Violence in the Media

In this lecture we heard about how different types of media can encourage violence, film, games and theatre ect... In our Seminar we looked into this further but from a slight angle.

below are three knives, each one you can see matches the title beside it. why?



1.  Honest Cowboy











2. Sci-Fi














3. Secret Spy












When we look at these knives you instantly link it to a type of character/genre it belongs to. this is due to a set of signs we've learnt. This system of signs has been built into us from a young age. the media uses these signs, for example, your watching a film, its an old western, a new character shows his knife, now if the knife was maybe rusty and had some blood stains on, you would quickly assume that this is a "bad guy" a villain. these visual signs tell us alot. on the other hand if it was clean and well kept you'd gather he an honest, fare and respectable man. Also we could take into account the way in which he's carrying it, how he uses it. without this language it would take a long time for us to recognize the different types of characters being used. And so we depend on this to communicate to the audience quickly and effectively.