Longmont, Co – (July 2006) -- Before you buy a ticket to the latest slasher/horror film or visit the Cineplex for the next violent action thriller, check out the book by media and communication specialist Gregory Desilet. OUR FAITH IN EVIL: MELODRAMA AND THE EFFECTS OF ENTERTAINMENT VIOLENCE (McFarland & Company, 2006) provokes renewed reflection on the quality of the screen arts while providing new criteria to consider in making an entertainment choice.

With a Master’s degree in communication studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Desilet has published in academia over the past two decades and has brought his accumulated experience and research together in a book for the general reader as well as the academic audience. Desilet finds that endless empirical studies on entertainment violence and its potential effects on audiences have produced little consensus of opinion in the general public or the academic community. Consequently, there is presently no clear basis for evaluation, choice, and action on the part of consumers concerning violent entertainment and its effects.

Much of the confusion centers on the cathartic potential of drama in general and violent entertainment in particular. Defenders of violence in screen media believe that it has beneficial entertainment value while purging audiences of destructively aggressive and violent impulses. These impulses often accumulate through constraints imposed by increasing demands of life in a recreation deprived technologically driven information culture.

“We need to better understand the process of emotional arousal and release, especially in drama,” argues Desilet. “Dramatic entertainment stimulates various emotions but not all such emotions can achieve effective catharsis or release in the context of theater viewing—that is, sitting in a chair watching a screen.”

According to Desilet, because of different cognitive and cathartic potential in theater viewing, dramatic forms have different capacities concerning the psychologically positive or negative effects of violence on viewers. Understanding the differences between dramatic forms provides a way to unlock the current media debate by exposing the way in which effects of portrayed violence depend on the dramatic structure through which violence is presented. Desilet concludes: “Cathartic benefits claimed for melodrama, for example, belong more to tragic drama and filmmakers and audiences ought to become more aware of the importance of this and other structural differences in relation to audience effects and repeated exposures.”

Part 2 of the book examines classic violent films in light of the structural themes presented in Part 1. These films include blockbusters series such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter as well as controversial yet critically acclaimed films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, The Matrix, and The Passion of the Christ.

Click on the following link to preview works on Media Violence 

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