Is Hollywood a good influence on people?

Whenever I hear the film industry being blamed for creating negativity in life, my mind goes back to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Last Action Hero.” For those who may not have seen it, Arnie plays a screen character who is accidentally transported into real life, only to find that getting shot, punched, kicked, and generally thrown really hurts. His character interacts with a child, and the moral of the story is that what you see on the big screen is not a performance in real life.

Then I think of “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey, a movie that takes a long look at the problems of positive thinking and says “yes” to life. There were many interesting points wrapped up in an extraordinarily funny story.

What about “The Matrix”, the first movie in the series really resonated with a lot of people on the spiritual path and you couldn’t help but feel as you watched it that Hollywood is tuned in to more than just a lot of money and fame? Behind this and many other films, one has the feeling that various thoughtful minds use the vehicle of the cinema to explore the problems of popular life and offer some conclusions.

That’s the positive side, now let’s look at the negative. Whenever I get to the negative, Charlie Sheen’s sequel “Hot Shots Part Deux” immediately comes to mind. In that movie there is a wonderful scene where he fires a machine gun and in one corner of the screen you have a continuous comment written that says “more bullets than (name of any famous action movie) fired”, and the numbers keep increasing. It’s a beautiful ironic twist on an industry that fires more rounds of fake ammunition in a year than teens who have pimples.

There is a great deal of casual violence in the movies, and there are certainly minds very willing to soak up violence like a sponge and emulate it. However, realistically, how many times does that happen?

If you live in a city in the world besieged by violence, you will tell me “a lot”, but the truth is that if an individual does not have the anger and the feeling of dislocation that is required, he will not emulate anything he sees in a movie. At best, movies can provide ideas to the general public in the same way that prisons take a young man who made a mistake and provide exactly the training you do not want any child to receive, thus becoming a college-level criminal when you are They were.

Everything in life is about personal choice and most well-balanced people will view extremely violent movies as disgusting at worst and giggle at best. At no time will an ordinary human being be tempted to risk his freedom and his future trying to be an Arnie, a Sly Stallone or even a Charlie Sheen. To name a very few people who have been in violent movies.

You are probably more likely to find more people thinking they are Jesus or Napoleon than emulating cinematic violence.

However, you need to consider the morals behind the film industry. When ‘Natural Born Killers’, the extremely violent film, was released in 1995 director Oliver Stone said:

• “The film is a very powerful medium, the film is a drug, the film is a potential hallucinogen, it enters the brain, stimulates and is something dangerous, it can be something very subversive.”. (Panorama BBC TV 2/27/95). (Source Media Watch UK).

However, in his article “Does movie violence increase violent crime?” for the “Quarterly Journal of Economics”, Gordon Dahl of UC San Diego and NBER and Stefano DellaVigna of UC Berkeley and NBER comment that:

• “We analyzed whether media violence affects violent crime in the countryside. We took advantage of the variation in violence in blockbuster movies from 1995 to 2004 and studied the effect on same-day assaults. We found that violent crime decreased by the days with the highest theatrical ratings for violent films. The effect is partly due to voluntary incapacitation: between 6:00 pm and 12:00 am, a million increase in the audience for violent films reduces violent crime between 1.1% and 1.3%. After exposure to the film, between 12 am and 6 am, violent crimes are reduced by an even higher percentage. This finding is explained by the self-selection of individuals violent to violently attend the cinema, leading to a substitution of more volatile activities.
• The results emphasize that media exposure affects behavior not only through content, but also by changing the time spent on alternative activities. Substituting more dangerous activities in the field may explain the differences with laboratory findings. Our estimates suggest that, in the short term, violent movies deter nearly 1,000 assaults on an average weekend. While our design does not allow us to estimate long-term effects, we did not find evidence of medium-term effects until three weeks after initial exposure. “

I don’t want to go into citing any more quotes, because any historian knows that we can do this forever. What I find interesting when comparing these two quotes is that the Hollywood producer believes there is an adverse effect and yet he is happy to continue, although some researchers question that the film increases violence. So maybe we have a little suggestion here that Hollywood thinks it has a greater influence on society than it does in reality; perhaps the general public is under the same misunderstanding.

What I have not found easy to quantify in my research trips, and a question I would like to understand is: do IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient) have a direct effect on an individual’s susceptibility to suggestion? and therefore their tendency to recreate what they see in the film; because you can’t blame Hollywood for the mood of a small number of viewers.

There is an argument for more responsibility in filmmaking, and it is a valid argument, but to be fair I could conclude that Hollywood movies show us what is happening in other strata of society and make sure that Those who are lucky enough to live happy and financially secure lives are not living those lives in the land of the clouds. It could also be said that through the cinema parents are warned of the dangers their children face in modern society.

At the end of the day, you can argue most situations from a variety of directions and modify your conclusions accordingly, however, I am a spiritist and would have to conclude that we should all take responsibility for our own actions and not seek blame. a third to create the person we want to become.

Again, you can argue against that point of view by saying that not everyone knows about spirituality and how it can help people create happier, more positive, and less angry lives, and I would answer:

So let’s find a way to tell as many people as we can – any Hollywood producer ready to make a nice fluffy (but very real) movie about how changing your mindset can not only change your life but also lead? to world peace?

Yeah guys, I know you’ve tried, but along with your violent, sad, and depressing movies, it would be great if they continued to connect with the positive messages as well.

Wishing you happy days, quiet nights, and lots of non-violent, hysterically funny, life-affirming movies.

Debutante