FREE ESSAY ON OBSERVATION OF TV VIOLENCE

OBSERVATION OF TV VIOLENCE

Violence on Television
In my experiment I will study the behavior of children before, during and after viewing a
violent television program, specifically "The Power Rangers." I will use the theories of
Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead and Harold Wilensky to analyze the results
according to their theories.
Cooley's theory is that people shape the aspects of their identity so that it would fit
what others would want. Therefore we would become the kind of person we believe others
think we should be. Harold Wilensky said that the media produces a mass culture, in which
people have similar culture, that people have similar cultural tastes and political
values shaped by the media. This produces a mass of people with similar thoughts and
feelings, which can be manipulated by the media.
Mead believed that the self is a social product, acquired by observing and assimilating
the identities of others. He believed that for identification and assimilation there is a
need for communication. The communication is the interaction of language, culture,
family, peers and with a new form of communication, media. For Mead, childhood play and
games were important activities. These activities used the idea of role taking, the way
we try to look at social situations from the standpoint of another person, and
significant others, influential people in our lives. 
The theorist that I think is the best for my experiment is Mead. For my experiment my
hypothesis will be that after viewing a violent television program children will act more
aggressive than before. That the children's play will change so that it would become more
violent, so that it would be similar to the show that they had seen. 
In my experiment I observed two children 30 minutes before watching the "Power Rangers"
30 minutes during the show and 30 minutes after the show. The observation was done on the
friends of my brother and the friends of my cousins. 
My first observation was on my brother and his friend on November 1, 1999. My brother's
name is Sina, he was born here and is 7 years old, but his parents were born in Iran. He
is half Muslim and half Jewish; neither of his parents are strictly religious. He has an
older brother and sister. His friend's name is Alex and he is also 7 years old, and born
in Russia. His father lives in Russia and he lives with his mother, grandmother and aunt.
Both his parents are Jewish and he has a twin brother, but no sisters. I started to
observe Sina and Alex at 3:00 PM at my house, since I knew that they would watch "Power
Rangers" at 3:30. At 3:00 they played with each other, first playing in the living room
using their trucks and making roads for their cars to travel on. They would make bridges
and they directed traffic as though one of them was a traffic officer. He would tell them
when to go and when to stop and they would make the cars crash into each other so that
the fire truck and the ambulance could come and rescue them.
Then about 10 minutes later they went into my Sina's room, where he brought out his
action figures. There were 2 Spiderman toys, 3 Power Ranger toys, 3 Batman toys, 2 Buzz
Light-year toys (from the movie "Toy Story") and 1 Ninja Turtle toy. They divided the
toys up, taking turns in choosing the toys. First my brother, Sina, picked a Power Ranger
toy, then another one, a Spiderman toy, a Batman toy and a Buzz Light-year toy. Alex got
the other toys picked the toys that I did not mention. They lined up their toys so that
they were facing their opponent and each of them grabbed two of their toys. They started
to battle against each other and pretended that the toys were real and that they were
either jumping really high or flying. Then they put one of their toys down and started to
fight with only one toy each. They moved the arms and legs of their toys and each one
would say that he had defeated the other ones toy. The other would complain and they
would bring out the other toys to start fighting again. They did this for the remainder
of the 20 minutes. 
At about 3:30 they went back into the living room and they started to watch the "Power
Rangers". During the first 13 minutes they sat next to each other on the couch and watch
the show. At about the time of the commercials, Sina's mother brought them each a hotdog
on a bun to eat. They spent the commercial time to talk about the show and to eat their
hotdog. When the show started again they began to watch and they ate much slower. It took
them about 5 more minutes to finish their food and during this time they watched TV
without having a conversation. Around 3:50 the ending battle of the Power Rangers started
and Sina started to sing the theme song of the show, "go go Power Rangers…" as the
TV was playing the song. After the Power Rangers defeated the "bad guy", my brother would
celebrate with them and that would be the end of the show. 
After the show Sina would show off his karate moves and start punching the air. Then he
and Alex would pretend to be one of the Power Rangers, each one choosing their favorite.
They would either pretend to fight with each other or they would team up with each other
and they would make a strategy on how to enter a building that the bad guy is at. After
about 15 minutes of this they would go back into the room and play with their toys again.
This time they named their toys so that it was one of the characters in the show that
they just saw. The would try to copy the action that they saw and both Sina and Alex
would team up against the bad guy, defeating him and then celebrating. They did this for
the remainder of the time that I observed them.
I did another observation with three different children at my friend's house. The first
child is a male named Dima. He is a Romanian born here and is 8 years old. He is
Christian and had a younger brother and lives with both his parents. The second child is
a female named Sandra, age 6. She is Armenian Catholic and is an only child. She lives
with both of her parents and was born in the US. The third child is a 7-year-old male
named Luis. He was born here and both his parents were born in Mexico. He is Catholic,
living with 1 younger sister and three older sisters.
For this observation I was in my friend's house on November 15, 1999. Again I was going
to observe at the same time and focusing on the same show. At 3:00 the three children
were pl0aying marbles with each other. They each had their own base and they were to hit
each others marble to capture it. Dima had a defensive base and was determined to protect
his base. Luis had his marbles everywhere and was trying to capture as many marbles as he
could, while Sandra chose to attack Dima. The children would play and they would
sometimes get into fights about the rules of the game. After about 10 minutes of this
Luis got bored and he brought out animal toys and to amuse the other children. He used
the toys so as to help him win the game. The other two children got mad and they got toys
too. After 20 minutes of playing and arguing with each other they all became so mad at
each other that they stopped complaining. They went into the backyard to play kickball
with each other. They kicked the ball to each other without any arguments. 
At 3:30 they went back into the room and they turned on the TV to watch "Power Rangers."
For the first part off the show (the section before the first commercial break) the
children sat down and when they saw their favorite character they would talk about
him/her. During the commercials Luis and Dima got up and went outside to play with the
ball some more, while Sandra stayed inside to watch the commercials. When the show
started again Sandra called Luis and Dima and they quickly came back in. The same kind of
behavior went on for about 5 more minutes and at about 3:50 it was the time when the "bad
guy" was to be defeated. The two boys kept talking about the moves and the weapons that
their favorite character would use. Then they began to act out the battles between the
bad and good guys. Dima and Luis picked their favorite person and acted with them as they
did moves on the show. Sandra was the judge and she told them whether they were doing
good or not. They did this for another 20 minutes until about 4:15 when they started to
challenge each other to a fight. They fought using their imaginary weapons. They started
to dispute about whose weapons were stronger and they started to wrestle with each other.
After 10 minutes of this Dima's and Luis' parents came to stop them. They continued to
watch TV for about 20 more minutes.
According to the action of the two boys was to show that they were like the models on the
TV show. That they were trying to be like the people they admired and that they hoped to
become similar to the characters on the show. Wilensky's theory suggests that the show is
influencing the audience and that the producers of the shows are controlling them. The
influence can change if the producers change the show and that they can manipulate the
audience into thinking of what they want to think of. Mead's theory would say that the
children would view this show because they thought that the actors in it are significant
figures and with this respect the children would try to imitate them using the role
taking method. The children's identification is passed down from the actors' actions to
the children.