Impact of Horror Films on Children and the Society - Assignment Example

What Psychological Impact does Horror films have on children and the society? The society today is confronted with a lot of problems. The moral and social values of the people are evaporating. The standard of education is falling apart; depravity, crime and dishonesty are rife. The incidence of illegitimate births has increased, whereas divorce rates are soaring. People are faced with more mental health problems than the past. Researches estimate that every one in four adults in the US suffer from a diagnosable mental illness every year (National Institute of Mental Health). There are many causes attributable to the current situation the society finds itself in. Television is one of the major causes for the same. Television has become an integral part of an individual’s entertainment in the modern world. People from all age groups spend a major part of their free time watching the television. So it follows naturally that they are influenced by what they watch on the television. Nowadays, concern regarding the impact of movies, video games and the Internet has become a regular feature of the debate regarding social issues. In the recent years, there has been a shift in the nature of the movies and video games produced towards more horror and violence. The issue of violence and horror in cinemas runs parallel to the advent of television for recreational purposes. People, especially young children, when follow horror programs on television and watch movies portraying violence and gory, the question arises what influence do these programs have on the minds of the children and the society on the whole. Edward James Muggeridge is the Father of the motion picture. He was the creator of the first movie. The original purpose of television and movies is to provide entertainment. Over the time, different genres of movies have surfaced, catering to the choices and preferences of all types of people in the society. One of the genres that have emerged is the horror film. The popularity of horror movies is depictive of the fact that people enjoy this genre and often prefer it over the romantic or classical genres. Some of the horror films stay number one on the charts for many weeks at a time. Examples of famous horror Hollywood movies include The Shining, The Silence of the Lambs, Exorcist, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Wait until Dark and Drag me to Hell. The success of these movies has led to the production of even more horror movies (Rickitt 11). The very names of the films are suggestive of the sheer horror and violence that they contain. Horror scenes in movies have certain characteristic impressions. Blood is a must. Besides that, elements such as violence, death, cruelty, torture, and psychological brainwashing are more or less constituents of a typical horror movie. When children watch these scenes, one can not refute the fact that they are not influenced by them. Horror movies trace their origin in fictional work that depicts the evil aspect of life. The chief goal of horror movies is to scare the viewers. The films show fictional characters that are miscreants associated with the forces of evil. Directly or indirectly, all horror films are a manifestation of people’s nightmares. Horror films are able to attract large audiences because of the adrenaline rush that they give. However, the negative influence of horror films on people’s psychology is great. One of the main impact horror films have on people is anxiety. Coupled with graphical displays of blood and music, horror films, in their attempt to scare the audience, raise their anxiety level. Children are youthful and susceptible. The effect of viewing such content can cause them to feel anxious and nervous generally. This can continue even when they are old. As a consequence, horror films are responsible for raising the anxiety levels of the people from all age groups. In a survey by USA today, data was collected from 150 students at Wisconsin and Michigan college about the anxiety that they feel. The findings of the survey showed a high level of media fright in the students. 90% of the participants of the survey admitted that they experienced a media fright reaction from childhood to adolescence; 26% of them still complained of residual anxiety (USA Today Society for the Advancement of Education). Another main impact of horror films is fear. It is often seen that children who watch horror films generally do not go into the dark and have a fear of dark places. They associate darkness with evil and demons. Horror movies show that evil characters such as vampires, demons etc operate in the dark. Hence, the child picks up this fear from horror films and abstains from lurking in the dark. If children are forced to go in the dark, they scream and cry, expressing their fear for the dark. Moreover, movies portray that vampires and other negative elements can cause a person to die, often in a cruel way. People subconsciously then develop this fear that facing such elements can kill them, with the probability of the encounter increasing manifold in dark places. Horror movies can also cause sleeplessness. A lot of people complain that they stay awake the whole night out of fear after watching a horror movie; the episodes of sleeplessness can last for days depending on the impact the movie has had on their minds. If continued exposure to horror movies is present, then the individual may experience lack of proper sleep for months at an end. The duration of these effects less than a week in about 33% of a research group whereas they lasted for more than year in about 36% of the people (USA Today Society for the Advancement of Education). Moreover, many people complain of nightmares and panic attacks during their sleep after watching horror movies. They may break into cold sweat if they are in a dark room all alone. They also sleep fitfully. The disturbed sleep also affects their daily activities as they do not feel alert and fresh. Horror films have both long-term and short-term effects. Short-term effects can range from nervousness and jumpiness at sudden noises, or keeping the lights on at night when sleeping. In another study conducted, the effects of horror movies on the behavior of people were observed. 