Crime Fiction and Violence in the Media - Essay Example

In recent times however, apart from being in a literary genre, it has emerged not only in mainstream cinema but as a highly popular television genre with shows such as Law and Order and CSI is one of the top 10 watched shows in America. Fetishism meanwhile is defined by The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms as ‘…an object or idea that instills reverence and devotion to it by drawing attention through conditioned reflex’. Furthermore, in terms of Karl Marx’s concept of fetishism (1977), commodity fetishism is when the social relation between people assumes a relationship between things. Drawing the two together, it can be concluded that depicting crime and violence in these shows or movies has taken a somewhat fetishist approach, with each show having an essential yet varying element of graphic violence and many relying solely on it for popularity. Rather than portraying to the audience the essence of the crime, crime shows are focused more on exploiting their own creative elements in depicting these crimes as dramatically and violently as they can, mostly in order to benefit ratings, rather than to display to the audience the true nature of these acts.

Violence in the media is not confined only to fictional shows and does not serve only the purpose of shock value. Rather, as people face greater and greater exposure to the outside world at an earlier and earlier age and as they get more and more conditioned to learn through all five senses rather than just one, suddenly, being told about the murder isn’t enough. We need to see the murderer to be able to visualize it and have it feel real. If that fails to get the message through, we need to see the site of the crime and the people affected, and the way it was done.

It is less sadism as it is natural in us to want to grasp the full reality of something, and as the definition of that reality has changed over time, so have the depictions we are shown. News channels and television shows alike rely on graphic details to illustrate the full impact of a crime. Crime shows will often show gruesome depictions of these crimes through highly realistic make-up and body models, with these crimes being described in highly intricate detail. The problem however is that crime fiction isn’t classified as specifically for adults of a certain age and therefore these shows are shown in time slots where even children can have more or less unrestricted access to them.

Violence on television isn’t the same taboo as perhaps nudity or drug use might be, despite studies showing that it has negative effects just at par with them. Since property offenses have no mass appeal, they are replaced by the more gory and exciting crimes of violence. Studies (Barker & Petley, 2001) have shown explained the popularity of crimes in these shows by the fact that it depicts life in a far more exciting light. Two men arguing are shown to resort to fist fights rather than drawing out legal orders through a long tedious process.

Things happen faster and with exaggerated emotion and magnitude, exactly as we fantasize but never actually do. Television violence plays into these subconscious desires and fantasies and plays out for us in visual detail what fails to form concrete thoughts in our minds.

Two men arguing are shown to resort to fist fights rather than drawing out legal orders through a long tedious process. Things happen faster and with exaggerated emotion and magnitude, exactly as we fantasize but never actually do. Television violence plays into these subconscious desires and fantasies and plays out for us in visual detail what fails to form concrete thoughts in our minds.

This however is the same reason it is so damaging to the developing psyche of a child who learns that violence may also be the answer to something, albeit one that’s looked down upon. Or due to frequent exposure, they may begin to consider murder and mystery as an acceptable angle of life. Crime is represented as a possibility that can occur at any time, not an abnormal, one-off event in a general situation of normalcy. Studies have shown that every time a child saw violence on television they became a little bit more immune to it and less empathetic in general (Belson, 2001). They considered it to have less shock value and impact than the last exposure it garnered.

Why then is violence in crime depiction so popular even though it has such drastically damaging effects, especially on children? The answer is sadly quite simple. As Sasson (1995) explains, we, the audience, expect that level of shock, fantasy, excitement, and drama. Without it, the television show we were watching would feel boring and abstract. When graphic details are added, the crime is suddenly brought to life and seems all the more real. We have just as much sympathy for the victim, hate for the criminal, and intrigue about the murder as perhaps the fictional detective in the show. Whether the violence is needed or not, television producers have this urge to depict it graphically nonetheless, just to make the visual more dramatic.

So then if fetishism is the unexplainable drive to do something for the sole reason of doing it and deriving joy from it, it can indeed be said that the depiction of violence on television has become a fetish. Furthermore, keeping our early definition of fetishism in mind, it could perhaps be that the viewing of violence in crime fiction through television, cinema, or text is just as much of a fetish as depicting this crime is. Ultimately, television is made to cater to the views and demands of the audience and if it is graphic violence that will attract that audience, a crime fiction producer has no reason not to include it. Therefore, if we are questioning or debating the harmfully adverse effects television violence has upon our children, we should perhaps question why we have garnered the reflex that gives rise to its depiction in the first place.