Cinematic Persuasion

1
Cinematic Persuasion

• Suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart,
  nudity, sex, happy endings. Mainly happy
  endings. Griffin Mill (in Robert Altmans The
  Player ? on what a movie needs to make money).

2
Cinemas Power to Persuade

• Movies are a form of entertainment
• They are also a business (show business)
• they are also a form of persuasion
• Movies reach large numbers of people
• potential for mass influence
• Movies are told in a narrative form
• stories possess an aura of believability

3
Cinematic influence

• All serious evaluations of movie and television
  versions of American life suggest that pop
  culture portrays a world that is far more
  violent, dangerous, sexually indulgentthan
  everyday American reality (Medved, 2002)
• People may not expect to be persuaded during a
  movie
• willing suspension of disbelief
• Movies can persuade intentionally or
  unintentionally
• intentional persuasion
• accidental influence
• Social responsibility versus artistic freedom

4
Movies and social modeling

• Young people aged 15 to 24 are the most frequent
  movie goers.
• Only 1 in 4 movies portray no risky health
  behaviors (positive examples include Castaway and
  Sixth Sense)
• The movie industry rarely portrays negative
  consequences of risky behavior (such as HIV,
  pregnancy, DUI, etc.)

Harold Kumar In Escape from Guantanamo
5
Form Some Conventions

• Teen movies typically contain features such as
• conversations at the school lockers ("Dazed and
  Confused")
• the prom ("Carrie")
• cheerleaders (Bring It On")
• the shopping mall ("Mall Rats")
• the juvenile delinquent gang (The Outsiders")
• the sensitive, alienated teenage hero (Jim, in
  "Rebel without a Cause").
• This is an extremely limited list. Any others?

6
Form Hybridity

• The nature of the teen movie genre changes very
  rapidly over time and there are crossovers or
  hybrids with neighboring genres, for example
• horror ("Buffy, the Vampire Slayer")
• sports ("American Anthem")
• musicals ("Grease")
• romance ("Romeo and Juliet").
• Any others?

7
Social modeling thank youfor smoking

• Smoking rates in cinema are disproportionately
  higher than for the public at large (Omidvari, et
  al 2005).
• Over the past six years more than half of the
  movies geared toward children feature characters
  smoking. In more than a quarter of the movies,
  actors light up cigars (AMA, 2008).
• Teenagers are significantly more likely to start
  smoking if they watch movies featuring stars who
  smoke cigarettes (Dalton, 2003)
• 89 of smoking is initiated during adolescence
  (Johnston, OMalley, Bachman, 1996)

8
Movies and risky behavior

• More negative social modeling
• Unsafe sex
• 98 of movies with sex scenes make no mention of
  safe sex (Gunasekera Chapman, 2005).
• Drug and alcohol use
• Movies with cannabis (8) and other non-injected
  illicit drugs (7) were less common than those
  with alcohol intoxication (32) and tobacco use
  (68)
• Buckling up
• seat belt usage in movies is quite low, typically
  between 10-30 (Jacobsen, Kreuter, Luke,
  Caburnay The national average is closer to 70.

9
Positive social modeling occurs too

• Finding Nemo normalizes disabilities
• Nemo has an underdeveloped lucky fin
• Nemos father suffers from post traumatic stress
  syndrome
• Dory has short-term memory loss
• Bruce the shark is in a 12 step program
• A squid has incontinence (cannot retain its ink)

10
Cinema and social change
Films often advance cultural awareness and social
change Guess Whos Coming to Dinner Easy
Rider Thelma Louise Brokeback Mountain
11
How movies persuade stealth advertising

• Product placement- the practice of inserting
  brand name items into the movie scenes is
  commonplace
• brandchannel.com (lists placements in movies)
• Types of placement
• Visual
• Spoken
• Usage
• Apple has placed products in more than 1,500 TV
  shows.
• Apple is just as popular on the big screen,
  showing up in hits from "You've Got Mail" to "How
  to Lose a Guy in 10 days.
• Films are carefully crafted, detailed works of art

12
How movies persuade Promoting viewer
identification

• Stories in films overlap with viewers own
  experience, so they can relate to the message in
  the movie
• viewers identify closely with characters who face
  a crisis or adversity
• example Movies like Rudy and Seabiscuit champion
  the little guy.

