Introduction
Moral’s are something that everyone in the world has, and each person moral’s are different. Throughout this dissertation, I want to find out the different moral’s that people have in a western society, how they are different. I want to relate the moral’s of different people to the media and find out if the media does in fact influence different people’s moral’s. My main media focus will be film, television and celebrity culture.
Rough
One place where people get there morals from is from family. Family is the primary source for children. Children first learn there right and wrong’s from there parent’s. When the child does something wrong, the child is told so. Even though it is illegal to do so, some children are still smacked. Is this immorally wrong? If the child does something wrong then they need to know what they did is wrong and has consequences. If the child does not learn this then the child will think it is okay to do bad thing’s.
This being so, respect is needed.
Fairytales are also taught to children and have simple moral from them. This is another one of the many way’s to teach child about right and wrong.
The three bears is basically a story how a girl brakes in to someone’s house and is punished for be bad.
Disney film’s also teach this, snow white and the seven dwarfs teach us that you should not talk to stranger and accept gift’s from them.
The novel alice in wonderland has many references to drug abuse. Some of these include “going down the rabbit hole”, “ eat a mushroom, it will expand your mind” and the sense of felling of time slowing down. These being told, a story that if supposed to be for people of all ages, isn’t it morally wrong to imply the use of drugs to children.
http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/explain/alice817.html
Morals
The character of jigsaw in the saw films has morality. This character kidnaps and tortures people for there wrong doing. This is a very deeper and sadistic version smacking a child when they have done wrong but the principle are still the same, wrong doings must be punished.
The saying an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Is this a moral saying or not? In theory it balance’s it self out, if someone doe’s something wrong to them, then it should be okay to do something bad to them. In saying this the person who did wrong to begin with may not have moral’s, or in fact didn’t mean to wrong do the other person, then is must surely mean that it is not okay for the other person to punish the person who did wrong in the beginning.
Should it be okay to punish someone for man slaughter? The person who commited the afelany has done wrong but it was an accident. Should it be okay to punish someone if they didn’t mean to do it?
Paris Hilton is famous for the internet video “One night in paris.” Creating a sex video and posting it on the internet is can be persceved as being very immoral as sexual intercourse is a very personal thing.
Robbie William’s has been known for taking drugs, which in a western society is looked down upon and is bad, but yet he is worshipped by million’s of people around the world. The fact that he is worshipped for being immoral must mean that today’s society’s moral’s have changed over time.
There is a very big debait about weather lady gaga is a man or not. This are just rumours but making up things about someone is still wrong, and if the rumours are true then is should surley be the person to tell the public only if they want to.
Celebrity our new religion?
The moral’s of jame’s Bond can also be questioned. He goe’s around killing people, sleeping around with women but is idealized. He kill’s people for the greater good.
This however he is serving a greater good, his country. Is it ok to do wrong to do something that will help out more people
If killing an incocent child to cure cancer, could you do it? This question is used by many pyscologyist and is all about personal belief’s.
Who’s worse, the client or the prostitute. This is an argument that has been around for a very long time. It determines who is more immoral, the person paying for sex or the person being paid for sex. One of the main reason’s why it is supposed to be immoral is because it is taking something that is meant to be a loving expression for procreation and being turning into a profit for personal gain. It is taking emotion out of the equation, therefore taking away the morals of people.
Shameless is a TV program that focus’s on the lives of working class people. It shows the character’s taking drugs, having affair’s, prostitution, murder and kidnap to name a few themes that have been featured through out the series. The way in which the people show the character’s commiting these immoral act and breaking the laws appears as fun and okay to do so. This in it’s self could be argued whether it is morally wrong to actually show this on television. Some people get there moral’s from TV programs such as these and many people have said it is shows like this what is corrupting society…………….
Grand theft auto is a video game that allows player to free roam around the streets and can o almost what ever they want. The game was the basic rules of society such as do something bad then the police come after you.
Since the first version of the game, the game has become very realistic and the graphics are very detailed. This means that when peoples head are getting blown off, all the guts of the person can be seen. The affects of people seeing this is that people are become desensited to this and when this happens in real life it is the normal and doesn’t have the same shock value.
In saying that, such things as wars exist and this goes on everyday. Maybe it is better to exercise and experiment with personal desires of ‘being bad’ on a computer game rather than have to experience them in reality.
Games for people of a young age are not as violent and have more adult themes, but surely as we get older are moral’s should not change should they?
Games such as Mario and Sonic are very simple games, the player goes through the level’s, collect’s items and fight’s vilian’s. These games are rated universal so everyone can play they and the objective’s of the games are simple. Game’s such as the grand theft auto series are free roaming games, allowing the player to do almost whatever they want. Almost all of mission’s are consist of breaking the law in one way or another. This ever though it is a fiction game, the player has to perform immoral acts to successfully complete the game. After interviewing………………… who have played the game, more than 50% of the have had a prostiute, killed her and then stolen her money. This is real life would be outradous to do.
