| The purpose of this project is to explore what effect the violence we consume as entertainment in Western Culture has on the human person. Specifically, the researcher wanted to study the impact of graphic violence in movies, television, video games, and in combat sports such as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA, UFC) on those who consume them. As part of this research, the researcher sought to understand the science behind human fascination with violent entertainment and what attracts us to it. The researcher also sought to understand how it changes us. The research revealed that there is direct correlation between the violent entertainment that is consumed in our digital media and a rise in antisocial traits such as aggression, trait hostility, and cheating, as well as the diminishment of pro-social traits such as empathy and responsiveness to need in both the short- and long-term. The research also showed that violent entertainment contributes to an increase in the objectification of human beings, increased fear for personal safety, and a further perpetuation of real life violence.;This research formed the heart of a seminar offered to students at William Jessup University. In this seminar, three arguments were made to challenge the normative consumption of violence as entertainment. Centered on the teaching of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, the researcher challenged the myth of redemptive violence assumed by the culture and pictured in many of the stories told in movies and television. The researcher described the power of fantasy and applied it to the way in which fantasizing about violence acts in video games can serve to malform our character. The researcher explored the Imago Dei as a way of protesting the violence inherent to the MMA which subjects its athletes to conditions that lead to significant head trauma, concussions, and possible CTE. The early church was held out as a model of how the church could decisively shift away from forms of violent entertainment and thus make real and lasting change in the culture. Finally, the researcher demonstrated in the results from surveys given to students before and after the seminar that it was possible to shift the thinking of Evangelical Christians so that they are positioned to lose a taste for much of the violence they consume as entertainment, especially that which glorifies violence, objectifies human beings, diminishes empathetic abilities, and dulls moral character. |
