Mayhem: Violence As Public Entertainment [Hardcover]

Sissela Bok (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 1998

What is the effect of long-term media violence on our national character? Do we want four-year-olds watching slasher films? Who should decide?While almost everyone has a strong opinion about the profusion of violence-in film, TV, video games, and on line-paralysis sets in when it comes to action. The issue is seen as a hopeless standoff between free speech and preserving public morality. In Mayhem, Sissela Bok reframes the issue. She shows us that we have created a false dilemma and that we need not feel so helpless.Mayhem lays out the arguments and weighs the evidence on each side: the desensitization, fear, and addiction that concern psychologists, pediatricians, and religious groups on the one hand, and, on the other, the threat of censorship invoked by journalists, civil libertarians, and the entertainment industry. The book gives a vivid historical overview of the debate: from Rome, to nineteenth-century attempts to ban all theater, to censorship of the Internet in Singapore and China, and contrasting views of figures as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Bill Moyers, and Judge Bork.As in Lying and Secrets, she puts this thorny question in clarifying perspective, and shows how our ways of dealing with it not only express, but can shape our character and lives. Finally, she takes up specific and imaginative ways to resolve the dilemma, from private measures for individuals and families to large-scale collective efforts.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Does watching violent acts make us violent? As Western society becomes ever more media-saturated, this question continues to provoke heated debate. On one side are those who seek to reduce the role of violence in popular entertainment, and on the other are the defenders of free speech and civil liberties. Sissela Bok's Mayhem is an attempt to assess the impact of violent entertainment and to provide strategies for reducing that impact. Her study is grounded in a historical examination of violence in entertainment--from the Roman gladiators through Renaissance theater to the current attempts to regulate the Internet. By placing the current debate in a historical context, she is able to dig beneath the hysteria of the present and find the deeper roots of our fascination.

In exploring the modern role of violence as public entertainment, Bok pursues the middle ground, refusing to advocate outright censorship, but also reluctant to simply deny that there is a problem. One of her solutions is to increase "media literacy"--helping children "...learn to take a more active and self-protective part in evaluating what they see." This seems to be an eminently sensible response, protecting freedom of speech while interrogating the place of violence in our lives. It is not the violent entertainment itself that is dangerous, but its passive consumption by an unquestioning audience.

This is a dauntingly complex issue, and Bok cannot offer easy answers or hope to please all her readers, but this is a thoroughly researched and compellingly stated contribution to an extremely important debate.

From Library Journal

Two leading intellectuals look at the impact of commercially motivated cultural production on today's media-saturated culture. In her methodical and readable book, Bok (formerly philosophy, Brandeis; now distinguished fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies) examines the shallow debates surrounding violent entertainments, especially on television. She fleshes out both sides of the issue, offering a rigorous discussion of the ill effects of violent shows and of censorship, and then advances nongovernmental solutions to curbing exposure to violent media. While packed with citations and rich in anecdote, this book is slim and serves to refocus the debate rather than advance any new position or findings. Still, as discussions of the V-chip and similar efforts continue, this may be the best primer for a serious debate. In his more interesting but also more demanding work, Bourdieu (sociology, College de France, Paris) critiques the effects of the medium of television on the practice of journalism and, by extension, on other professions, on government, and on all of society. The bulk of the book is made up of two lectures that Bourdieu delivered over his university's television station, which drew heated criticism from prominent journalists and brought this book to France's best sellers lists last year. Because of the origins of the work there are few citations, but Bourdieu didn't dumb down his language, and the sometimes polemical text demands concentration. Though he mostly refers to French examples, the morass of vapid pontificators on "news" talk shows and the pervasive self-censorship of the marketplace are all too familiar to American audiences. This insightful and disturbing work belongs in all academic libraries as well as subject collections in larger public institutions; Bok's work is recommended for most public libraries.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (April 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201489791
• ISBN-13: 978-0201489798
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #644,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > Mass Media

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Important and rational but too restrained, August 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mayhem: Violence As Public Entertainment (Hardcover)

Sissela Bok's "Mayhem" takes on the issue of violence in various media and the effects of that violence on the population. The issue is one that seems to be dominated by those for whom reason is not a priority, and Bok's considered and apparently well-researched book is a welcome voice of sanity. (This is not to say that she is the first to deal with the issue honestly and reasonably; naturally, others have done so. Bok, however, does seem to enjoy more exposure than many of the others, whose work has often been relegated to academic fora.)