It would be interesting to see if old people actually did all he optional extras in the game like the younger generation.
The bible is another source where people get there moral’s from. It include’s the 10 commandment, the 7 deadly sin’s and many story’s about Jesus and God about right and wrong. Even though the bible is many year’s old, many of the moral’s in the book are still the same today as they were back then and are inflicted in modern law’s.
A very modern moral code that is often used today, and even though is mainly used as a joke is the saying “bro’s before hoe’s” This saying is used often with males. Even though it is used as a joke, the origins’ come from many year’s ago when males were looked on as being above woman in society. The saying is saying to put friend’s first before women, but is this morally wrong? Why?
Hem is used as following the leader. In the second world war, Hitler wanted to kill all the Jew’s To the German’s this was the right thing to do as everyone in there society was doing it even though they were doing nothing wrong.
In a more modern question, would it be wrong to kill people is they had an infection that had the could kill million’s of people?
Ideology a way of looking at something with one purpose or goal. There have been many films about this. One example of this is the matrix
The matrix, as presented in the eponymous film, operates as an Althusserian Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). The Matrix1 presents a world in which "the state [as] a 'machine' of repression" is made literal where robots rule the land (Althusser 68). It is true that they rule by force (sentinels and agents) and these constitute the Repressive State Apparatus, but their primary force of subjugation is the matrix, their ISA. The film traces the path of one man, Neo, in his painful progress from the ideology of the matrix to the "real world," or the ideology of the "real."2
The matrix, unlike the ideology of the "real," is explicitly defined along Althusserian lines as an ISA. Althusser identifies ISAs as "a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer" (Althusser 73). Just as the "machine" of the state is taken literally, ideology as "reality" is taken literally.
The matrix has the idea that the world is ruled be machines and is in a state of repression. It focus on the idea that a perfect world has been created but has taken the free will of people, one of the rights that god gave us.
Having free will is a right that everyone is born with, but it’s what we do with it that defines who we are.
The film rocky shows another view on
Minority report also has the view of a perfect crime system where the crimes are predicted before they actually happen to prevent crime.
The film seven is about a murderer committing murder’s because the victim’s had committed the seven deadly sins. This film is kind of based on moral weight, but uneven. The reason for the crimininal murdering these people was because they had done wrong in the first place
Fight club shows us about how we are all conformed into society, living very monedane lives and that everyone does as they are told. “The ikea sofa” . The main theme is rage against the machine.
http://frimmin.com/movies/fightclub.php
On Christmas 2009, there was a an interesting challenge for Christmas no.1 single. Previous years the x-factor contestants had won the no.1 spot for the past 4 years. A facebook group was started against Simon Cowell and how he had taken over Christmas. The facebook was to release the single “killing in the name of” by rage against the machine. This song was very anti Christmas and was released purely to get one over on Simon Cowell, (ironically though Simon Cowell owned the record label Rage against the machine belonged to so he would still be making money.) The single did get to number 1. This goes to show how powerful the media, in this case the internet, can be.
Fmylife.com is a website that allows people to share bad experience’s with the world. Alot of it is social uncomfortably against ideology and makes homour of things that have happened to them. Even though this website is from humour purpose’s, whose to say that these social situation’s are uncomfortable.
From school, as well as learning about moral’s people also learn about social acceptability. They learn about what is considered not necessarily wrong but as strange to do. This may be inaproiate comments. If people are learning this from movies and television, then the movie might be giving wrong advice what is socially acceptable.
Quesitonaire
After giving a questionnaire to a 100 random people I began to analysis the results.
From the results I discovered that the biggest thing that people still feels is morally wrong and the least amount of people have done it is slept with a prostitute.
When researching this abit more, the reason for this is because “Society's bias views supported by Religion and Politics”
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091029045249AAcUFZK
I found this quite interesting because even though the questionnaire was talking about sexually being with a prostitute, everyone is a whore to someone to a certain level.
Another thing about this is that in other countries, prostitution is legal, coming from a western society our moral’s peoples moral’s are very different from peoples in other countries.
T.V. program’s such as diary of a call girl glorify this profession. This is an example about how the media how power and have influence to change people’s opinions. In the future, say more television programs were created like this, would the result’s of this survey could be very different.
Horror films often have a big underlining of moral issues. Film’s such as nightmare on elm street and Friday the 13th always play with the character’s choice in the film and what happens to them. On these films and similar films, the girl who has sexual intercourse with someone at the beginning of the film end’s up brutally murdered. This is theme is used strongly on Friday the 13th as the character of Jason was drowned because the camp leader where not watching him. Jason comes back from the dead to murder sexually active teenagers for being bad.
