Dr. Anthony F.

Crisafi: University of Central Florida, Philosophy and Humanities; University of Hertfordshire, Philosophy Denise Crisafi: University of Central Florida, Sociology Violence in Film: Measuring Existential Reactions to Evil Particularly over the last thirty years, depictions of violence in media outlets have been denounced as harmful in their effect. This sentiment is grounded in the results of psychological studies that report stark increases in aggression centered behaviors among their participants after exposure to violent images. This negative effect has been demonstrated with population samples of children and adolescents as well as with population samples of adults. Methodologically, studies dealing with children employ self-report measures and longitudinal examinations while studies dealing with adults utilize violent film clips and pre-film agitation to elicit aggression on a confederate. Although these studies collectively have merit in their results, they are lacking both in literature and in methodology. Consistently an issue of significance, there is a tendency for experimenters to remove violent depictions from their original context in order to simplify a research design. In essence, experimenters rely upon their own artificially created narrative, which defines violent actions as either justified or unjustified in context. This methodology has arguably produced results that are questionable when discussing an audiences actual, and typical, interaction with depictions of violence. Clearly misunderstood among psychological research in this area, the way in which an audience reads violence in film is dependent on a wide variety of factors, specifically cultural and subjective concepts of the role violence plays in shaping attitudes towards evil. Our study focuses on the idea that narrative has a more subject effect on an audiences perception, and that in adult audiences there is a clear understanding concerning the place violence plays within this construct. Of course, this idea of narrative guidance in audience response is not a novel concept. Film studies have established a large library of literature stating the importance of narrative and its stylistic components in defining acts cognitively for a viewer. This can theoretically be understood through the psychoanalytic and cultural studies framework of Slavoj Zizek, who combines the psychoanalytic analyses of Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud to establish the connections between film and audience. The current study employed this framework to counter the practice of merely using film clips to exact a response amongst an audience, and to also demonstrate the benefits of using a more methodologically integrative approach to explaining behavior. Implications for this study are discussed in terms of media censorship, emphasizing the idea that this issue is not that one is simply viewing violence, but, rather, what kinds of violence one is viewing. While this study does not dismiss the evidence that media violence, especially habitual viewing of media violence, has the potential to produce problematic effects among younger audiences in particular, it denies that violence is static in its effect. Fictional violence is more than just an act; it is a complex set of actions that is defined by situational factors, viewer identification and empathy, and desires for a specific outcome. Violence is a tool used in film to transmit messages about occurrences in various cultures, as a reflection of ourselves, and, more importantly, our social systems. It is imperative to begin the discussion of film violence by examining the features of the studies that have laid its groundwork in the field of psychology. As mentioned, many of the studies that have been conducted on the topic of violence in media have focused their attention on children and adolescents, mostly because of their higher levels of vulnerability to such content. These studies have established supporting results for the idea that violence in many forms of media, the major outlets being television, film, video games, and the internet, causes either long or short term cognitive reactions that can be harmful to the development of that child (i.e. Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, Baumgardner, 2003; Drabman & Thomas 1974; Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, Eron, 2003; Leyens, Park, Camino, Berkowitz, 1975; Thomas & Drabman, 1975; Slater, Henry, Swain, Anderson, 2003; Lee & Kim, 2004; Vidal, Clemente, Espinosa, 2003; Sheehan, 1997). Those studies dealing with short-term effects, such as that of Drabman and Thomas (1975) utilize methodology of randomly assigning a group of students to a view a violent or nonviolent condition, in a few cases, a no film condition is added, and subject them to a real or filmed violent altercation in which the reaction time of seeking adult help is observed and measured. Results of this type of methodology typically demonstrate that children who view a violent film clip are slower in reaction time in seeking adult assistance (i.e. Drabman & Thomas 1974). Other studies have utilized self report measures of children on violence exposure. For instance, Funk et al. (2003) administered self-report questionnaires pertaining to violence exposure and use, empathy, and pro-violence attitudes among a sample of fourth and fifth graders. The results showed that those who played violent video games had lower measures of empathy whereas those who played violent video games in conjunction with watching violent film had both lower scores of empathy and higher rates of pro-violence attitudes. This and other studies relying on self-report use their results to suggest that youths who increase their exposure to violent entertainment are subjecting themselves to depictions that alter cognitive

processes, and this has been hypothesized to lead to desensitization, as in the case of Funk, et al., (2003) or aggressive tendencies that lead youth to seek out more of reinforcing violent material, as in the instance of Slater, et al (2003). Also, some experimenters have found it more beneficial to conduct longitudinal studies of effects of media violence (Turner, Hesse, Peterson-Lewis, 1986; Eron, Huesmann, Lefkowitz, Walder, 1972). Interesting, and typical, results are evident in that of Huesmann et al. (2003), that measured the violent television viewing of six to ten year olds then followed up on their behavior fifteen years later. The results of the entire study demonstrated a significant effect of the violent media on the adult behaviors of both males and females. Importantly, the more exposure to violence as a child, the perceived reality of fictional violent content, and higher violent character identification predicted higher levels of aggression in the adulthood of this sample. Of particular importance in explaining the results to these studies are social-psychological and cognitive theories which attribute childrens and adolescents responses to film violence to modeling and learned scripts and schemas. Banduras Social Learning Theory is the most widely cited theory when dealing with media violence and younger audiences, and posits that behaviors that are displayed as rewarded and positively reinforced will be modeled, and habitual modeling of such rewarded behavior, which is depicted in violent media such as film, will ultimately cause children to imitate these violent acts in social settings (i.e. Lee & Kim 2004; Sheehan, 1997; Turner, et al, 1986; Bushman, 1998; Geen & Thomas, 1986; Rule & Ferguson, 1986). This is similar to Huesmanns proposed encoding specificity, whereby children associate a violent act with the situation in which the violent act took place. If this violent act is portrayed through the media, for example, in a manner that resolves a conflict, then the child may ultimately retrieve this stored information when faced with a similar conflict situation as had been observed (i.e. Huesmann, L. Rowell, 1986; Geen & Thomas, 1986). Another theory in dealing with children and violent media is desensitization theory, which states that children who are habitually exposed to high degrees of violent content will become less affected by this content over time (i.e. Huesmann, et al., 2003; Sheehan, 1997; Rule & Ferguson, 1986; Hill, 2001; Drabman & Thomas, 1974). Psychological studies that have dealt with violence and adults report that there are established links between violence in media and aggressive behavior. These studies are different methodologically from the studies with children in the event that they more often use violent film clips from commercial films instead of relying on self report measures of violent media use. Although few studies with the children have shown film clips from commercial films, there becomes an ethical question of what kind of violent content children can view. Thus, if children are subjected to full-length violent films, it is more likely that action-oriented genres may be used as opposed to drama genres or horror genres which encompass high degrees of explicit bodily violence. Also, violence studies conducted with adults are more focused on using film instead of generalized media and they are more focused on the short term effects of the film clips as opposed to longitudinal studies. The protocol for a majority of these studies is angering a population of undergraduate college students through shocks by a confederate on an unrelated task, assigning those participants to either a violent film clip, a nonviolent film clip, or no film clip in many instances, and then measuring the number of shocks administered back to that confederate post film viewing (i.e. Meyer, 1972; Geen, 1975; Geen & Stonner, 1974; Carlisle & Howell, 1974; Day, 1976; Thomas & Tell, 1974; Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963). Theoretically, cognitive-neoassocionistic and excitation-transfer theory are often used to support the results of these studies because they are used to explain, short-term, how those angered from a previous task experience a heightened aggressive response to a violent film clip as opposed to a nonviolent film clip or no film clip, and how the observation of the film violence becomes semantically associated with aggressive thoughts, heightening the chances of administration of more electric shock on the confederate. Variations also exist, as with Meyer (1974), and Thomas and Tell (1974) whose experiments utilize both real and fictional film clips, or in the case of Geen (1975) where participants in separate groups were told by the experimenter that the same clip is either real of fictional. Also deemed important by these studies to the examination of effects of violent media is the context in which the violence takes place. In some instances, context in the film clip is presented assuming justification or no justification without any further supplementation, and the protocol for the experiment is as described above, where electrical shock and instigation are used (i.e. Meyer, 1972). Some studies have taken film clips of violence and have created narratives around them that define the act in extreme terms of being justified or unjustified. These narratives are dictated to the participant group before they view the film clip, which includes a perpetrator and victim, and then measured on such variables as aggression, via shocks on a confederate, empathy, and acceptance of violent statements (i.e. Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963; Geen & Stonner, 1974). Conversely, few studies have utilized film in their entirety, and the few that have done so tend to focus their attention on viewer aggression. Zillman & Weaver III (1999) displayed either gratuitously violent or nonviolent films for four consecutive days to the same groups of participants, wherein they participated in an unrelated task in which a confederate provoked them, ultimately leading to the administration of electrical shock as discussed in the methodology of those studies using film clips. Worchel,

Hardy, and Hurley, (1976) interrupted full-length films in one group and found that interruption of the film resulted in heightened aggression as compared to the control. Also, Berry, Gray, and Donnerstein (1999) showed edited and unedited versions of the same violent film that had been released in the United States (unedited) and England (edited) and measured enjoyment. Gender differences were found, as females reported enjoying the edited version more so than the males. Kiewitz & Weaver III (2001) also utilized the entire film, measuring interpersonal conflict in conjunction with trait aggression and found that higher trait aggression elicited higher levels of hostility, especially in males. None of these studies, however, examine the role of context of violence, which is meant to define the violent acts on film, and not the outside situational factors, such as the editing or interruptions, or consecutive viewings, as often discussed, as a mediator of the filmic effect that was displayed by participants. This methodology, of using film clips and/or creating contexts of justified or unjustified violence through an artificial narrative, and of overlooking specific aspects of structure of entire films, is where the idea for the present study initially came from. Film studies has established a large library of literature that explains that directed film narrative, which is easily defined and understood as The way in which the story events of a movie are organized, (Lehman & Luhr, 1999, p.17), encompasses stylistic components, such as voice-over, music, character emotion, flashbacks, and, oftentimes, metaphors, etc., that defines a context cognitively for a viewer (i.e. Smith, 1999; Lehman & Luhr, 1999). This stylistic definition works with whatever type of film one is watching, and consequently works in films that display and do not display violence. Therefore, the psychological studies that are methodologically creating narratives to define a violent act from a film clip are essentially losing the intended reactive components of the films entire narrative. What these studies have repetitively demonstrated, then, is that an empathetic person will respond in an intended way to a violent act based on whether or not they were told it was justified or unjustified. What these studies have not yet identified is that original narrative, as demonstrated by utilizing film in its entirety, ultimately defines a violent context through the use of its stylistic components, and at the same time causes the audience to cognitively question and evaluate acts that define this context of violence as moral or immoral, or as justified or unjustified. Film studies understand this process of narrative definition, identification, and interpretation in the teachings of psychoanalytic theory and cultural theory (i.e. Plantinga & Smith, 1999; Forrester, 2000). Although there exists a large school of theorists who have developed ideas of the cultural significance of semiotic interpretation and meaning, this study has chosen, for the purposes of simplification and extreme importance to the variables of interest in this study, the theory of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, and the psychoanalyst-cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek. Through examining the practices and proposals of these theorists, narrative importance to the individual will ultimately be supported, both directly and indirectly, through a brief discussion of how semiotics and linguistics construct familiar psychoanalytic variables, such as dreams and desires. These ideas will become important in the discussion and analysis of how narrative creates a structure in the medium of film, and works in terms of context to elicit subjective, or variable, individual responses. Narrative operates in terms of a semiotic (meaning sign) system that is linked to the study of linguistics (i.e. Cobley, 2001). Ferdinand de Saussure hypothesized that there exists in every written text a signifier, the material aspect of a sign, and a signified, the mental representation of a sign (i.e. Cobley & Jansz, 1997; Muller & Richardson, 1982, Cobley, 2001; Forrester, 2000). Other theorists, such as Charles Sanders Pierce, established this idea further by proposing a triadic theory that consisted of a separate sign (representamen), a signifier (object), and a signified (interpretant) (i.e. Cobley & Jansz, 1997; Forrester, 2000), which is a more specified application to the narrative structure in the psychoanalytic sense of film due to its ability to not merely limit semiotics bound in narrative to a reference point about the world, but to attribute semiotics to the representation of the world, their interactions and human actions (i.e. Cobley, 2001). Although Lacan, who branches off of the ideas of Freud, utilizes the semiotic theory of Saussure more than that of Pierce, the ideas of Pierce are important in understanding cultural meaning in narrative semiotics as theorized in the works of Zizek. Zizeks cultural theories are a product of a synthesis of both Lacan and Hegel1, but his preference for the theories of Lacan will also causally include the ideas of Saussurian linguistic semiotics in his discussions of cultural meaning and interpretation of narrative in film in terms of the psychoanalytic components these cultural semiotics impose upon the audience. Freud was not a pioneer, in any sense, in the advancement of film or many other technological variables. His area of expertise revolved around theory of the desires and instincts within the unconscious that are developed through a series of psychosexual stages. The most prevalent of Freuds theory is the idea of the phallic oedipal
1

Refer to Myers book Slavoj Zizek (2003) or Parkers book Slavoj Zizek (2004) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels ideas center around individual ideas combining into one Absolute idea, termed Totality. Totality is achieved through dialectic through the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Zizek ultimately uses Hegels ideas to discuss internal identity.

