Addressing specifically the question of violence and the media, The Killing Screens urges us to think about the effects of the media in new and complex ways. In contrast to the relatively simplistic behaviorist model that media violence causes real-world violence, Gerbner encourages us to think about the psychological, political, social and developmental impacts of growing up and living within a cultural environment of pervasive, ritualized violent images.

SECTIONS: Stories of Power / Happy Violence / Accelerating Violence / Violence is a Social Relationship / The Lessons of Violence / Citizenship in the Cultural Environment / What Parents, Teachers, and Schools Can Do

One of three videos in the Series of George Gerbner: On Media and Culture

Producer & editor: Robert Dinozzi
Executive producer, director & editor: Sut Jhally
Copyright 1994

George Gerbner (1919-2005) was Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania for thirty years. He was also Professor of Communication at Temple University, and founded the Cultural Environment Movement.

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New Television Rating System Is Extremely Flawed
This Progressive article (originally published March 10, 1998), by George Gerbner, examines the post-1997 US television ratings system, and reveals its flaws as a regulatory tool.

Is Media Violence Free Speech?
This Brain Tennis debate (originally published July 9, 1997) between Cultural Environment Movement founder George Gerbner and 1960s peace movement activist Todd Gitlin critically examines the television violence debate as a form of elitist cultural control.

The Man Who Counts the Killings
This Atlantic Monthly article (originally published May 1997), by Scott Stossel, provides background biography and analysis of George Gerbner's work with the Cultural Indicators pProject, "which is best known for its estimate that the average American child will have watched 8,000 murders on television by the age of twelve, is so alarmed about the baneful effects of TV that he describes them in terms of "fascism"."

Reclaiming Our Cultural Mythology: Television's global marketing strategy creates a damaging and alienated window on the world
In this In Context article (originally published in The Ecology of Justice, Spring 1994), George Gerbner writes, "The alienating culture of television has taken the place of other forms of communication that at one time tied us together in families and communities, and gave us all the opportunity to participate in creating and passing along our cultural story."