Violence is present in most of the media we witness daily; it has grown to be an almost essential part of our entertainment; it entertains and excites us. This infatuation, borderline obsession with violence continues to grow; some even love the thrill from it so much that they become addicted. Violence has emerged to be something that is used and consumed on a regular basis; it has made its way into our culture and has become an integral part of our lives.
Violence has made the largest impact on the media part of our culture. The role of violence in our media has definitely changed over the times. The role of violence throughout the ages has changed from that of a serious one to one that is just fun. It has become a lot more frequent in our current trend of television shows and movies. According to Vivian C. Sobchack’s “The Postmorbid Condition” in Signs of Life in the USA, violence has become senseless and random. In the old classic movies, violence would be placed carefully into the plot; every little violent act would be well thought out and carefully planned. Every violent act down to a slap to the face would be filled with emotion and play an integral part to the plot. The camera would focus on that one action extracting all those emotions that fill the air, giving us a sort of more humane sense of violence.
In our current generation, violence has become so common and occurs on such a large scale because of our computer graphics and other amazing technological advances; all those big bangs and flashes take away from the importance of violent acts such as death and makes it seem rather unimportant, that it happens just for the sake of happening. This is best explained when Sobchack says:
“This hyperbolic escalation and quantification of violence also has become quite common to the action picture and thriller…here violence and the laying of waste of bodies seems more “naturalized”: that is, it regularly functions to fill up screen space and time in lieu...