Does Hollywood Need Guns?
Guns have been an iconic prop of Hollywood storytelling since the early days of the industry. The genre of gangster movies of the 1930s could not have existed without guns, and the same for the popular TV Westerns of the 1950s. What made those stories engaging was the melding of guns with narratives that were true to their genre. Gangsters need guns just as much as the inhabitants of the Wild West. But in today’s world, the proliferation of guns is creating a crisis of major proportions. The ease with which Americans can obtain assault-style guns is turning our cities into the wild west once glorified in the Westerns of the 1950’s.
While it is difficult to disentangle the role that Hollywood storytelling has on the growth of gun use in the U.S., there is no doubt that gun use has proliferated in popular movies and TV shows, especially in crime-related genres. In our research over the past decade at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, we have documented the rise in gun portrayal in popular PG-13 movies and TV-14 television shows. We have also shown that the use of guns in popular screen narratives is seen as acceptable by parents of children ages 15 and older when the guns are used for justified reasons. These include defending oneself or friends and family from others who pose a threat. When Bruce Willis in the Die Hard franchise shoots the bad guys even indiscriminately, he is seen as a hero worthy of emulation.
These attitudes are also observable in young viewers of these kinds of violent entertainment. In a study we conducted with late adolescents, ages 18 to 22, we found that viewing movie clips of justified gun violence was tracked by areas of the brain typically associated with approval. But when the gun violence was seen as unjustified, young people’s brains displayed a pattern more in keeping with disapproval.
We think these findings point to problems with Hollywood’s glorification of guns. Unlike other consumer products, guns are not advertised to the general public on major forms of media. You will not see an ad for a gun on TV or in popular magazines. The gun industry doesn’t need those sources of marketing when it can rely on Hollywood to feature guns as a justified form of self-defense. Not only does Hollywood promote guns, but it also increases fears of crime when it shows the need for guns as a form of protection.
We know that such portrayals are more likely to influence young viewers who are learning about the world through screen media. Research conducted in the 2000s found that adolescents who viewed a lot of films that featured smoking were more likely to initiate smoking. We do not have similar research on guns. But we have looked at changes in gun use in popular TV shows from 2000 to 2018 and found that as the proportion of gun use in violent scenes increased over that time, the proportion of homicides committed with guns also increased, especially for young people ages 15 to 24.
The film industry responded to concerns about featuring smoking in movies by reducing the use of unnecessary use of cigarettes, especially in PG-13 movies that do not restrict viewing. Why can’t the industry do the same for guns? In other words, do we really need to rely on guns to make violent stories appealing? Can’t Hollywood tell compelling stories about crime without overdoing the use of guns?
Dan Romer
Research Director, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania