The Hypodermic Model

As we are already aware, the Hypodermic model of media communication is one that assumes that mass media can directly influence behavioural change by 'injecting' its audience by audio/visual means. I would like to focus this blog on on the Hypodermic model. I will criticise it, despite the fact that it gets hammered all the time, which is exactly what it deserves might I say. I want to further question the validity of the model and its ignorance to the idea of context.

To set the context of my discussion I want to define violence: Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

I recall watching Sky Television several years ago when they were screening an advertisment for Sky Sports channel. It featured a man walking briskly and seriously down a dark inner-city road. As he paced towards the camera he said (or something vaguely along these lines), "If you want to touch other men, if you want to tackle someone senseless or just want to slug someone across the head, you can. Just call it sport."

This raises several questions for me in terms of criticisms of games and violence. A person might participate in a sport such as boxing, watch it on television and may even play a video game of it. Surely the actual participation of the sport which is at its core, a violent sport, has more direct behavioural effect than the game does. The link here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nepBG1PtFd0) is footage of Fight Night Champion, a boxing game which contains blood yet only has an M rating in New Zealand, interesting. What I am trying to get at here is that i think that the model fails to account for the fact that people understand violence in context. I watched boxing as a kid, but have never punched someone in the face. The hypodermic model is one which is based on conservatism and contradiction. It allows for violent past times but not for violence of new kinds. It is a direct parallel between the argument of whether the rapper "Common" should be allowed in the White House for having gun sounds in his songs, yet the same people making the criticisms can sing every word to Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues, a song which explains a senseless killing by a prison inmate, made and performed by a man with extensive criminal history who has visited the White House several times.

I have a major issue with how the Hypodermic model doesn't allow people to understand a text but instead makes the subject to it. If conservative's want to control violent behaviour in teens it lies in societal contexts. Bowling for Columbine(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUSpszWfu_w) expresses this point very well, that it isn't what you watch or listen to at all. It is more a question of personal situations.

I also think is is hilarious to think that the majority of the people in mass media images are slim and fit, yet you don't see everyone buying a bowflex. It just doesn't work like that!

Anyway, I am going to rob Munchy Mart, just cos' I can. I learned it from playing GTA.