27% of the people cried and yelled as an after effect of the movie; during the movie, people trembled, felt nausea and stomach ache, hyperventilated with an increase in their heart beat, fear of losing control, feeling of paralysis, holding the person sitting next to them, numbness and loss of consciousness (USA Today Society for the Advancement of Education). The long-term effects can range from anxiety and sleeplessness to fear and phobia. Elaborating further, phobia is a direct consequence of horror movies. The person may develop a phobia towards blood and desolate places. This can be explained by social cognition theories. The theory states that when one sees a particular concept, he or she tends to draw on the information that he has stored regarding it. As a result, the person’s view is influenced by this mental representation of information that he has in store by past experiences; this mental representation or cognitive structure is known as schema and helps explain the fact that humans’ social perception is influenced by their understanding of the way things happen normally. The theory’s relevance to horror movies lies in the fact that when people see an object or exposed to a situation, they tend to think about it as dictated by past experiences; that is, their initial impressions are influenced by their past perceptions and with repeated use, become a component of a system of integrated knowledge (Richardson, Morgan, and Fleener 73). Therefore, when people watch such movies, a phobia and a prejudice settles in their mind. When they see some resemblance to the horror clips in real life, they tend to associate the real life with the fear and evil nature portrayed in the movie. As a result, they develop phobia towards objects. The phobia inducing elements can be animals and environmental factors. Movies often show insects and people develop phobia towards them. There are environmental factors as well that might cause people to shake with fear or become nervous. Earthquakes, thunder and lightening can cause people sensitized to horror flicks to feel frightened. Blood is one of the elements that people might get frightened by. Bloody images often frighten children, who are more prone to injuries due to their playful nature. Moreover, for many people, the environment can cause them to feel scared. A desolate woody area can scare them along with heights and closed places. Water might also scare people as horror movies often show people being drowned in waters. In the Michigan and Wisconsin survey mentioned above, 65% of the participants admitted that they were scared of blood. One of the participant confessed that after watching the horror flick, Jaws, he had bad dreams about blood for two months and as a result, he still continues to feel scared of injections and blood (USA Today Society for the Advancement of Education). Disturbing sounds and twisted shapes also frighten people. In the aforementioned survey, more than half of the participants agreed that images and sound are the most common type of fright stimulus present in movies. The heavy breathing of the murdered in Halloween frightened one of the participants whereas another sacred by the music of Jaws. The gouging of eyes, facial disfigurement, burns etc may elicit repulsion in the audience (Worland 37). Research studies have shown that impact of horror movies is greater in younger people than in older ones. However it has been seen that even when children grow up, they carry the phobia with them. Science has proved that the influence of a movie on the personality of the person depends on his behavioral traits. A child who has not received love and care, and has grown up in a neighborhood where crime rate is high is more likely to be affected by horror movies. Moreover, when they see something on the television or other forms of media, and if the content is strong enough, it can compel them to do that feat, thinking it’s brave. One such incident happened in US where a couple of children threw kerosene at their parents when they were asleep and set fire to them. The children said that they had seen this being done on the television. Children exposed to excessive violence in horror movies also show negative behavior traits. Researches have shown that children who watch violent and horror scenes react with more aggression and anger compared to those who do not. This aggression is not short-lived. With repeated exposure to such scenes, children become aggressive by nature. According to American Psychological Association, the effects of violence and horror on young minds have three main consequences. Children become less sensitive to the pain and problems of other people. Moreover, they grow more scared of the world around them and, as mentioned above, they behave in ways that are deleterious to other people (Bible Studies at the Moorings). Research also