The Crime of Pop Culture and
The Uses and Gratification
Victoria Mastagh
The Crime of Pop Culture and
The Uses and Gratification Modern popular culture is everywhere, and affects almost everyone whether we realize it or not. Television is a part of almost everyone’s everyday life. However is media becoming the fuel behind our actions? It is believed that a murder is committed every thirty-five minutes, but is media an accomplice to these occurrences? The killing of others, and among others has been happening before any sort of media was invented. However with its popularity and growing uses and reliance, maybe media is a sort of influence for crimes that didn’t exist before. Media is powerful, but is a television show like Dexter …show more content…
A three year old Dexter was found in a shipping container surrounded by a pool of blood two inches deep by Officer Harry Morgan, who took him in and adopted him. Dexter works as a blood splatter analysist for the Miami Metro Police Department. What no one knows is that Dexter moonlights as a serial killer. However unlike other murderers there is a possibly justifiable method to his madness. Dexter only kills rapists, other killers, drug dealers, basically only people who are guilty of serious crimes. His killings have to meet a certain set of criteria that Harry taught him. Dexter refers to it as “the code of Harry”. While working police cases and punishing killers, he fights with his inner demons about whether he is a vigilante or the same as the people he takes out. The theory of uses and gratification is the idea that media is used by different individuals to meet and fulfill their specific needs, which might include murder. This theory is mostly applied to the effects of television. “The approach assumes that a person’s social and psychological makeup is as responsible for media uses and effects as are the media messages themselves.” (Bryant, Finklea, Thompson, 2013, p. …show more content…
What kept them interested? Dexter works with the police so there is a high tension with him getting caught at any moment. He sometimes throws the investigation to point to someone else so he can kill the real culprit. He successfully hides his “dark passenger” (his urge to kill) from everyone in his life. Basically we are the passenger on the roller coaster journey of his hunt, kill and thought process. His attempt to seem normal and his thoughts being narrated to us is probably the most entertaining aspect because we are in a way, inside the killer’s brain. The idea that there is more danger out in the world than what there really is because of the things we hear and see from media is called The Mean World Syndrome. The Mean World Syndrome was created from the research of George Gerbner. A viewer is prone to view more violence if they watch television in a high quantity. This in turn makes those viewers think that there is a higher rate of violence than what is actually going on. Not everyone who watches Dexter goes out and imitates his killings. Most people watch only for entertainment purposes. Those select few who do decide to take after him in the real world, only watch to lean his technique, which isn’t the media’s purpose, which might be a reason they get
The Uses and Gratification
Victoria Mastagh
The Crime of Pop Culture and
The Uses and Gratification Modern popular culture is everywhere, and affects almost everyone whether we realize it or not. Television is a part of almost everyone’s everyday life. However is media becoming the fuel behind our actions? It is believed that a murder is committed every thirty-five minutes, but is media an accomplice to these occurrences? The killing of others, and among others has been happening before any sort of media was invented. However with its popularity and growing uses and reliance, maybe media is a sort of influence for crimes that didn’t exist before. Media is powerful, but is a television show like Dexter …show more content…
A three year old Dexter was found in a shipping container surrounded by a pool of blood two inches deep by Officer Harry Morgan, who took him in and adopted him. Dexter works as a blood splatter analysist for the Miami Metro Police Department. What no one knows is that Dexter moonlights as a serial killer. However unlike other murderers there is a possibly justifiable method to his madness. Dexter only kills rapists, other killers, drug dealers, basically only people who are guilty of serious crimes. His killings have to meet a certain set of criteria that Harry taught him. Dexter refers to it as “the code of Harry”. While working police cases and punishing killers, he fights with his inner demons about whether he is a vigilante or the same as the people he takes out. The theory of uses and gratification is the idea that media is used by different individuals to meet and fulfill their specific needs, which might include murder. This theory is mostly applied to the effects of television. “The approach assumes that a person’s social and psychological makeup is as responsible for media uses and effects as are the media messages themselves.” (Bryant, Finklea, Thompson, 2013, p. …show more content…
What kept them interested? Dexter works with the police so there is a high tension with him getting caught at any moment. He sometimes throws the investigation to point to someone else so he can kill the real culprit. He successfully hides his “dark passenger” (his urge to kill) from everyone in his life. Basically we are the passenger on the roller coaster journey of his hunt, kill and thought process. His attempt to seem normal and his thoughts being narrated to us is probably the most entertaining aspect because we are in a way, inside the killer’s brain. The idea that there is more danger out in the world than what there really is because of the things we hear and see from media is called The Mean World Syndrome. The Mean World Syndrome was created from the research of George Gerbner. A viewer is prone to view more violence if they watch television in a high quantity. This in turn makes those viewers think that there is a higher rate of violence than what is actually going on. Not everyone who watches Dexter goes out and imitates his killings. Most people watch only for entertainment purposes. Those select few who do decide to take after him in the real world, only watch to lean his technique, which isn’t the media’s purpose, which might be a reason they get