A women in a pink and white jacket rides up on the back of a motorcycle to a group of men standing on a Baltimore street corner and before anyone watching can comprehend, she opens fire. The whole incident occurs in a matter of seconds. Violence is a hallmark of The Wire, from the flashing blue and red lights of a murder scene that served as the opening sequence of the entire series. The Wire depicts people who have been stangled, throats slit and beat up to the point of emergency room visits. All of that is in addition to frequent portrayals of gun violence. The Wire ’s position as a cable show gives it more freedom to show the amount of violence that often pushes the line between realistic and gratuitous. Without the constraint of advertisers placed on basic networks, cable networks such as HBO have a reputation for edgier content.
The presence of violence in the media is a trend that concerns many and has been blamed as a catalyst for real life crimes. The infographic bellow explains some conflicting data about the increase in the depiction of crime in television and rates of real life crime. While these numbers demonstrate an undeniable increase and prevalence of violence on television, the impact of this trend is debated.
Image courtesy yourlocalsecurity.com
- Image courtesy yourlocalsecurity.com
One worry is that when viewers are exposed to more violence on television, they become more fearful of the world around them. This is known as the “Mean World Syndrome,” a part of “Cultivation Theory” proposed by George Gerbner. (For more on Cultivation Theory and Mean World Syndrome check out the video The Mean World Syndrome: Media Violence & the Cultivation of Fear) The idea of the “Mean World Syndrome” is that seeing a world on TV filled with shootings and crime will make people distrustful of their own environment. In actuality, as the inforgraphic points out, people are 200,000 times more likely to be murdered on television then in real life. The violence on The Wire can cause the belief that on every corner in the streets of Baltimore there are shootings and drug dealers and breed a fear of the whole city.
Another worry about exposure to violence on television is that it may desensitize people to violence. [1]After watching two and a half seasons of killings, the gun violence on The Wire may seem less shocking. Further, this level of violence may become normalized and seem to be an inevitable fact of life.[2] In The Wire , the violence in the show is a steady theme, and the viewer needs to be able to digest killings quickly to keep up with the pace of the show. The question lies in whether this extends to viewers feelings about violence occurring in the real world. Violent games and television shows have also been proven to result in higher aggression in children and teens, but those study results are debated. [3] This clip from the Mean World documentary discusses phenomena of desentization to violence.
In truth, a viewers reaction may include some combination of the two ideas. Its difficult to watch The Wire and not think about the danger and crime in Baltimore, but that is clearly part of the series intent. However, a viewer cannot be upset about every violent act in The Wire , or it would make the show impossible to watch. The emotional relationship developed with characters like D’Angelo, Wallace and Frank Sabotka prevents the viewer from becoming completely detached to the violence either.
[1] 2 3 Brad J. Bushman and L. Rowell Huesman “Effects of Violent Media on Aggression,” in Handbook of Children and the Media, eds. Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication, 2012), 231-248.
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