Violence on TV

For this section I was taking look at violence on TV in both cartoons and very physical programming. I content analyzed an episode of Batman the Animated series called "Jokers Favor" and an episode of WWE Raw. Here is a graph of some of my findings.

Both shows were extremely violent but in different ways. The Batman cartoon showed situations that were a little too out there to be interpreted as real, but still none the less very violent. What surprised me the most was the amount intimidation that was used. The entire premise of the episode was that The Joker would not kill a man as long as he did what he told him. The way he did this was with violent threats to intimidate the man. The real violence did not happen until the end of the episode.

The WWE Raw program I watched was nothing but violence. While it was a bit longer than the cartoon, I still think the numbers would have been pretty high if it was a half hour long program. Wrestling is all violence, so it is not surprising the amount of physical contact that is seen. 

Many theories could be used for the way these programs could effect people and especially children. First one that comes to mind is Desensitization. If a child is brought up watching programs like these, he or she may not think that this type of behavior is bad and violence may not phase them. The second is Modeling Theory. A child or even an adult could watch this behavior and then try and reenact it in real life causing a lot of damage to their self or someone else. Lastly is Uses and Gratification theory. This one applies to already violent prone men. Watching this type of behavior could almost get someone off and set them off into more violent behavior.