SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It's superheroes and not their super-villain counterparts that we should really be afraid of. This idea has been explored in a number of superhero movies, including such diverse fare as The Incredibles, Watchmen, and the post-Sokovia adventures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In each, lawmakers shackle our protagonists in response to the collateral damage caused when they step in to save the day.
But perhaps collateral damage is not what we should be worried about. According to a new study, the "good guys" are actually significantly more violent than the antagonists they're trying to stop. These findings were presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Pennsylvania pediatrician Robert Olympia and his colleagues sat through 10 superhero movies released in 2015 and 2016, cataloging each specific act of violence and noting whether it was committed by a protagonist or villain.
As anyone who has sat through a recent summer superhero tentpole can attest, there is a lot of violence to catalogue—on the order of 23 acts per hour for the good guys, with just 18 violent acts per hour for the bad guys. And it is mostly guys—male characters were five times more likely to engage in violence than female characters.
Well, it's edgier that way.
[For the sake of discussion, here's a 3-minute clip on YouTube: Incredibles 2 Fight Scene in Full: Jack-Jack vs. Raccoon (Exclusive). How many violent acts do you count? --Ed.]
(Score: 2) by Blymie on Saturday November 10 2018, @09:14AM
So -- first thing. There is no published paper here yet:
I wanted to find out a few things... such as:
- what movies were looked at
- what the criteria was for counting a violent act
- conditions for those acts
But could find nothing... not without published info. So far, this is just "a bunch of students" saying "we found violence *on screen*."
The on screen part is key here.
Example....
Villain steals top secret plans to destroy the world, via some super-large anti-matter bomb. The then steals anti-matter.
In the above, the villain killed hundreds of thousands of government guards and employees, and even let the anti-matter lab blow up with some remaining anti-matter failing containment after he destroyed the place.
But as someone else mentioned in this thread.. most of those wouldn't be "on screen".
Anyhow...
The real comment I have about this .. press release (without anything published yet!), is that it is keyed towards how many "violent acts" a child sees, and if those acts are linked to 'goodness'. EG, a "hero".
They want John Wayne back.