Moral Panic

What is a moral Panic?:

It was Stanley Cohen 1987 who first came up with the term moral panics. He defined it as a condition, episode, person or group who become defined as a threat to societal values and interests due to their representation within the media e.g.) mods & rockers. Cohen also points out that the media sometimes stylises these episodes amplifying the nature of the facts and consequently turning them into a national issue thus making them worse than they needed to be as they could of been contained at a local level. A quote shows this factor well which is about "making a mountain out of molehill"

Cohen's study originated from his interest in the youth culture and its perceived potential threat to social order. Throughout each era, a group has emerged who fits the criteria that Cohen has labelled as being turned into a moral panic or a threat, such as Skinheads, Hells Angels etc. They all become associated with negative aspects usually violence, which in turn also provoke public reaction usually calling for a police presence within the community of where the event took place.

Moral panic examples include the following:

-football hooliganism
-drug abuse
-vandalism
-video nasties
-aids
-knife crime

There are various ways in which these moral panics/issues are dealt with. Generally they pass as quickly as they came and are long forgotten when the media begins to write about other news as the moral panic isn't published no more thus sparking less interest in the subject and making it less of an issue. However some moral panic last for years even sparking riots such as aids which was labelled as the gay plague resulting in insults t homosexual public.

An Example of a Moral Panic:

An example of a moral panic would be the torture and murder of James Bulger whick took place in the early 1990 causing a moral panic known as the paedophile scare. It is not hard to see why people were so upset over this case and why newspapers covered the story aggressively resulting in a panic. As many commentators tried to state that the murder of James Bulger was a gruesome act which was somehow characteristic in modern British society, despite the fact that various figures show that such child murders being killed by other children are extremely rare.

However children have in the past killed other children yet what is different about this case is the media input which resulted in national reactions to the event. For example Mary Bell who was eleven at the time killed two toddlers in 1968 but instead of covering it the media chose to ignore it, which in turn resulted in public rejection of it as a cause for panic due to low coverage of the incident.

The media used the case of James Bulger to symbolise all that was wrong with Britain with one paper quoting ‘it’s an evil world and we need strict rules’ about the two boys who killed James. Explanations for why the crime took place weren’t discussed within the media instead they chose to focus on the difference between innocence and evil. Even a moral message was brought out from the Guardian newspaper which said and I quote “we are all guilty, and we must make sure it never happens again”

This shows that the cultural hegemony model has been used by the media to make the viewers/readers/public take on their believes and ideologies thus resulting in various rules to be carried out and other regulations to be announced. Now that the media had highlighted and presented to the public so many issues of moral and societal concern no one said anything in opposition to a series of solutions that were mainly produced by the government.

This included:

• The installation of more surveillance cameras as they had been vital in showing who the kidnappers were.
• Banning of violent films as the belief was that the video Child’s Play III which the boys watched was believed to have been the reason that they carried outt the attack by mimicking a scene from the film.

This moral panic raised concern that children are now more at risk from child killers in and paedophiles. The press remained constant with this topic even discussing other paedophilia cases with the Guardian saying that police services ignored the scale of the cases and that they were getting bigger each year. The Home Office estimated at the time that up to 110,000 people in Britain had been convicted of sex offences against children and outlines a chronology of the worst offences

Some of these include:

• August 1993: The abduction, rape and manslaughter of 14 year old Jason Swift by Robert Oliver.
• March 1996: Arrest of Roger Saint, a foster father who had served on Clwyd County Council’s adoption panel.
• August 1996: Marc Dutroux arrested by Belgian police.
• July 1997: Brendan Smyth, a Catholic priest convicted of indecent assaults on 20 children.
• August 1997: Public schoolmaster Adrian Stark- committed suicide after being charged with child pornography offences.

How are the authority figures represented in human traffic?

Authority figures are shown in Human traffic by various techniques with the most noticeable scenes being jip and his mother within her house, jip with his boss at work, jip with one of his mums clients and Mort with his dad. This is shown mostly through social class for example: Mort is a low class white male with no job and takes drugs while his dad is seen as middle class as a police officer with more authority and power within society.