complex, which Freud references as reflective in the unconscious state of our desires and dreams as well as in the therapeutic practice of free-association. The only real contribution to film that Freud developed was his likening of the collective filmic experience as a communal daydream, one of which was driven by desires to see things such as exaggerated facial expressions and bodily movements as, he posited, were similar to the hysterical female patients he collaboratively observed with Charcot years beforehand (Lebeau, 2001). Be a minimal contribution as it may, Freud is not discounted in this area of discussion because positing, both in the realms of psychoanalytic practice and the experience of film, about the representations of the unconscious in dreams and free-association, and the development of the unconscious in general, set the stage for more contemporary psychoanalysis as demonstrated by Lacan. Jacques Lacan is theoretically understood in psychology as taking a more existential view of Freudian psychoanalysis. The existential nature of Lacanian psychoanalysis manifests itself in the interest of how an interpretant exists in a social system in which mood states and ideas are represented in semiotic systems either consciously or unconsciously (i.e. the act of a mother hugging a child = a sign of love = the unconscious or conscious semiotic connotation that the act means love). These ideas become applicable to Freudian concepts in the areas of dream states and desires. Lacan looks at dreams as narratives, which is illustrated in Muller and Richardsons Lacan and Language (1982) where they note that Lacans insight was marked by an awareness of the importance of language, (p. 75) in the three different Freudian texts of On the Interpretation of Dreams (1900), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). In On the Interpretation of Dreams Lacan discusses how the Dream has the structure of a sentence, (Muller & Richardson, 1982, p.75) and how the patients dreams come to operate more like dialogue as the dream progresses. This recognition of a rhetorical process in the dream can be applied to film, recalling from the previous paragraph that Freud, in the advent of film as a technological medium, likened the widespread public enthrallment with film as a collective daydream, by referring back to his recorded observations in On the Interpretation of Dreams. Drawing a parallel, then, yields the idea that film encompasses the same components of structure through rhetorical dialogue, which is, in common terms, what narrative is, and this rhetorical dialogue ultimately becomes an apparatus of interpretation. Lacan developed this structural application of the mind partly as a counter idea to Freuds psychoanalytic basis of neuroses as predicated upon biological sexual desires and acts that manifest themselves in, oftentimes, totems and taboos, which Freud discussed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). Lacan rejects this idea of neuroses as being resultant of sexual impulse and, in order to counter this, developed the idea of a Reality Principle, out of which the mirror stage of development arises. The theorized meaning of the mirror stage was simply when an infant sees its reflection in the mirror for the first time; this reflection causes a fragmentation of the mind, causing the infant to realize that they are both a subject (person I) and an object (reflection He), and ultimately realizes that they exist outside of their own desires, which is symbolized in outside social interaction. Therefore, we learn, according to Lacan, from an early age that we are both an ego and an id, and neuroses occur in terms of labels derived from these social interactions (i.e. Muller & Richardson, 1982; Forrester, 2000). In developing these ideas, Lacan was not interested in the cultural components of the narrative dream states or the conscious development. However, Lacan was unwittingly making a cultural criticism in discussing the mirror stage. One of the ways in which the fragmentation of the mirror stage attempts to become reconciled is through the use of semiotic markers. In order to reconcile we create sign systems that consist of groups of symbols that create narratives used to analyze and interpret society. Existentially speaking, this reconciliation means that we are trying to create meaning for ourselves and for our lives in an attempt to understand who we are and how we represent ourselves. Sign systems become our way of interpreting the world, and this is where cultural theory, as described by Zizek, becomes important because it will discuss how interpretations shape the way we interact in the nature of the reality. Zizeks theories and writings utilize the ideas of the theorists already discussed in order to distinguish how these semiotic interpretations is what narrative is all about, and the importance of narrative interpretation, which is both cultural and psychoanalytical (i.e. Parker, 2004; Myers, 2003). Conclusively, the ideas of these theorists as a whole will be placed into the hypothetical and methodological perspective taken by the present study. Slavoj Zizek has directly posited that film is culturally defined and contains meaning via viewers desires and fantasies, which are, as discussed with Freud, psychoanalytic components of the unconscious. The cultural definition that Zizek connects with desires and fantasies manifests itself in semiotic components, ultimately of the narrative, that convey cultural meaning to those fantasies and desires, wherein it is evident that Zizek drew on Lacans ideas (Zizek, 1991). To illustrate and apply Zizeks ideas, we can examine, for instance, American History X, one of the films used in the present study. One of the first symbols that the audience becomes exposed to in the opening scene of the film is that of a swastika tattoo displayed on the chest of the main character, Derek Vinyard. This tattoo is a symbol, a semiotic component, which conveys cultural meanings of hate and intolerance.

