Content Analysis on Violence in Television

The children's programming that I watched was Pokemon. This show was all about fighting and violence. Every episdode was a different battle. Ash Katchem (the main character) has all of theses animals. Ash has the good animals, that fight the bad ones. Ash calls upon his good animals to battle the bad animals. There is a lot of hitting striking and it is made into something that is very appealing to children. Having not watched it in a long time it surprised me as to how much violence is in these shows. Ash's main animal Pikachu, is rewarded for destroying the other bad animals. It is so weird to me after reading about mediated violence how these kinds of shows are being watched by so many children. Violence is a constant variable in each episode. 
* Violence- There was a lot of hitting, slapping and things of that nature. The climax of the show was always a fight trying to destroy the enemy.
* Verbal violence- There was not a lot of verbal violence, except in the "bad guy" characters. There were little things here like egging people on and calling them stupid, but nothing too bad.

 

I also watched WWE Raw wrestling. The whole time I was watching the program was either talking about beating someone up or actually doing so. There was a lot of hitting and kicking going on. There was also a lot of verbal violence as well. The wrestlers used intimidation as well. I have never actually watched wrestling until this assignment and even though I could see how staged it was, for young children to see this is something totally different. When children see this, they may want to model the actions of the wrestlers (modeling theory). So every time they're in a situation and someone is bothering them they think they must beat them up, say mean things to them, and try to intimidate them. There was so much verbal and physical abuse going on I'm surprised shows like this are even allowed on television for entertainment purposes. 
* violence- Violence was a recurring theme during the whole half-hour span of the show
* verbal violence- The wrestlers didn't use overt curse words, but very threatening language was used.
* intimidation- This happened all the time during the show. That's what they do before they actually fight.

INTERPRETATION OF BOTH FOR DIFFERENT AGES:

I feel that young adolescents and young adults who watch Pokemon will be affected. I don't feel that they will be as negatively affected as if they were watching wrestling because wrestling is real-life people and Pokemon is much milder than the other programming. I feel that children will use modeling theory the most in both instances and be inclined to be more aggressive. The children seeing in both cases that after a fight, the winner is rewarded greatly. This makes the act of violence seem more appealing than if nothing happened or if there were consequences. i also feel that they will be so desensitized to the amount of violence that they are watching that nothing will ever seem to be violent enough for their liking because they have become so used to what they are seeing.

I feel that adults who have seen this throughout their lives will be so used to this that they will think nothing of watching these types of shows. I also believe that they will think nothing of it to introduce these types of programming to their children and the vicious circle will continue.