Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant
Thanks to early screenings and leaked footage, the much-anticipated movie Kick-Ass gained massive buzz among fanboys, bloggers (and pretty much everyone else under the age of 30) months before it hit movie theaters, poising itself to possibly be the best superhero move ever made. But when the feature finally released last month–replete with glorified violence and a young girl with the dirtiest mouth since Bob Saget–it was met with formidable resistance from parents and critics alike. Although Roger Ebert called the film “morally reprehensible”, publications such as New York Magazine and the Los Angeles Times recognized Kick-Ass as a guilty pleasure. Yes, it’s shockingly violent and raises the question of child abuse—but gosh it’s fun, and that 11-year-old really kills with some gumption, don’t she?
The strong reactions this film elicited recalled for me a recent book by media psychologist Karen Dill, titled How Fantasy Becomes Reality. Dill is well known for her research on the effects of media violence, which actually earned her a “character” in Grand Theft Auto IV, the car “Karin Dilettante.” Dill was at a conference the majority of last week, but enthusiastically agreed to take a break in between panels for a quick phone interview on the film. Here Dill continues her discussion of media’s influence on our realities. For Part 1 click here.
Michelle Rafferty: Have you only found that it’s mainly imagery that influences people and their behaviors, or have you also looked at the way text influences people? Or what do you find to be the most influential when it comes to media?
Karen Dill: I’m very interested in studying the image in media, and I believe that imagery is really powerful, because in part it evokes an immediate emotional response. It’s not really that we think through something, it’s just that we’re moved by it. For instance, I was just at a conference where someone was talking about the political power of showing a photo of a polar bear on a melting ice cap versus showing data about climate change. So when we see this polar bear our heart goes out to it, we feel so bad, it’s one polar bear, versus all this scientific data that explains this same type of thing, but not with the picture. So I do think pictures move us emotionally, maybe unconsciously in a way that we don’t have to process cognitively. On the other hand, another thing that I would focus on as moving people is simply story. It could be a movie, a narrative, it could be a book, or a textual narrative. But there’s some really fascinating research coming out of Florida by a man named Norman Holland who is a psychologist and he has a book called Literature and the Brain, and wh