We motif of social violence in the space of cinematic communication

Abstract

Social violence traditionally has been a constituent in the information flow of artistic communication, of the cinematic one especially. With the language specific to cinema it is easier, than with the languages of other arts, to attract and command the attention of a broad public with the spectacle of violence. Also, as a rule, it is more economical because of the relatively low cost of embodying violence on the screen considering the overall expensiveness of film production. In the West, the filming of practices of violence aimed at entertaining the public, as well as the public concern at the possibility of their negative impact on the rising generation, has a long history. Within the concept of “the audience as the victim” there were thousands of studies conducted, especially in USA. In the USSR cinema of the entertainment orientation was under the ideological ban which put the representation of violence within certain boundaries. In the 1990s the situation of cinema changed drastically. Je escalation of entertainment violence on the screen caused a public concern. Sociologists began to study its perception by and impact on spectators. In this regard, the article considers the experience of conceptualizing the reformatting of its representation after, consequent upon the impact of the last century’s revolutionary violence, cinema had obtained the status of “the most important of all the arts” and “the social significance” of the violence became the cultural code of its representation. But with the transition of Russian cinema to the market, foreign entertainment movies were granted open access to the nation’s film screens. Entertainment violence reached the status of a commercially important communicative attraction. Its effectiveness in this function is viewed in the article based on the materials of sociological surveys conducted among filmgoers of the cities of Kirov and Ekaterinburg. Another side of the issue considered as well is the sociocultural effects of violent images on the rising generation in whose midst there is a “risk group” that merits careful research and preventive acknowledgment in the process of social control.