Immediately, then, the audience develops an expectation about the content of this film and about the character himself. When the scene cuts to the African-American robbers outside of his house, the audience unconsciously knows, or can infer, before violence even occurs, that the situation is bound to go awry and most likely will result in violence. The violent depiction that occurs thereafter, which contains violence escalating to a level of hate that results in two of the robbers being brutally killed by Derek, also becomes a cultural semiotic component in terms of the minimal knowledge the audience has about Derek, and the audience may then conclude that he is a horrible person that deserves the punishment he receives, and initially, before any violence occurs, may even subconsciously desire that Derek be punished simply because of what the tattoo symbol represents. This example of cultural expectation in film is my own analysis in accordance with Zizeks cultural theory; Zizek has done analyses on film, especially those of Alfred Hitchcock, wherein he speaks of symbols, such as gaze, voice, and murder, as indicative of unconscious desires of characters and/or audience (i.e. Zizek, 1991; Kay, 2003). Take, for example, Zizeks analyses, as illustrated in his book Looking Awry (1991), of Rear Window, where he states: Rear Window is ultimately the story of a subject who eludes a sexual relation by transforming his effective impotence into power by means of the gaze, by means of the secret observation: he regresses to an infantile curiosity in order to shirk his responsibility toward the beautiful woman who offers herself to him, (p. 92). Other films are also analyzed in Looking Awry in an analysis by Zizek of Lacans perspective about the reality principle and symbolization. To digress, it is important to isolate the idea of expectation, as discussed in relation to the instance of American History X. Zizek, in discussing film, implies that the psychological components and semiotics that define a narrative transmit messages about culture that are recognizable. It is noted in film studies that filmmakers are meticulous in about how they structure messages and how they want the audience to feel and interact, and because they want their narrative to contain components that are recognizable, films tend to structure their narrative in line with the ideological constraints that are consistent with certain expectations of culture (i.e. Carroll, 1999; Smith, 1999). These expectations could be components varying from the way that the story is expected to resolve, the expected situations that frequent certain genres, or the expected punishments or rewards that are assigned to certain characters. If these ideological constraints are broken in the sequence of the narrative, audiences will be unable to identify with the cultural semiotics, and this, in turn, creates a source of tension and distaste with the film. For example, in the present study, if a participant was subjected to the unrealistic horror genre context that was not identified as being the genre that they regularly watched on their own, then there was a high probability for them to not enjoy that film. Also, if a participant was subjected to a film that they normally enjoyed, such as a drama film, and the film did not conclude with the ending they desired for the situations of those characters, there was a tendency to voice distaste with that aspect of the film. Therefore, drawing from Zizeks analysis, narratives are cultural constructions that they take place in cultural settings but there also part of a cultural milieu because they reflect desires. So, audiences have a cultural need to have expression of the unconscious/subconscious and this expression of the desires are represented in film in the form of symbols that are culturally recognizable, through narrative, to an audience at any given point in time. The reviewed background is important in understanding how the cultural representations that are presented in film, and the interpretive impact that these representations, guides audience reception and response to the narratives salient components, which in the case of this study is violence in a given context. These groundwork examinations and underlying theories present in both the psychological experimentation and film studies converge into the integrative methodology of the present experiment. This study defined four contexts violence present in four different methodically selected films. These contexts were defined in a methodology that drew upon Berkowitzs original methodology of utilizing film clips of a justified or unjustified violent act (i.e. Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963) and the lineage of psychological film studies that use a nonviolent film as a control regardless of their methodology. The idea of using a typified horror film is my own, which was chosen in accordance with the variable of violence. The purpose of using a gory-violent film from the horror drama was to accentuate the differing meanings of realism and unrealism in relation to audience response, and to examine the narrative idea proposed by Cantor and Oliver that horror films directly involve visual and auditory techniques with general plot elements, such as darkness and music, to maintain a viewers emotional arousal; increased arousal then intensifies fear via excitation transfer (i.e. Cantor & Oliver, 1996). The decision to utilize a film that is clearly unrealistic in relation to three that are realistic comes from the literature on horror films, particularly from Crane, 1994, that discusses the enthrallment and enjoyment of horror films in terms of cultural movements and trends. Briefly, trends in the horror genre have progressed in content in relation to societal terrors that plague generations. The nineteen-fifties, for example, saw a movement away from European, and popular literature based gothic and mythical creatures, such as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein

(1931), to destructive mutant creatures that are narrative products of atomic bombs and radiation, such as Them! (1954), and societal takeovers by Communists, such as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), that were actual threats during the era of the Cold War. Through the cultural movements of the nineteen sixties, there was evidence of the political climate polarizing and spiraling into a realm of uncontrollable society. Consequently, horror films of the late sixties and early seventies portrayed social commentary through the use of more graphic serial killings, depicted in such examples of Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Exorcist (1973), and Dawn of the Dead (1978), in response to public enthrallment with the more widespread display of capital crimes and serial killings depicted in news programs. The focus on serial killers within the realm on unrealism is birthed out of Alien (1979) where, for the first time, we see a melding of horror and science fiction. This trend continues into the eighties, where the convergence of horror films are contextualized in the rampant killings of serial killers that are alien, as in John Carpenters The Thing (1982), or returning from the dead, as in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980), and the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness trilogy (1981-1993). The Thing (1982) was selectively chosen due to the facts that the unrealistic nature was apparent, that it was a horror film that was typical in content for the audience in the study, and that the nineties saw a decline in horror film where the few that were produced were most likely seen by most of the participants in the present college age cohort. Shown in their entirety to preserve narrative definition of the selected context, this study employed a method of using both objective and subjective post-viewing response categories to allow elaboration and explanation of selected objective response. Dependent variables of mood and emotion as well as empathy and identification in the face of violence as defined by narrative were selected for measurement due to their deemed importance and frequency of use in other psychological studies dealing with film (i.e. Geen, 1975; Turner & Berkowitz, 1972; Mueller, et al 1983; Mueller et al 1977) and as described in literature on film (i.e. Carroll, 1999; Tan & Frijda, 1999; Smith, 1999; Gaut, 1999). The subjective response categories allows for examination of characteristics of the film that may differ between groups accordingly with that defined context. Therefore, it is possible that a film deemed violent in objective response by a viewer may have affected the way that they reacted to a character, the ending, or their emotional reaction to the overall content of the film. If this methodology provides significance, narrative can then be labeled in terms of the interactive semiotic variable that carries interpretation, and the semiotic variable would be, in the case of this study, the violence in terms of its context, and the interpretation would be reflected in the responses of emotionality, empathetic sympathy in terms of identification, and morality. Also, because this study is an examination of multiple variables that have not previously been collectively measured, the films were shown to participants individually as opposed to a group setting. The idea was to preserve an individual response that was not socially affected, and it was decided as an important aspect based upon a review of Leyens work, where, in each study, results indicate that presence of others audience members that either approve or disapprove of aggression influence the response of others (i.e. Leyens, Herman, & Dunand, 1982; Dunand, Berkowitz, & Leyens, 1984), which is similar to Wood, et als research on sponsor effects, where sponsors who convey that they either condone or denounce violence have an effect on others attitudes, especially in children, and have been observed as a demand cue evident in experimental and field research (i.e. Felson, 1996). Concurrent with this idea, the hypothesis and accompanying predictions for these responses are: H1: Film context of violence, as defined by narrative structure, will result in different levels of mood, emotion, empathy in terms of identification, and type of demonstrated violence. Prediction 1: Participants assigned to Film 1: The Thing - Unrealistic Context of Violence will not experience a high degree of mood change subsequent to viewing the film. Due to the unrealistic nature of the situational factors and characters defined in the narrative, participants will not readily identify or feel for the characters or situations in an empathetic manner, although