Daniya Mozaffar

Mrs. Martin

Advanced Composition

1 May 2015

The Culture of Violence

We find it impossible to stay away from violence. We devour acts of violence as though they are our main source of food. If anything violent is put in front of us, we are very hesitant to look away. Whether it is fascination, curiosity, or disgust; we rarely ignore violence. Yet why is that? As young children we are taught the power of words, of how violence is never the answer. How does the violence effect society, and in turn how does society change accordingly? Pop culture emphasizes violence in almost all forms of entertainment; from movies, book, music, to even forms of art. The most popular video games are violent with hand-to-hand combat or shooting. The most popular movies are the ones with fighting such as The Avengers. Music lyrics constantly involve, in one way or another, violent acts. A great example would be Eminem. But why is that, why is violence so prevalent in pop culture? To understand violence, we not only need to look at society, but deeper into the human mind, and even ourselves.

When we think of violence, most people automatically think about serial killers. Our fascination with serial killers is obvious. TV shows such as Criminal Minds, fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, and real life famous serial killers such as Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, and the Zodiac Killer. According to the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), there are a set of characteristics which are prevalent in people with psychopathic tendencies. They are usually uncaring, have shallow emotions, irresponsible, insincere speech, overconfident, narrowed attention, selfish, and violent (Hirstein). When reading American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis, Patrick Bateman is no different than the serial killers who are real. With most serial killers, we never know their life story as we do with fictional characters. We do not see the progression of their violent nature from obsession to necessity. But with Patrick Bateman we see him slowly lose control of himself. We see him go from thinking about killing, to actually killing. From killing a dog (Ellis, 161), to eating the women he kills (Ellis, 334). And the scariest part, one that people sometimes fail to realize, is that he looked like a normal rich man living in New York. Serial Killers are uncannily very good at looking average and normal. They are even sometimes attractive, as the case with Patrick Bateman, and the real life serial killer Ted Bund. Every one of us, in some ways, is a little psychopathic. On average, someone with no criminal convictions scores 5 on the PCL (Chivers). As explained by the Psychologist who created the PCL Professor Robert Hare There are people who are part-way up the scale, high enough to warrant an assessment for psychopathy, but not high enough up to cause problems Psychopathy, the diagnosis, bleeds into normalcy. (Chivers). Every one of us, in some ways, are psychopathic. There have been moments in each of our lives where someone annoys us to the point we want to punch them, but we actually dont. When do people cross that line, and how do they cross that line?

While we do not have an answer to that question, we can see the progression very nicely in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk with the narrator. From the thought of a fight club, to creating project mayhem; we see the narrator, and his other personality Tyler create not only a source of freedom for them, but also for a countless others. The book Fight Club shows us something that we ignore, we love fighting. We find enjoyment, in one way or another, in the suffering of others. This is shown in the epologue of the book, where the author talks about how there are fight clubs that appeared everywhere. But contrary to common belief, it isnt human nature but rather our environment that makes us aggressive (Kohn). As explained by Alfred Kohn in his article for Psychology Today It allows us to excuse our own acts of aggression by suggesting that we really have little choice. We, just as the narrator and the characters of Fight Club, blame human nature for our outbursts of aggression. The narrator uses it as an excuse to fight, just as we blow off little squabbles between kids saying theyre just kids. Society enforces violence not because we like it, but because we are lazy to change it.

A common ideology of today is that the youth are violent. Obsessions with violent video games, movies, and TV shows. The largest causes for violence are the youth. In the U.S., youth homicide rates are more than 10 times that of other leading industrialized nations (Statistics on Violence and Peace). The book A Clockwork Orange by Anthony burgess, shows us what could happen, or maybe has already started happening with the youth if they are given the freedom to be violent. Alex, the main character of the book is very violent, and so are most people his age. When compared to the youth of our time and age, we arent any different. Sure, no one goes around killing people, but we do play video games that do just that. The violent video game industry is a billion dollar industry, with a global revenue well over $60 billion annually (Kain). While it is argued by many that violent video games do not cause violent acts, just the act of playing them shows our violent nature. How are we any better than Alex, when we play video games that emphasize violent acts?

Revenue of Video Game Sales U.S. (Billions)

Through our research, my group realized two things. We realized that, like us, most people are oblivious to how much violence we are exposed to everyday. We also realized that we are darker than we actually thought, and most people are like that too. For a lot of us, we learned a lot about ourselves and how naturally violent we are. We learned that a lot of our violent thoughts were based a lot on society and how much violence is deemed acceptable in society.

Our real world research was by taking a personality disorder quiz that was created by a psychologist. Personally, I had a score of 7/9 of being a narcissist, 9/30 for being psychopathic, a 0/9 for a histrionic personality disorder, and a high chance of having a generalized personality disorder. From the 5 family members I had take the quiz, 5/5 had a narcissistic personality disorder, 1/5 had a histrionic personality disorder, 3/5 had a score of higher than 5 for a psychopathic personality disorder and 3/5 had a high chance of having a generalized personality disorder. I found it very interesting that all of the people, including myself, had some sort of a personality issue. I also found it interesting that a lot of people were over the general threshold for psychopathic personality disorder that is over the average, myself included. One of the biggest things I learned from this part of the research was that people who do not look like they could have a personality disorder, can actually have it. I also learned that a large majority of us have a very high chance of having a narcissistic personality disorder.

From what we learned from all of our research, we found that the only way we could have people aware of the prevalence of violence in our lives, would be to have a pop culture perspective on it. And what better idea than making a satirical rap video. The video was satiric in nature by having lyrics that were gruesome, and video that worked accordingly. We also named the video Violence is always the Answer. Our goal was to have a majority of the people watch the entire video, enjoy it, and then listen to our explanation on why they might have found it enjoying. A lot of people that watched the video were surprised by the content, but they did enjoy it, and came all the way to the end. Some people didnt understand why we were advertising violence until they heard the ending explanation. Out of all of the people I had watch the video. 19/20 watched the entire video. 15/20 found the video entertaining, regardless of the content. All 20/20 agreed, and were shocked at how accustomed they were to violent media. All of them agreed that they didnt realize how use to they were to violence and violent media until the explanation at the end of the video. All of them said that they laughed at the video because they found it weird what was happening, and didnt even realize the violent perspective on it. Our video itself had a total of 415 views in the first two days. It was really interesting to see all of the people who watched it, react the same way we did as we went deeper and deeper into our research. So many of us dont realize how densely influenced our lives are by the violence around us, and when we do, we are shocked by the realization of it.

I originally chose to do this topic because I was curious as to why violence was so prevalent in society. I was curious as to why we find enjoyment in violence and seeing other people get hurt. While I did understand that in a better detail, I surprisingly also learned more about myself than I thought I would. In A Clockwork Orange, I was surprised at myself when I felt bad for him when he was reformed. I should have been glad that he wasnt going around doing what we use to do, but instead I started wishing for him to go back to what he was. A part of me realized that if I had been reformed as Alex had been, I would lose myself as a person, and that is worse to me than being violent. In Fight Club I realized how much I am like the characters of the book. I enjoy fighting, and I connected with them because I knew how freeing fighting is. If I had a chance of joining a fight club, I know I wouldnt hesitate to go and fight. In American Psycho, I found it terrifying when I started wishing he killed someone in the book. There were times in the book I got angry when he wouldnt kill someone, or he wouldnt kill them in the way I had expected. I got more and more excited every time he killed someone in a new way. The farther and farther I got into the book, the more and more I got comfortable reading about everything he was doing. I didnt mind the gruesome details of the book, but rather, I enjoyed the details and was intruded by what he was doing. As I researched serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Aileen, I learned that I am more comfortable with murder than I probably should be. The photos of the killed did not disturb me, but rather fascinated me. The wounds of the murdered did not make me step back, but rather take a leap forward towards looking for more photos. Probably one of the most shocking discoveries for me through this project was learning that almost everyone is psychopathic, its only when you cross a threshold that you become something inhumane. I was surprised by the score I got for my When we posted our video, I was relieved to find that there were multiple people that thought like me. That were as surprised as me by how accustomed we are to violence and violent acts. We have become so accustomed to violence that we dont realize how much until someone shows us. Each and every one of us is a little crazy, violent, and destructive; its only when we lose ourselves that we become someone we never thought we could.

Works Cited

Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. New York: Norton, 1986. Print.

Chivers, Tom. "Psychopaths: How Can You Spot One?" The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, n.d. Web. 09 May 2015.

Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho: A Novel. New York: Vintage, 1991. Print.

Hirstein, William. "What Is a Psychopath?" Psychology Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May 2015.

Kain, Erik. "As Video Game Sales Climb Year Over Year, Violent Crime Continues To Fall." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 09 May 2015.

Kohn, Alfie. "Are Humans Innately Aggressive?" Alfie Kohn. N.p., 02 June 1988. Web. 09 May 2015.

Kohn, Alfie. "Are Humans Innately Aggressive?" Alfie Kohn. N.p., 02 June 1988. Web. 09 May 2015.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. Print.

"Statistics on Violence & Peace." The Peace Alliance. N.p., n.d. Web.