What effect does Violent and Pornographic content in film have on its audience?

Violent and pornographic scenes have been found in movies for a very long time. The first pornographic film was shot in 1896, it was called Le Coucher de la Mariée which translates to bedtime for the bride. Ever since there have been millions of films containing this type of content.

For ‘violence in films’, there have been traces of this subject in even some of the first ever films shot in the 1890’s, they contained pushing and shoving and slapping originally, however with time violence in films have become more and more pronounced, this is because the special effects used and the quality of acting has also increased dramatically over the years.

So what effect are these genres of films having on the audience, I believe watching a film that contains violence is completely harmless and I even find they help relieve stress I believe this is because I am concentrating on the characters issues rather than my own, this is because the film, if it’s a good one, is usually very immersive especially when it is watched in a cinema, so my thoughts are; these types of films do not give the motivation to go out and harm someone but they are mostly a way to relieve stress by watching someone else hit a wall out of anger rather than yourself.

So what actual effects can they cause, studies I have found state that certain genres of violence in films such as horror movies have been known to desensitize viewers if they frequently watch this type of film, it is not likely that a human can become desensitized by the typical action movie violence as the context of the violence itself could be disturbing, but it would not be glorified to make it seem as violence is the answer like it may seem in some horror movies.

A more interesting topic, however, is the theory that violent media does make children more aggressive, this has been proven true by many studies, one is by the website “psychology today”, they stated that:

“In the 1960s, researchers showed children a video of an adult playing with an inflatable doll. In the video, the children watched as the adult sat on the doll, punched it in the nose, hit the doll on the head with a mallet, and kicked it repeatedly. After watching the video, the children were brought into a room with the same doll and lots of other toys. As predicted, the kids who watched the aggressive video imitated what they saw—they beat the doll with a mallet, and they punched and kicked it” However ‘psychology today’ say that the children did not show any aggressive behaviour towards the toys and as expected cuddled and played with the toys gracefully.

This proves to me that the BBFC age ratings set on films are actually really important in order to keep a society where crime and violence is low, I think the fact that it is common nowadays for these ratings to be ignored by parents could possibly be why violence is becoming more common with teenagers between the ages of 11-14, where there was a 13% increase according to the Guardian newspaper.

For sexual films and effects, I found an interesting study about overall memory after watching a sexual film and learning a topic just before, the study was carried out by “eScholarship.org” by their psychology department. In summary of the study, men maintained a similar level of memory whether they were sexually aroused or not, at 21% memory remembered when neutral, compared to 22% when sexual, however for women when tested they remembered 20% on average when neutral and this fell to 15% when they were sexual, I think this information is quite interesting.

Other studies have shown that pornographic content if watched too frequently by any person can lead to both sexual frustration and desensitization when confronted with a real-life experience, research by “Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine”, in some extreme conditions this can cause male sexual dysfunction by lowering libido and eventually leading to an inability to get an erection and this is caused by watching too much sexual content. “15 to 20% of the erectile dysfunction is related to sexual media consumption”, these figures are worrying to many doctors, the problem is that this content is readily available and all on the internet.

In conclusion after the research I have looked at I am shocked how much of an impact Violent and Pornographic scenes and films have on the human body both mentally and physically, I was also shocked by the research about memory loss and how being ‘sexual’ can either increase / decrease the amount we can remember, so a very interesting topic and I believe after this research that it should be made more difficult to watch inappropriate videos under the recommended age, as this could have a beneficial impact on the behaviour of the upcoming generations.