The movie genre of chick flick/romantic film use moral’s but in a good light. Often these films that the nice guy can get the girl. It shows how being good in this world lead’s to reward.
The film of pulp fiction has be said to be “morally irresponsible” because in one scene in particular it glorifies drug’s. The scene almost makes the drug seem like pornographic and watch something tempting and desirable.
The genre of sci-fi often use issues that are going on at present but use’s another world/time to address them.
Events in real life affect films and there outcomes. When September the 11th occurs, various films that were coming out around that time were either delayed or edited due to the incident. Some of these movies included collateral damage being delayed because of the a building in L.A was attacked in the film. Another film affected by the attack was Spiderman, some of the scenes had to be edited and changed involving the twin towers.
If the attack had never happened then the issues concerning the film’s would not have been a problem which goes to show that people moral’s and attitudes do change over time, whether it’s due to an incident or that the event has become desensitised because less and less people are involved as time goe’s on.
Another issues about moral’s is when an unfortunate event happen’s, like a disaster of something bad happens to a celebrity, eg Jade Goody, joke’s begin to circulate the country/ world, is it morally wrong to laugh at these jokes? The reason is because even though the person laughing has no involvement what so ever with the incident, they are still making fun of someone else’s misery.
Representation in film about peoples moral’s is used a lot. The bad guy with bad moral’s bad things happen to them. The same thing happen’s with the good guy.
This can be seen in such characters as
Film characters?
The character of the Joker in the batman film has no moral’s and “just want to see the world burn.” Without moral’s of some sort makes the person ethier bad because he doesn’t care about other people of insane.
Morals come into effect when interacting it someone else.
T.V characters?
The character of del boy in the sitcom only fool’s and horses has his famiy moral’s before anything else, he is always looking after his younger brother Rodney and making sure no harm come to him. He does however con people and rip’s off his friends. Because the moral weight of doing all this for his family, he is a very lovable character and lover by the nation.
The character of Gerald Butler in Law abiding Citezen show’s how the moral’s of a man can change after personal crisis happens. The character in the film has is family wrapped and murdered in front of him and the person commiting these offences doesn’t get his justice. Is it wrong for the man to go after the people who did this? Eye for an eye.
In conclusion people do have different moral’s and a variety of different opinion. These moral’s are judgement on the current ideology of the world, whether it not wrong to give to charity during a global recession or if it ok to take a life to save another.
http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2006/06/killing-innocent-child.html
Moral Weight and Moral Exceptions
Another set of moral concepts that we will have to take into consideration is the distinction between moral weight and moral exceptions.
An example of moral weight can be found in the case of a father who is out fishing with his child when the kid gets stung by a bee. Imagine the kid having an allergic reaction and the father's car will not start. There is another car nearby. The owner has left his keys in the car. Therefore, the father takes this car to get his kid to the hospital. The father's duty for the welfare of his son outweighs the wrong of taking the car.
An example of a moral exception can be found in the aversion to killing others. In fact, we do not promote a blanket aversion to killing others. Rather, we promote a moral prohibition against killing others except when the person killed is actually threatening significant harm. We are not, in this case, weighing the attacker's right to life against the victim's right to life. Rather, we say that the attacker has sacrificed or given up his own right to life, and may therefore be killed with moral impunity.
In matters of moral weight, the agent is expected to feel regret and remorse over his actions. He is expected to have an attitude comparable to, "I'm sorry, but there was nothing else I could do. If I had not taken your car to get my sick kid to the hospital, he would be dead." However, in the case of moral exception, no apology or residual regret is expected. The person who kills an attacker owes nobody an apology.
To the desire utilitarian, a case of moral weight is one in which two "good" desires come into conflict. A father is expected to have a desire to take care of his child. He is also expected to have an aversion to taking the property of another. In the scenario above, the two desires come into conflict. Desire utilitarianism states that the aversion to borrowing property should be weaker than the desire to save the life of one's child. So, the father may take the car. However, the outweighed aversion still exists -- still should exist, and it leaves an emotional residue. This aversion is the source of the regret and remorse that lingers as a result of his actions.
The case of an exception recognizes the fact that desires can be complex. Desires can be as complex as the propositions that make up their object. As a result, it is possible to promote a desire that, "I not kill anybody who is not aggressively threatening others with immediate harm." This type of desire allows a person to kill in defense of self and others without the slightest twinge of regret or remorse.
Once again, I remind the reader that it makes little sense to design morality for strange and exotic situations. We have enough to do in using praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to create the desires and aversions that will serve people in average, every-day circumstances. These every-day desires might have strange implications when an agent finds himself in a highly improbable situation. That is simply a fact of life.
