violence not only encourages aggressive behavior but also desensitizes people, making them numb, to the pain and suffering of others.
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