Is TV making us violent?

Early on in September, I studied the effects of montage and editing on the viewer in my communications course. We went over continuity editing, cross editing, collision montage and many more methods to production that affect the viewer’s relationship to the images in different ways. But one thing that resonated with me the most was the Kuleshov experiment because I later attended my Film/Video 1 class where we discussed the same concept on the same day an hour later. Going over the same concept in these two different yet related classes inspired me to create my own major combining classes from the Communications department and Visual Arts department, and it also became the basis of my project. After all these discussions and critiques about PSAs, commercials, films, and campaign videos, I figured, why not make one of my own? Rather than just analyzing something made by others, I decided to take these studies of montage techniques a step further and produce something myself. After weeks of struggling to film the right material, I finally decided to make a short film from scratch that directly takes concepts of the Kuleshov Effect in order to persuade the viewer on an ideology. 

The kuleshov effect

To clarify, the Kuleshov effect is the cultivation of meaning through two sequential shots of film that interact for the viewer to derive meaning. For example, if a shot of an actor's face is followed by a shot of a bowl of food, the viewer is likely to conclude that the actor is conveying hunger. But if that same exact shot of the same actor is followed by a shot of a funeral, the viewer is likely to conclude that the actor is conveying grief, and so on. Applying this concept, my film starts off with a shot of a young black male’s face, followed by the ocean. The shots then bounce back and forth between the same young male’s face and some other everyday shots of nature, but then quickly escalates to a shot of a man with a gun, and then back to the actor with the same expression. This continues on for a while, between shots of calm, everyday images to scenes of violence from the movie Django Unchained, Leon the Professional, and some fight scenes from the music video to “In the Night” by R&B artist, THE WEEKND. After a couple of minutes of jumping back and forth between the young man’s face and these images of violence from mainstream media, the final shot of his face then zooms out to reveal that he had been watching TV and switching between channels.

After the TV is switched off, the camera follows the young man as he is picked up by his friends in a car from a suburban sidewalk. The group sings along to songs on the radio and soon comes to a stop at a local Target store. The five walk in and start goofing around the store like any suburban teenage group, throwing balls around, dancing, making TikToks, and play-fighting with toy swords. After this light-hearted montage, the scene changes as the group walked out and starts hanging around the parking lot. One of the young man’s friends asks him to be a part of a TikTok, where the friend addresses him with the n-word. What’s problematic about this, is that his friend is white. So the two start yelling at each other over this issue, which then quickly escalates into a pushing match. But it all happens too quickly – the black friend pushes the white friends to the ground and pulls a little pistol out of nowhere. The video takes a sudden turn in the atmosphere as the music fades away and the scene slows down – all that can be heard is a heartbeat. In between shots of the traumatized white friend’s face, the video cuts between shots of the Target logo and examples of violence in mainstream media that were seen previously in the first part. 

Picking back up on the pace, the shot of the white friend’s face cuts to the pistol pointed at him, but suddenly shoots out a stream of water, revealing that the pistol was actually a water gun. The white friend sighs in relief as the black friend picks him back up and the group returns to a joyful attitude in light of what just occurred. 

Every character detail, every cut, every shot, and every prop was purposely created to convey one ideology: that violence in the media can cause viewers to think violently, but it is the other underlying factors in life such as background, education, personality traits that bring viewers to violent action. The main goal is to take the blame off the media, but also critique racial factors and stereotypes seen in media that lead viewers to blame the media. 

Testing the effect

To test the effects of my production, I interviewed a random selection of students at St. John’s University and Fordham University about their viewing experiences. The Kuleshov Effect plays an important role in the character development that purposely pushes the viewer to associate the young black man with violence. After asking what their first impression of the character was, the response from the viewers were words like “psychopath,” “creepy,” “violent,” and more similar negative associations. Some viewers were not clear as to what exactly the character was watching at first but still recognized that the scenes were violent and associated similar traits with the character without the character even moving an inch. All that is shown is his face. But, when asked about how the character actually acted while he was driving around with his friends and hanging out at Target, most replied that he seemed like a pretty normal kid. Not a single viewer linked my images of him play-fighting with toys at Target to what was going to happen next. Thus, if the viewers were not shown the first montage, they would not have associated the character with these specific negative traits. This is something the viewers also agreed to.

With the storyline and editing all combined, including the non-diegetic shots of the violent films and the symbolism of the Target logo, the viewers came to a consensus that they did, in fact, expect the character to shoot his white friend, but were surprised when the gun ended up being fake. These responses about the editing helped prove my theory that the media is powerful enough to push a viewer to think violently. However, when asked if the story still would have made sense to them if the two main characters had been switched, they replied that it would still be a plausible scenario, just with a slightly different conflict. One student from St. John’s mentioned that “violence can happen from anyone,” and therefore he would have expected the same storyline even if the black and white characters were switched. Today’s viewers are smart enough to recognize that violence cannot be associated with a particular race, which some complained that they still see in news media. My casting was intentional — I directed the black man to take out the gun to create a link between the images of Django Unchained, a movie about a freed slave who murders numerous slavemasters in order to save his wife, but the viewers agreed that it takes a specific type of person to go out in real life and commit an act of violence that isn’t affected by his racial background.