showed that children who are exposed to violence and horror at an early age grew up to be more short-tempered and violent than children who do not watch horror movies. The victimized group also was more likely to indulge in criminal acts. Moreover, by being continually exposed to violent behavior and horror became more indifferent to acts violence. There is a subgenre of horror known as psychological horror. This type of horror builds up the suspense of the story by the guilt of the characters, their emotional dilemmas and thinking (Murray). Psychological horror has a much deeper impact on the audience of the audience as they subconsciously affect them. These movies generate fear in people by bringing in to light those realities that they try to suppress. Psychological horror arouses the deeper instincts of the audience. Where the evil force is apparent in other horror movies, in psychological horror movies, the audience is scared by the emotions of the people. One such example is the character of Hannibal Lecter of the movie Silence of the Lambs. He operated and carried out his evil schemes from the cover of a kind and amiable man. These types of films are disturbing for viewers because of the tension that they build over the passage of the movie, which is why audience is left with feelings of tension and anxiety after the movie has ended. These horror films impact children by making them more delinquent and affecting their psychology. One of the adverse effects of horror films also includes that they rob children of innocence. As mentioned above, children become more desensitized to violence with repeated exposure. As a result, the levels of what is considered as violent also fall. When someone is continuously exposed to the same content, he or she would tend to subconsciously accept it as correct. Therefore, acts that were considered violent earlier would be perceived by these people as normal. Children who watch horror movies are no longer morally sound; this is because they accept what they see in the movies as normal. If they have no one to guide them, they would start perceiving these violent acts to be justified; thereby ruining their moral judgment and reasoning. Moreover is they lose grip over their values, their family life would also suffer, not only when they are young but also when they grow up and start their own family. Violent streaks can cause them to be harsh to their own children and make them indifferent to their responsibilities. As a result, the whole society is affected. Horror movies also affect the imaginative capacities of children. Since they many of them are psychological thrillers, they brainwash the children into accepting things that are not morally correct. Young children are not able to make a distinction between what is right and what is wrong. In the example of Hannibal given above, the children may take a liking to his character since he is polite and generous is most part of the film, and they may tend to imitate him. In short, movies can desecrate the innocence of the children. The media impacts the society in many ways. Its importance is also escalated because of its ability to convey a strong message. It caters to a large number of audiences; hence the effects are spread over a large group of population. The effects of movies would also be widespread and not just limited to selected group of people. In terms of psychology, fear tends to the release of the hormone adrenaline by the body. This causes a flight or fight response, the rush of which can be stimulating for people. Also, empathic distress facilitates the liking of horror (Preiss 288). The exploitation of sex in horror films can negatively impact the minds of teenagers in particular. Thus in conclusion horror films have many adverse effects on the psychology of people, especially the children. Studies show that the horror content that children view have negative impact on them (Bryant and Oliver 288). They tend to elicit aggressiveness in children, and corrupt their mind. Moreover, they also cause effects like fear, phobia, sleeplessness and anxiety and lower the imagination of children. Children may be provoked to do immoral things. They tend to diminish family values. Horror films question and even attack traditional values (Hogan). Works Cited Bible Studies at the Moorings. The Evils in Television Lesson 1: Medical and Psychological Effects. N.p., 4 Feb. 2008. Web. 31 May 2010. Bryant, Jennings and Oliver, Mary Beth. Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. 3rd ed. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008. Print. Hogan, Ronald. Shared Nightmares: Horror films and society as mirror, N.p. n.d. Web. 31 May 2010. Murray, Steven Casey. Horror Movies Site. Bella Online, 2010. Web. 31 May 2010. National Institute of Mental Health. NIMH National Institute of Mental Health. National Institutes of Health, 28 May 2010. Web. 31 May 2010. Preiss, Raymond W. Mass media effects research: advances through meta-analysis. New Jersey: Routledge, 2007. Print. Richardson, Judy S., Raymond F. Morgan and Charlene E. Fleener. Reading to Learn in the Content Areas. 7th ed. California: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print. Rickitt, Richard. Designing movie creatures and characters: behind the scenes with the movie masters. Oxford: Gulf Professional Publishing, 2006. Print. USA Today Society for the Advancement of Education. BNET. CBS Business Network, April 2000. Web. 31 May 2010. Worland, Rick. The horror film: an introduction. Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007. Print. Read More