Bok takes some time to get to what is really the fundamental point of her book and the point from which her theses spring--that violence in the media does have an effect on the population. It would be more accurate to state that she concludes that media depictions of violence have several effects. It is probably a sad commentary on the state of public debate that Bok must take extra care to state the modest nature of the conclusion. Media depictions of violence are not the only factors that lead to these negative consequences, she points out with stress, nor are we all influenced in the same ways. These points, which should be obvious even to those who would challenge Bok's theses and assumptions, seem to take force from Bok's arguments and diminish the power of the book. In other words, the need to deal with disingenuous counterarguments harms the overall result.

Ultimately, it may be that Bok is a little too careful, though she does suggest that censorship on some level might not be such a bad thing. Her arguments may be too restrained out of an effort to avoid the excesses that seem to dominate the popular debate. While Bok certainly avoids any appearance (to me, at least) of being a demagogue or hidebound ideologue, the result is not anything near a definitive treatment of the topic but instead more of a primer. The effort at objectivity is certainly wonderful, and the text is recommended for those who have not given the issue serious consideration. For those who have ruminated at length on this issue, "Mayhem" probably offers little new.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Apple pie, September 5, 2007

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Mayhem: Violence As Public Entertainment (Paperback)

Violence is as American as apple pie. The book considers media violence, its impact, and problems of censorship. Romans feasted on violence. Communal violence was connected to sacrifice. Vicarious terror can be pleasurable. There is the matter of catharsis, a therapeutic good.

Heavy TV viewers, (therefore viewers of media violence), believe that the outside world is filled with threats. Middle class families have an inordinate fear of kidnapping. Children are kept in lockdown.

Numbing absorption in media violence may cause an inability to feel the pain of others. There is something the matter with learning not to feel a thing. Children need to develop their souls.

As stated, the book deals with problems of censorship. Parents, of course, may use the on and off button to control the television viewing of their children.

The author does an adequate job of dealing with the topics presented. The book is fairly academic, (but is free of jargon). There are both notes and an index.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read book Interesting and thoughtful, January 30, 2008

By 

MotherLodeBeth "MotherLodeBeth" (Sierras of California) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

Growing up in a community where violence was so rare I cannot remember reading, seeing or hearing violence until I was into my teens. Then as a mother of a pre teen who loved and still loves the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons I was exposed to the extreme views on violence that some people have. For the record I support D&D games.

The author does an excellent job of reminding the reader that violence as entertainment goes back decades. The book also reminds me of Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest, which for me has deep roots in violence in entertainment, when one looks at gladiators of old, to modern sports that draw millions each week end or nightly on tv channels.

What is of concern to the author as well as to many parents, is what role positive or negative does violent entertainment play in the life of a child whom we want to grow up to be a healthy, whole adult. Wish she had written more about this issue, since violence as entertainment covers a wide range of arenas with me. Gang violence is much like the gladiators of old. X Games which pits the best men and women in newer sports genre have an element of survival of the fittest. Even the Olympics from their beginning to now have survival of the best, as the goal.

But as the author writes, what has been lacking in recent decades is the sense of learning from failure, growing and maturing and becoming less in need of violence overall. It also for some reason also reminds me of modern warfare where instead of using humans to do the fighting we now have military sitting thousands of miles away pushing a button of some modern video game style consul to launch a missile that will kill and destroy. Thus the concern for making violence as entertainment even more negative.

Or video games that allow people to have 'fun' doing away with people in society that one really doesn't want around. But what do we do when someone spends so much time playing a game of vengeance that they then go to the next step?

What are the real consequences of 24/7 entertainment violence? Remember even the gladiators had days off.