Screen violence seen as fair play in right context

Study finds viewers accept aggression in films if it is 'justified’ by the plot or the story is humorous. 

Janine Gibson: Media Correspondent. 

Viewers are influenced by a sense of justice and fair play when judging whether or not screen violence is shocking, according to research published yesterday. 

Even graphic violence can be acceptable and entertaining in the right context, to wide groups of viewers, the  report, commissioned by broadcasters and regulators, shows. 

A violent scene in the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction, where John Travolta’s character accidentally shoots a man in the face, was much less horrifying to viewers than the depiction of domestic violence in Ken Loach’s film, Ladybird Ladybird.  

Factors such as the use of humour, or how realistic the situation is, reduce the impact of violent acts, but the key criterion for determining the level of violence in a scene is that it is “fair". If there is an uneven distribution of power or the retribution is seen as too strong, then the audience considers it "unjustified". 

Viewers describe incidents they regard as serious, as "unjustified", “undeserving", "realistic” and “unfair" and researchers found opinions were consistent across different demographic groups, all of whom used very similar criterion to judge the shock level of a scene. 

Researchers from Leeds university showed a range of clips, including scenes from Brookside, news footage, and film excerpts, to the groups, which represented women, young men who enjoy violent films, and war veterans. 

All the interviewees felt that the most disturbing clip was a man beating his wife in Ladybird Ladybird. It caused distress because of the realism of the setting, strong language and unfairness, but also because viewers were concerned about the effect on the child actors in the scene. 

By contrast, the clip from PuIp Fiction in which a man is killed out of the blue during an innocent conversation, spraying blood and chunks of brain around a car, was seen as "humorous” and “not violent” even by women over the age of 60, because there was light-hearted dialogue. 

Broadcasters and regulators will take yesterday’s report as the foundation for future editing and scheduling decisions about television violence. Regulators have previously used factors such as the number of deaths or the number of close-up shots of punches to calculate how distressing & scene is to viewers.

The Independent Television Commission’s director of programmes, Sarah Thane, said the research would tell broadcasters how viewers watch programmes. “It’s the context or integrity of the piece that will lead them to judge whether the violence should have been retained in that piece of work.” 

The BBC’s controller of editorial policy, Phil Harding, said: “We intend to share this research with programme makers and directors. This is very useful in terms of helping them judge plots, scenes and how to edit things." 

Broadcasters and regulators agreed, however, that the research did not now give programme makers carte blanche, or a free hand, to increase leveIs of violence in a humorous or ”fair" context.

(Article taken from the Guardian sometime in April or May 1999)

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