However the scene also shows a problem with the model known as cultural hegemony which believes that one social group dominates over the rest and thus their ways are seen as the norm (Gramsei 1930), as Mort rejects his fathers dominance when he has been told to leave. That said the character does end up leaving the house during the argument so in a way due to his anger he conforms to his fathers control when trying to reject it. This could suggest that society is seen as having a lot of power and so like Mort even if you try to run away from it you will still be under its control/influence.

Another scene could be the one with jip and his mother which shows the cultural hegemony quite well. This is shown when Jip tells the audience that he doesn't really want to see his mother yet at the end of his speech he walks into the house. This shows that although he shows clear dislike for having to see his mother he still does thus meaning that he cant disobey the control very easily.

The mothers flat is stereotypical for a women that age and makes her seem like she is going to be well dressed and of a high class with a well paid job. For example, she has a long coat and a suitcase laying on the chair when Jip first walks in. However in reality she breaks this stereotype of all of those factors as she is wearing a pink dressing gown and works as a prostitute. That said allow by her job and way of life she is seen as passive to society she still has control as she can dominate her son.

Location list

Location:



Graveyard scene where the female character sits next to a grave. This is used to show the audience quite easily that the reason the lead character is crying is that her parent is dead.



Bedroom scene where the female is looking through photographs of her mother and herself showing that she is thinking of her memories that she has. Thus this allows the video to flow as it tells the audience that the next scenes within the clip are memories.



The kitchen scene where a memory is shown between the mother and the daughter thus showing how ill she was yet how happy they were.



The living room scene where another memory is shown yet this time the mother is shown to be even more ill but putting on a brave face for the daughter. It is also used to have the main character and her mother singing along with the lyrics.



The park scene where the female drops the letter from the book and lets it fall to the floor allowing the viewers to see the letter burn. This shows who died as the letter is signed by the mother thus letting the audience know exactly what happened along with the graveyard scene.

Media in the future

I think in the future media will change their approach on how they show drug use, alcahol use etc yet i dont feel that it will be in a positive way. For example i feel that like with murder films where the violence and the blood/gore has become more exterme with the characters in films getting killed in a more graphic way. Take these two films for further proof, Psycho 1960 and Scream 1996 where just over a 36 years later the murder scene is far more graphic and scary, this is how i see the media advancing in years to come showing more graphic uses for drugs etc.
Thus i feel that the media may be far more restricted that they have been.

Psycho 1960

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4

Scream 1996

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFCStOMqpfk

Human traffic and The models

The effects model is also known as the hypodermic model. This view argues that the audience are doped with the media text and are hypnotised by it. They also state that the consumers may be influenced by the media and copy behaviour such as violent video games, violent film etc. Thus audiences can create subversive and deviant readings other than those intended by institutions of production. All in all media texts are used to gratify the audiences needs and interests otherwise no one would watch the shows and the ratings would go down making the show cease to exist.

Human Traffic is a metaphor for both the models because of the use of drugs for example two females are seen within a club being interviewed and are viewed at having a good time and being confident due to the use of drugs however the reporter doesn't find them fun at all showing the contrast between two types of people. The people that take drugs and the people that don't. Even the characters in the movie talk about a confidence boost saying that they can talk to complete strangers easily yet only under the influence of drugs. Due to this statement the audience (according to the model) will believe that taking drugs is an alright thing to do as the characters seem to be having a great time.

Then again near the end of the film shows that the use of these substances can effect the characters negatively after use and suffer from symptoms such as:

• having that low down feeling after a high making them feel worse about themselves before they started.
• seeing things that aren't there e.g) one of the characters thinks that his friend is flirting with his girlfriend
• slight anger issues

Human traffic can however also be a metaphor for the gratifications model which viewpoint is that the idea of drug use can be over thrown and can be looked at as a fine thing to do by over throwing the dangers of taking drugs as mainly only the positive effects of drugs are shown. For example its not until the end where one of the characters goes a bit crazy when the audience start what drugs can do to you.

However the producers never show the characters actually taking the drugs the audience are left to assume that they are as some of the them are seen smoking and due to the characters taking drugs all of the time we assume that they are drugs even though they might not be. This may be trying to stop being from copying the film and taking drugs as in reality the producers of the film doesn't want drug use to be a global thing but rather wants people to see the positive side to them as most people think negatively of them.