The movie "Clockwork Orange" is about a young adult named Alex who is inclined to commit violent acts. He and his friends go around hurting other people and trashing others' properties. After accidentally killing a woman, Alex is sent to prison. In prison, he agrees to become part of an experimental program so that he can have a decreased sentence and be released sooner.
The experimental program entails Alex watching several videos. The second picture posted is a picture of Alex with his eyes held open. The hand in the picture is someone else putting drops in Alex's eyes so that his eyes don't dry up. The videos Alex is watching are all of violent acts of beatings, murders, rapes, war sequences, and other horrible acts of violence. This program lasts for several weeks.
At the end of the several weeks, Alex is scared of all violence despite the fact that he once committed many of those acts himself. To prove that he can be released from prison, someone starts shoving him and punching him to get a reaction. Alex just stood there scared not knowing what to do.
In Cultivation Analysis, George Gerbner talks about television and how it shapes our lives. One of the aspects in which television shapes our lives and opinions is violence. The common thought about tv and violence is that heavy viewers are more likely to be more violent and commit violent acts. But according to CA, heavy viewers are more likely to be afraid and stay away from violence. Heavy viewers are also more likely to view the world as mean.
One of the products of CA is mainstreaming, the tendency for heavy viewers to perceive a similar culturally dominant reality to that pictured on the media although this differs from actual reality. In this experimental program, Alex was a heavy viewer. For several weeks he watched horrifying videos to the point that he was scared of all violence. Although the videos he watched were comprised of violent acts that had actually happened, violence in real life does not occur in a continuous string in the way Alex saw it. So according to Gerbner, the fact that Alex watched these videos on end for several weeks would be the reason why Alex was afraid of violence and getting into a confrontation.
The other product of CA is resonance which occurs when a viewer's lived reality coincides with the reality pictured in the media. After Alex goes through the experimental program and is sent home, he is then faced with the obstacle of trying to start over in his home town. The people that he once hurt and that he once acted violently toward know of the program he went through and how he no longer acts violently. They therefore start acting violently toward him. Alex then begins to experience resonance since the "reality" that was portrayed to him in the videos was now coming to life as people were acting violently toward him. This is also a good illustration of what Gerbner calls "double dose" where Alex is first subjected to violence through the videos and then it is reinforced through getting beat up. It is evident that Alex is a prime example of the concept of cultivation analysis in terms of violence.
5 comments:
This is a very interesting example of Cultivation Analysis. We do not know if it is true or not, but it succeed in describing the concepts which we cannot express in real life. It is hard to experiment and justify. However, this movie shows how TV affects people. It might me a bold example, but still it is a good example.
I agree with Naomi. The illustration is somewhat fresh.
Every Halloween I see someone dressed as a character from this movie. Now every Halloween I will be reminded of Cultivation Analysis, because this post is so relevant. Although the movie is meant to be experimental, it is clear that extreme exposure to bad images can cause a negative effect. Your example is, however, relative. While you are proficient in proving CA, does this exemplify a new generation of people cultivated by media?
The use of A Clockwork Orange as an example for cultivation analysis was a very unique and well thought out idea. I think that the example given is a very good example of cultivation analysis because it shows a character exemplifies the extreme of the effects of television on its viewers. A Clockwork Orange show's the effects of televised violence on a heavy viewer in an extremely drastic way. The severity of the situation makes the validity of the theory seem very strong. My only concern in regards to the post is that Alex was not viewing actual television, and he was a heavy viewer by choice, I wonder if that possibly takes away from the story's relevancy to Cultivation Analysis.
This book and movie have been picked apart since it was written based on the research of scientists on systematic des sensitizing. I am not sure how much Gerbner would relate this film to his own studies though. As Mike said, Alex was forced to watch these canned programs of violence as an effort to get a reduced sentence for a brutal, senseless murder. Cultivation analysis, I think, has more to do with the viewing by choice of all programs that desensitize, not just pure violence. While this example certainly holds some weight in the arguement, it is a stretch to call Alex a heavy viewer since in both the book and movie, he fakes being cured to gain publicity. In the book, he actually relapses.
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