Media Violence and Christian Ethics: 30 (New Studies in Christian Ethics, Series Number 30)
Cambridge University Press, 11/15/2007
EAN 9780521812566, ISBN10: 0521812569
Hardcover, 348 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
How can audiences interact creatively, wisely and peaceably with the many different forms of violence found throughout today's media? Suicide attacks, graphic executions and the horrors of war appear in news reports, films, websites, and even on mobile phones. One approach towards media violence is to attempt to protect viewers; another is to criticise journalists, editors, film-makers and their stories. In this book Jolyon Mitchell highlights Christianity's ambiguous relationship with media violence. He goes beyond debates about the effects of watching mediated violence to examine how audiences, producers and critics interact with news images, films, video-games and advertising. He argues that practices such as hospitality, friendship, witness and worship can provide the context where both spectacular and hidden violence can be remembered and reframed. This can help audiences to imagine how their own identities and communities can be based not upon violence, but upon a more lasting foundation of peace.
Introduction
regarding media violence
Part I. Media Realities?
1. Remembering violent news
2. Reframing news
3. Re-envisaging photojournalism
Part II. Media Fantasies?
4. Reviewing violent films
5. Reinterpreting films and video games
6. Reappraising advertisements
7. Redescribing media violence.
Review of the hardback: 'Jolyon Mitchell has written a genuinely important and ground-breaking book. Using a wide variety of evidence, and ranging widely across time and space, he explores the immensely complex relationship between Christianity and media violence. The result is a book rich in original insights, and one that combines great erudition with relentlessly probing discussion. The book deserves a very wide readership embracing, among others, theologians, sociologists, historians, and anyone interested in the contemporary media.' Dr David Smith, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge