The implied semantic equivalency in using the term ‘’violence’’ to des — Violence in media

"I saw six films along with about two dozen trailers for the autumn releases. Not a single one of the trailers (not to mention the features themselves) was devoid of considerable firepower. I’m not speaking of just action excitement, but of a veritable litany of handgun and automatic weapons discharges, incendiary effects, stabbings, and throat slittings. There were also, of course, a few garrotings and numerous beatings of women. This is studio entertainment, after all."

"The screen renders experience both less and more real in its own right. It both mediates violence and makes it seem more immediate, exposing viewers to levels and forms of violence they might never otherwise encounter. It helps cross boundaries between real and re-enacted, between art and entertainment between being near the violence and being at a distance…Questions about degrees of reality and about the role of real-life, imagined, and reenacted violence in our lives are crucial to our learning to understand and to deal with violence. But these questions cannot be dismissed, much less resolved, by making tidy distinctions between the real and the not real."

"Crime and the processing of offenders offers an opportunity for the celebration of conformity and respectability by redefining the moral boundaries of communities and drawing their members together against the threat of chaos … Crime news may serve as the focus for the articulation of shared morality and communal sentiments. A chance not simply to speak to the community but for the community, against all that the criminal outsider represents, to delineate the shape of the threat, to advocate a response, to eulogise on conformity to established norms and values, and to warn of the consequences of deviance. In short, crime news provides a chance for a newspaper to appropriate the moral conscience of its readership […] The existence of crime news disseminated by the mass media means that people no longer need to gather together to witness punishments. They can remain at home for moral instruction."

"Hentai wont transform a "normal" person into a slicing and dicing rapist, nor will it transform a disturbed sex offender into a health, productive member of society. This kind of stuff isnt an "On" or "Off" switch for deviant sexual behavior. It doesnt affect your actions so much as, potentially and quite harmfully, your attitudes. Its influence is insidious, subtle even. If there is, at last, a theory that explains the likely consequences of excessive hentai consumption, it is that of Cultivation. Developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s Larry Gross and George Gerbners hotly debated social theory explores the long-term effects of modern media on the viewing public, on its general ideologies and given assumptions. Michael Morgan, who joined the Gross-Gerbner research team years later, summarizes the theory as such: Cultivation researchers have argued that these messages of power, dominance, segregation, and victimization cultivate relatively restrictive and intolerant views regarding personal morality and freedoms, womens roles, and minority rights. Rather than stimulating aggression, cultivation theory contends that heavy exposure to television violence cultivates insecurity, mistrust, and alienation, and a willingness to accept potentially repressive measures in the name of security, all of which strengthens and helps maintain the prevailing hierarchy of social power. ("Audience Research: Cultivation Analysis," The Museum of Broadcast Communications; emphasis mine) Hentai as a tool for status quo preservation? Might seem like a stretch, except that, in the lionization of manly power trips, these films cultivate gender identities as rigid as...well, as the pitched tents they inspire."

"I find it amoral if youre making a movie where the problem is solved with a guy standing in the back of a pickup truck firing a machine gun at the bad guys. The morality of it is questionable because the repercussions of violence are incredibly far-reaching."

"Political violence experts say that even if aggressive language by high-profile individuals does not directly end in physical harm, it creates a dangerous atmosphere in which the idea of violence becomes more accepted, especially if such rhetoric is left unchecked. “So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,” said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence. “Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.”"