Shooter Got Swag

**If you have not seen the movie Shooter, I would recommend watching it before reading this post. **

Shooter is about a marksman living in exile who is convinced to get back in the game to save the president of the United States. After being framed, he ventures out to track down the real killer and find out who was behind it and why.

Cultivation theory is centered on violence. Many people feel that those who watch violent shows develop a more aggressive and angry behavior. George Gerbner is the theorist who believes the violence a viewer sees on television or in movies can cultivate a social paranoia that counters notions of trustworthy people or safe surroundings. He says that it affects their beliefs about the world they live in and the feelings they have connected to those beliefs.

The movie Shooter involves a great deal of violence in the form of shooting and killing others. I feel it demonstrates cultivation theory quite well. This video clip is a little long but it includes all the most intense shooting scenes from the movie. It caught my attention that the background music for the video is all upbeat feel good songs, which is interesting to me. It makes the viewer feel like they are having a great time watching this video and make it seem less violent than it really is.  

  

Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) is portrayed as the badass, good guy who saves the day. He is held by many viewers (men and women) in high standards because of how awesome and badass he is in this movie, myself included. He realizes the government cannot do anything to the bad guys because it is not in their jurisdiction; it is completely out of their hands. Swagger decides to take things into his own hands and take care of the men himself. As a viewer and fan of the movie, I see him killing the bad guys and being the hero. If you think about what is really happening, he is committing murder. One could argue that by Swagger killing them, he is doing exactly what these men were doing to many small villages. However, since Swagger is portrayed as the good guy, it becomes justifiable because their crimes were done out of a power trip, whereas his were for justice.

Gerbner says that if viewers come to believe that the world around them is filled with violence, they are likely to feel scared. As I was talking to my mom about cultivation theory and how Shooter related to it, she brought up some very interesting points. She grew up in a world much different than mine. There was substantially less daily violence. Young children could walk to school without their parents worrying if they made it safely or go play outside with all the neighborhood children. The only violence she knew was that of the war, which was very different and a whole other world. The idea of violence as entertainment is a strange and scary concept for her. When she sees Swagger and Nick in camouflage, killing all the men around the house; all she pictures is a man killing young American soldiers  who are just doing their job, not knowing he is the ‘good guy’. She pictures one of those young soldiers being one of her nephews and movie scenes such as this one make her a little sick and is difficult to watch. Her fear becomes increased when she sees violence and destruction being taken so lightly and casually. The more she watches shows and movies like Shooter, the more she feels that violence is becoming the norm in our society. It is getting harder and harder to decipher who can recognize the violence as just a movie and walk away and who lets it begin to seep into their reality. She has raised my siblings and I to realize it is just a movie, but she worries that those who we are surrounding ourselves with may not have that same background and thought process. She becomes scared for us and her grandchildren as the violence spreads and becomes more natural and normal. Her biggest fear is that very safe, normal appearing people are so desensitized to media violence that it would be easy for them to slip over the edge and cause a violent act.

Gerbner identifies heavy and light viewers and the effect it has on them. I would say my mom and I are both light viewers; but extremely light viewers of violent television or movies in particular. However, because of our different generations and upbringing, we have these different perceptions on media violence. Those who are heavy viewers can come to believe that violence is how difficult problems are to be solved. I have a few friends who think this way and I would classify them under the heavy viewer’s category. They have become completely desensitized to the victimization and suffering Gerbner found and they have lost the capacity to empathize. It is easier to empathize when we “know” and like the people in the movies, but when it’s a random person with no significance or role except to die, sadly, it becomes easy to feel apathetic towards them.    