measures of empathy may have been reported as high among some viewers. Due to the gore and actions taken on by the film, participants will report high levels of violence, especially unrealistic violence. Emotional reactions of fear and anxiety are expected, but not in anger or aggression, even though violent content is present. Enjoyment of the film may be due to gender and genre preference in this category. Even though the film may be difficult to identify with on any given level, participants responses to empathy will be a factor in interaction with the narrative. Prediction 2: Participants assigned to Film 2: In the Bedroom - Romanticized Context of Violence will experience a high degree of mood change subsequent to viewing the film. Due to the realistic nature of the scenario presented in the narrative, participants will readily identify with and/or experience empathetic sympathy for the characters and situations presented. Due to the justified nature of the violence as defined by the narrative scenario, however, participants will experience agitation in regard to the defined perpetrator and empathetic sympathy in regard to the defined victim. This will be reflected in participant emotionality, where levels of anger and sadness will be elevated. There arent any expected gender effects or genre preferences as a prerequisite to the involvement

in this film. However, high levels of reported empathy by the participant will be a factor in how well they identify and interact with the narrative. Prediction 3: Participants assigned to film 3: American History X - Social Consequential Context of Violence will experience a high degree of mood change subsequent to viewing the film. As in the Romanticized context, the realistic nature of the scenario presented in the narrative will direct participants to identify with and/or experience empathetic sympathy for the characters and situations presented. However, participants, exposed to the displaying of the impact of the consequences of violent acts, will experience ambivalent reactions to characters and define them as both perpetrator and victim. Also, levels of emotionality will be elevated, especially in the areas of sadness and fear; anger is expected to be reduced in the face of the consequence displayed; the issue of morality of content will also be highly reported by participants. There arent any expected gender effects or genre preferences as a prerequisite to the involvement in this film. However, high levels of empathy as reported by the participant will be a factor in how well they identify and interact with the narrative. Prediction 4: Participants assigned to film 4: Ordinary People - Nonviolent condition will not experience a high degree of mood change in any direction. The realistic scenario and characters may elicit identification and empathetic sympathy for the characters. Participants will experience agitation and sympathy in regard to their interaction with the narrative, but this identification will not induce high levels of emotionality. Participants are expected to respond to this film, and these responses will be individual baseline attitudes as a result of the films narrative. Gender and film preference effects are not expected. Empathy, however, will be a predictor of identification and interaction with the film. Prediction 5: The open-ended questions will illustrate the importance of variable subjective response in accordance with the provided objective response. Drawing from the psychoanalytic theory as described above, participants will provide responses that are not alike but can be correlated into categories in order to be analyzed. Participants provided responses to character agitation and sympathy, overall enjoyment of the film, reaction to ending, and what they liked and disliked most about the film will elaborate on the objective likert-response, individuating their reasons for their objective response from other participants reasons for their objective responses. The responses will bear correlative characteristics of response similarity, but responses will vary in the respect that all of them will state something or word something differently. Prediction 6: Participants who report frequent viewing and enjoyment of violence will enjoy conditions that contain explicit violence more than those participants with lower reported levels of viewing and enjoying violence. Participants will rate themselves lower on perceived effects of violence variables that attribute such items as aggressive thoughts and actions. Conversely, participants will rate others higher on these perceived effects of violence variables. Context of violence as a factor of overall reaction will be identified as a variable of effect between groups of participants. Participants will also report duration of violence effect as being relatively small, in terms of seconds or minutes. The overall results provided by these predictions support the hypothesis of this study: that film context of violence, as defined by narrative structure, will result in different levels of mood, emotion, empathy in terms of identification, and type of demonstrated violence. Predictions indicate that the differences in participant response were guided by an unconsciously or consciously recognizable contextual component, and intended narrative is therefore a viable element as it is successful in defining that context for the viewer. These supporting results for this hypothesis provide new evidence for the media violence debate and should be considered in the implications for censorship. Critics of violent