On June 24th, an unfortunate incident happened in Panyu District, Guangzhou. A woman was murdered in her villa. Apart from the rampage of gangsters, I was shocked by the report of the murder in a local newspaper. Presumably, in order to bring visual impact to readers, this newspaper specially produced two 3 d images of the simulated murder scene for the article "Ten Million Rich Women Panyu Villa was Chopped". One is that the gangster cuts the woman's neck with a knife, and the other is the scene where the woman falls to the ground. Blood flowed from the cracked neck and punctured abdomen to the floor. Such elaborate news is just to set off the lines in the article-"According to insiders, Tan's abdomen and neck were cut off."
On the one hand, I am disgusted with this bloody scene created to please readers. However, on the other hand, we have to admit that bloody and violent feeding is something that many Chinese and foreign media pursue, with strong cultural and psychological support behind it.
Why are humans fascinated by violence? Here, we might as well review an interesting story told by communication scientist L Flint in The Conscience of Newspapers, which he heard from a senior official of the Press Association:
10 priests visited an editor-in-chief to protest that he put trivial matters on the front page and ignored more meaningful events. The editor-in-chief replied, "This room has two doors. If I tell you that in a minute, President Eliot will come in through the door on the left, James J Jeffries will come in through the door on the right, and nine of you will watch the door on the right. "
The official explanation is that the world champion boxer is more attractive than a university president, because the champion boxer caters to our initial desire. American civilization and culture are still relatively new, and the paint on them is still wet. Only a few centuries ago, our ancestors were barbarians, and everyone was fighting with their companions to protect their women, children and food.
It should be said that it is precisely because of catering to the audience's "bloody aesthetics" that many mass media are more keen to describe the process and scene of death than to explore the cause of death. Sometimes, even the death toll doesn't matter. For example, for TV media, Killing Sharks is more attractive than Killing Coconuts. Even if statistics show that the number of deaths caused by coconut falling worldwide every year is 15 times that caused by shark attack.
Why did some people sit in front of the TV and comment excitedly when the Iraq war broke out? Does this situation mean that our hearts have flown back to ancient Rome? At least, we can easily find the same thing there-the secret desire of bloodthirsty.
Gladiators fought to the death, subjects shouted hysterically, and the emperor turned his thumb up and down to win public opinion, witnessing the oldest "bread and circus" and the most exquisite "entertaining people with death" in the world. The most classic narration about this "policy of entertaining people" is the famous line in the movie Gladiator-"The pulse of Rome is not the marble in the Presbyterian courtyard, but the yellow sand in the arena".
Today, when we passed through Rome, many entertainment places that used to hunt with flags have been turned into broken walls. However, similar bloody massacres have not disappeared. At least, the bullfighting performance in Spain is still opening this ancient wound. Perhaps because of the pain that followed, in today's European streets, we occasionally see some naked rebels, who dress themselves up as "cattle people" with horns on their heads, shake the "fierce cow yogurt" on their chests, and shout the slogan "Make love, don't fight bullfights" in full view.
Bullfighting culture is also resisted in China. A few years ago, Daxing District of Beijing planned to build thousands of bullrings, the largest in Asia, and introduce American bullfighting and Spanish bullfighting. This bottomless takenism has been opposed by many people of insight, because a mentally sound person should not take pleasure in cruelty to animals, and a civilized society should not allow cruelty to animals. On the other hand, under various moral pressures, even the Spanish government is considering building a "bullfighting-free city". Opponents also believe that this bloody scene, which bases the happiness of a few people on the suffering of animals, is inconsistent with China culture.
Of course, rejecting the bullring does not mean that there is no similar cultural spread in China. Modern communication also regards the arena as the earliest source of mass media. Because China has not established the necessary film and television grading system, in a sense, television has become a modern version of the "unprotected Colosseum", because the plots of violence and revenge culture can be seen everywhere on television. Turn on the TV, close your eyes and listen only with your ears. I believe it won't be long before you catch the crying line-"I want revenge!" "
The history of thought is a history that speaks ill of human nature, which Maslow once deeply felt. This seems to be equally manifested in the motivation level of newspapers. Only disasters and thrilling emergencies are worthy of attention, and the bright side of life is ignored by the media. Life becomes a duel, a zero-sum game, where one side is the conqueror and the other side is the conquered. When one side won a great victory, the other side was defeated, just like a poor woman lying in a 3 d image, lying alive in the "media arena".
When newspapers indulge in this evil description and make it a "killing window" that people must pass through every day, their excessive exaggeration of violence and blood makes people gradually lose sympathy and become numb. Reading makes people lose love, what a paradoxical and failed reality it will be!