            I have grown up in a world where violence as entertainment is the norm. We have movies, television, video games, and toys that all expose children to violence at a young age. After watching so much of it, we can become almost numb to it. I didn’t realize this until talking to my mom. As I was searching YouTube looking for a good scene from the movie, she mentioned the camouflage scene outside in the countryside and thought it was a good example. I said to her, “but it isn’t all that violent; do you think it’s the best scene?” She came back saying that was my answer right there. The fact that I did not feel that scene was violent just proves how much our generation has become numb and indifferent to the violence portrayed in the media. I have never thought of myself as a violent person or someone that enjoys violent movies or television shows. However, because it is becoming such a norm in our world today, I find I am starting to become desensitized to it and losing my capacity to recognize the level of violence displayed.

            These attitudes of fear as well as desensitization are existent in many people in today’s society, depending on the type of person you are, how you were raised, and what sorts of media you have watched. The younger you are and the more violence you are exposed to, the more likely you are to develop paranoia towards society or others. This is a very interesting theory to me because it has such a huge impact on our society today and in the future; yet most of it is so unintentional and unrealized by many people.

Don't Rock the Boat

Information is constantly passing through our brains every second of every day forcing us to make decisions from the small things to the large ones. The Elaboration Likelihood Model explains the cognitive aspect of processing communication messages. It looks at message processing through two routes; central and peripheral. The peripheral route is a mental shortcut process that is used to make quick decisions. I want to focus more on the central route. The central route involves message elaboration which is the extent to which a person carefully thinks of something. When people are using the central route, they are focused in on the information and are carefully scrutinizing the ideas. The information that passes through here is generally stored in long-term memory. Cognitive dissonance is defined as the distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action. Cognitive dissonance is what we experience when information is being passed through the central route.  

In the movie ‘How Do You Know’, there are a couple of great examples that demonstrate cognitive dissonance. How Do You Know is a fun movie about Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) who just got cut from the USA softball team for being past her prime. She finds herself evaluating her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as George (Paul Rudd), a business man in a crisis competes with Matty (Owen Wilson), her current baseball player boyfriend.

In this scene, Annie (Katheryn Hahn), who is George’s secretary and friend, is going a little nuts. She knows information that could negatively affect George’s life. However, she signed a contract promising to keep her mouth shut. 

Annie is trying so hard not to tell him, but it’s making her insane. She is experiencing cognitive dissonance. Her distressing mental state is being caused by this desire to share the important information yet being contract-bound to remain silent.  

This may be a stretch but you could say there is counter-attitudinal advocacy which is publicly urging others to believe or do something that is opposed to what the advocate actually believes. George strongly believes in Annie staying true to the contract and not telling him anything, but Annie strongly believes she should tell him. Annie is trying to urge him to have the same belief as she so that she can relieve her distressing mental state and tell him the information. He doesn’t want her to ‘rock the boat’, even though she knows something about the boat that will destroy him. It’s a challenging position to be stuck in, just as any dilemma in life can be.  

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Selective exposure is the tendency people have to avoid information that would create cognitive dissonance because it’s incompatible with their current beliefs. This next scene demonstrates this. 

 

This scene has George on his way to meet Lisa for a date when his father, Charles (Jack Nicholson), comes to tell him some important information. When George first saw his father, he was friendly and curious to see why he was there, but once he realized it was going to be bad news, he made the decision to avoid the information because he did not want to deal with it. George knows the information will not settle well with him. He says “I’m not ready to take on anything that I can’t handle” to his father. This is a perfect example of him portraying selective expose. He knows that something terrible is in his future and that mentally he could not handle it. He knew that it would cause him to enter a distressing mental state and because I don’t want to be a spoiler alert I will just say that later in the movie you learn of the difficult decision he must make between two terrible options.  

Cognitive dissonance is something we all experience, weather it be on the heavy or the light side. The more we think about it and the further it goes into our central route, the more uncertainty it causes. When we experience it we try and justify one side or the other, make a comedy out of it, pawn it off onto others, or simply follow the crowd. These theories are relevant when looking at them from a communicative perspective because they can help us realize when we, ourselves or others enter these mental states. It sheds light on the actions and reactions to help us get a better understanding of ourselves and others while communicating with one another.