BASILISCO, GLEN S.

10:00-11:00 AM MWF
February 17, 2016
In Print, Social Media, and Films: Finding Violence in the Three Forms of Media
The human race in each civilization that arose and debilitated experienced disruptions of
the status quo brought by actions, most likely in a certain form. Labelled as violence, as Arendt
viewed as a tool, it continued to thrive and became part of human experience. And with the fade
of time and the budding of the era of modern development in various facets of life, it was able to
transcend to different forms of media-the print, social media, and films- and bring a huge impact
in politics and society today.
Violence in print media presents itself in a subtle, pleasurable, and yet clever package.
Newspaper that is an everyday media is not only concerned about the information that concerns
everyone and the data that can obtained by reading it. It is also about compelling us what to think
of the day-from the affairs in the highest threshold of governance to the things we will prepare in
the table. It plays the minds of everyone on what should be the agenda of today. With various
events that transpires, it ensures that what we are talking about is not necessarily what we should
talking about. In macro-institutional approach, this is called agenda-setting, or I shall call the
structuring of the mind. It sets up the mind and dominates it.
More than that, newspapers also fabricate our thought process, and how will we perceive
the world as it should be, rather than how should it is. The structural bias of the newspapers will
expose the triumph of goodness or the banality of evil. More true is that it stays on the scoops,
the catchy ones, or something entertaining. While it retains its settling form as an objective
material, it unveils its very nature of subjectivity that imposes itself to readers. We are more
exposed to the frames of colossal controllers that ensure that their interest will be impose on us.
Whether we like it or not, newspaper is a material of compulsion that will shape, or even
dictate our course of action. It is a powerful force in the world today that appears to be innocent,
harmless and subtle, but in really its derivative nature is purely violent. The way it is being
delivered and its contents are the manifestation of violence, whether it is about politics, public
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information, sports, lifestyle, or even entertainment. All of these have the tendency to become
violent or conjure violence.
Lifestyle magazines and product brochures are two kinds of print media that shows the
power of images. It subconsciously enters into our psyche as it tricks the senses and shuts down
the mental cognition of its very nature. It may therefore appear as pleasurable experience,
sensualizing, specifically the eyes. However, these media forcefully redefine the life or identity
which we ought to be. The images depict these ought to wields a powerful force that can
dominate our line of thinking. These imposition dramatically changes how we think of ourselves,
and how we think of others.
Duffields work on North/South divide is elucidated in these magazines and brochures.
There is suppose delineation between a superior and subservient culture. The given role of the
superior is to impose itself to the subservient culture. It tries to create the idea that there is
something wrong. That they are the right model that must be followed by the world. And once
this is establish, resistance in any of it may be labelled or be called as extremism, treachery, or
insubordination making you an enemy. Furthermore, it clings to a particular area of social
cleavage, deny pluralism and multi-identification. Violence destroys the empowerment of the
divisions. In the course of time, its aim is to the destroy either of any.
Social media are todays venue of every millennial. The very nature of this kind of media
is unique as it brings the ideas of imposition into an advance level that ancient and medieval
personas may not be able to relate to. As sit absolutely grows, it becomes, or has the capacity to
bring more violence. Facebook, Twiiter, Instagram are examples of social networking sites that
are not by nature violent. Instead, they have the capacity to become or to conjure such with one
click. Such media therefore bring violence closer to us than ever before, as one step divides us
between it.
The violence in social media can be seen in a two-way. First, although it is by nature nonviolent, the way how society compels individuals to engage in such newly created networks, and
how society defines human beings as linkages in the virtual world makes it astonishingly violent.
It seems the whole world should embrace them as they are already part of the status quo. Such
domination makes social media a powerful media at present. Second is the violence in the
contents posted, shared, or tweeted. The core of such contents in itself maybe violent in its very
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nature in a sense that a subjective statement can gain likes and share and that can make it appear
to be a generally accepted idea. And is it will appear to connected walls, its violent nature
becomes more violent, and become more capacitated to inflict violence.
Violence in films, specifically The Revenant, features the forms and impacts of violence.
The film, if Im not mistaken is situated in the early years of America as nation. It featured the
struggle between the English and French, and the resistance of the natives. The story can be seen
in light of Fanons analysis on violence.
The colonial system establish in the setting of the film featured violence and exploitation.
You all have stolen everything from us. Everything! The land! The animals. Two white men
snuck into our village, and took my daughter, Powaqa, said one of the natives who is searching
for his daughter to a French. In the search of tribe for his daughter, they manifested violence and
even brutality to the colonizers. But they did not do it in for material pursuits. It was the natives
quest for saving their villages last possession-their children, their future. In this regard,
everything was for the daughter of the chieftain I suppose. The violence that rebounded was not
for the colonial process but for their heritage. The violence demanded from the natives is not
for the pelts exploited in their lands and animals. It was for a life. The destructive violence was
manifested to be responded by a productive violence.
It is true that violence breeds violence. It is clear that part of, or even their whole
humanity has been destroyed by colonialism. There is internal transformation and a shift in
thinking, brought by external impetus-actions that lead them forget their humanness and embrace
a new approach to dealing with things. Mr. Glass, the protagonist in film embodied this
transformation after his son was killed by Fritzgerald. This transformation traverses the
understanding and awareness of his own mortality. He manifested Focaults resistance as he
interacted with power. The struggle over death is overwhelmingly produced a man that no longer
fears death and embraces violence as if it is a natural part of his life.
While violence may be destructive in nature, Mr. Glass experience that violence can no
longer change things, or brings back the distant past. Violence, in its brutal form, can no longer
revive his son, Hawk, and bring it to life. It will do any good after all. Mr. Glass realizes this
when he arrived in a point in his pursuit of Mr. Fritzgerald, that vengeance is not in his purview.

Violence is also wielded by God. It is a spiritual form that can let him let go of vengeance
and the past that raped him over and over again, while at the same time achieve justice. God is a
powerful entity, he or she may be abstract, but the belief of such existence recognizes that it also
hold some form of power to inflict violence. This spiritual nature of violence is present in the
return of Mr. Glass from his long absence.
The print, social media and films are the different forms of media where violence can be
located. This violence may not be in physical form, but it retains its very nature to produce
effects or to disrupt the present. In this new instruments, similar themes start to emerge of the
form and nature of violence, and how it is paradoxically theorized with power, but still achieve
its interconnected ness.
When one grows absolutely, that is when violence begins. The imposition and
compulsion carried out in the process is what makes it violent. It was also illustrated that
colonization destroys the humanity of individuals at the very core. It was also drawn how is one
can be harassed by the past, and its implications on the creation and possibility of violence.
Moreover, violence was located and can be located in the physical, psychological and spiritual
realm.

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