Television Violence

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Television Violence
Does entertainment influence society’s attitude towards violent behavior? In order

to fully answer this question we must first understand what violence is. Violence is the

use of one’s powers to inflict mental or physical injury upon another, examples of this

would be rape or murder. Violence in entertainment reaches the public by way of

television, movies, plays, and novels. Television with its far-reaching influence spreads

across the globe. Its most important role is that of reporting the news and maintaining

communication between people around the world. Television’s most influential, yet most

serious aspect is its shows for entertainment. After viewing NBC from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. there was an average of 3.4 acts of violence per hour. This is during prime time and many people might think this is too much for children to see. Also, if you look at how it is depicted and the degree of violence it shows, it could be a very bad influence on children or anyone for that matter. In my opinion, NBC did not do a good job in responsibly showing the violent acts during its prime time hours.
The first show I viewed was Seinfeld at 6:30 p.m. Of all the shows viewed over the course of the night Seinfeld had the most acts of violence in its half-hour programming. There were a total of five acts of violence, which included tripping and hitting people with a cane, verbal threats, and physical slapping with hands. All these actions were meant to be funny best evident by the laughter from the audience in the background each time something occurred. One violent act was when one of the main character’s George was standing in a hall way and someone walked passed him and he stuck out his cane and tripped the person walking past him. This wasn’t such a horribly violent action although it could possibly cause physical harm to someone. A child seeing this might think this is very f...