13
How movies persuade exporting American culture
and values

• American movies export Western cultures and
  values around the globe
• Movies are one of Americas three leading exports
• Negative side- foreign audiences are not too
  thrilled with the emphasis on materialism, sex,
  and violence in the movies.
• Positive side- movies can embrace values such as
  freedom, equality, and human rights

14
How movies persuade exporting American culture
and values

• Fashions, hairstyles, lifestyles are often
  imitated
• Movies are vehicles for advertising

15
CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION
McArabia Kofta
16
CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION

• Cultural Imperialism Dominance of one culture
  over others
• Hollywood movies, MacDonalds, Disneyland,
  Starbucks
• Dominance of the English language and invasion of
  other languages
• Do people all over the world have the same taste?
• Africa
• Culture Industry opportunities for Africans
  to sell their culture in the global market that
  values traditional culture

17
Movies and violence

• Movies often serve as guides for social behavior
• viewers often act out, model, imitate what they
  see on screen
• Research on violence in video games, television,
  movies, and the Internet found that those exposed
  to movie violence demonstrated more pro-violence
  attitudes (Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, Baumgardner,
  2004).
• 26 per cent of adults still have "residual
  anxiety" many years after viewing horror movies
  in childhood.

18
Movies and violence

• Hollywood routinely recruits teenagers and
  children (some as young as nine) to evaluate its
  story concepts, commercials, theatrical trailers
  and rough cutseven for R-rated movies.
• The FTC studied 44 restricted films meant for
  adults, and discovered that 80 per cent were
  targeted to children under 17.

19
Cultural and Gender Stereotypes

• Hollywood frequently typecasts minorities,
  cultural groups, and women, overweight
  
  
  people, the elderly, and other
  groups into limited roles
• Legally Blonde perpetuates the dumb blonde
  stereotype
• Shallow Hal gives people permission to make fun
  of fat people
• Jackie Chan fills the image of the martial artist
  who is sexually/romantically awkward
• Arab-American community refers to the Three Bs
  syndrome. Arabs in movies and on TV are
• bombers
• belly dancers
• billionaires

20
Hollywood blazes a path

• Oscar winning actor,Morgan Freeman, brings a
  sense of authority, dignity, and gravitas to the
  roles he plays.
• He played the role of president of the United
  States in the movie Deep Impact (1998) and the
  role of god in God Almighty (2003).
• Is it possible he made the idea of an
  African-American president more thinkable?
• Dennis Haysbert and D.B. Woodside also played the
  Commander in Chief in the Fox TV series 24.
• Can Obamas election be seen as a case of life
  imitates art?

21
Cultivation Theory

• Cultivation Theory predicts that heavy exposure
  to movies and TV may cultivate attitudes more
  consistent with the media version of reality than
  with reality itself.
• Heavy viewers have a more distorted view of the
  world than Light viewers
• Heavy viewers develop a view of a mean, scary
  world
• Movies and TV provide biased, stereotyped
  depictions of reality, which can distort the
  beliefs of heavy viewers

22
Based on a true story?

• Plotlines and details may be loosely based, or
  may be based on false assertions
• Amityville Horror The truth was finally
  revealed when Butch DeFeo's lawyer, William
  Weber, admitted that he, along with the Lutzes,
  created this horror story over many bottles of
  wine. (www.snopes.com)
• Texas Chain Saw Massacre there was no real
  family of cannibalistic chainsaw murderers
  slaughtering people in Texas, nor any actual
  series of chainsaw-related killings.
  (www.snopes.com)

23
Documentaries

• Bowling for Columbine documentary or
  mock-umentary?
• Supersize Me documentary or shock-umentary?
• Beware of docu-dramas
• Time compression
• Composite characters
• Re-shot footage (example, reaction shots filmed
  at a different time)

24
Resistance to Cinematic Persuasion

• Do not let your guard down
• Realize its only a movie ? not real life
• Be aware of product placements
• Assume the director will opt for a good narrative
  over accuracy
• Be informative and seek knowledge