depictions, in fictional film, television, and non-fictional news programs, have cited results from the studies that utilize violent segment methodology to support their claims of the harmful effects of media violence in the ongoing battle on censorship. This censorship is mostly focused on younger populations, and arguments for the protection of this group do have merit as violent material on television and in film that is beyond basic comprehensive concepts of children as viewers is existent. What does not have merit, however, are the arguments that negative behavior is solely the fault of violence and that violence is a consistent variable in its effect. As mentioned in the introduction, psychological studies have outlined that trait behavior and underlying disorders in individuals are variables that direct how greatly and severely they will react to violent depictions based upon their desires. Even within this instance, narrative direction and definition are still important in guiding response, even if perceptions and empathy are altered in the individual. Furthermore, the results from this study have supported the assumption that fictional violence is more than just an act; it is a complex action, or set of actions, that is defined by situational factors, viewer identification and empathy, and desires for a specific outcome. Recall that narrative, as well, is both a structural component and a defining component that is subjective in effect. Subjectivity is a dynamic variable and since response to film, as demonstrated by this study, is guided by the narrative definition of contextual violence, then violence is also a dynamic variable.

Supporting results and caveats considered, what this study collectively demonstrates, and has aimed to demonstrate, is that utilization of integrative methodology on ideas from many academic fields pertinent to the same subject of study is important. The complexities of this study have been seen in the careful attention to detail in the transitions from methodological background to theoretical application; from an integration of the methodologies and theories to create a design that purposefully examines context, a variable that has been minimally demonstrated as significant in previous research. Psychological studies have discussed contextual variables as important, and the definition of context varies across studies in its meaning and usage; some studies have defined context in terms of violent acts in order to elicit aggression among viewers, while others have defined context in terms of the setting in which the viewing takes place, such as audience versus individual viewing, and manipulative context, as mentioned in the introduction with such examples as consecutive versus nonconsecutive viewings. Film studies discusses narrative, but even this discipline has a tendency to use it indirectly in discussions of audience effect and the differing stylistic components that genres utilize to elicit those audience effects. An integrative analysis of these two disciplines has revealed that they both utilize ideologies of other fields of research, regardless of whether or not scholars from each of these areas decides to incorporate these ideologies; this is evident in the overlapping ideas of psychology, cultural studies, film studies, and psycholinguistics in the Freudian, Lacanian, and Zizekian grounding theory used to support the research ideas presented in this study. The overlapping complexities evident in this study are considerable to different disciplines within psychology and also to other fields of academia outside of psychology. Cognitive psychology deals with how individuals perceive the world, and this idea is most often applied to aspects of human memory. However, literature on film, especially Plantinga and Smiths edited book Film, Cognition, and Emotion (1999), identifies that emotion is a cognitive phenomenon, especially when responding to a narrative and, as demonstrated by the results of this study, of the context of filmic narrative. A clearly subjective state, emotion is resultant of cognitive perception, and this is beginning to be, according to Plantinga and Smith (1999), more recognized as Cognitivists emphasize the way that emotion and cognitions cooperate to orient us in our environment and to make certain objects more salientwhich help us to evaluate our world and react to it more quickly, (p.2). Considering Zizeks theory that film contains cultural representations, it is possible that subjective emotion, a cognitive process, helps us to evaluate and interpret the cultural significance of semiotics in contextual film narrative, which would explain why there were differing reactions to the violence in this study. With all aspects considered, it is well overdue that research takes a different direction when dealing with the subject matter of film, and this new turn should start with a thorough assessment of what integrative research actually means and the consequences that it entails for results and their applications. Focal shifts, in this research, from using merely film clips to using entire films, by using other research outlets that are not solely psychological, and by using theory that enables one to draw parallels in analysis are crucial to taking a progressive step and to not merely repeat ourselves in our findings. What this study clearly has demonstrated by integrative analysis is that, when dealing with violent images in film, and in media in general, the question should not be whether one is watching violence, but, rather, what type of violence one is viewing.