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Deciphering Violence
In the current information age, Americans are bombarded daily with stories and images portraying a rising tide of violence. Drawing on media that includes television, newspaper, fiction, film, painting and photography, as well as interviews and focus groups, Karen Cerulo explores the ways in which individuals think about, depict and evaluate violence. Moving beyond typical studies that focus on violent story content, Deciphering Violence decodes the role of story structure itself and how the sequencing of facts can systematically influence our moral judgements of violent acts. The book identifies institutionalized forms of violent storytelling and raises new possibilities both for decreasing public tolerance of violence and increasing social control of the phenomenon.
202 pages, Paperback
First published June 11, 1998
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August 16, 2008
In a nutshell, Karen Cerulo makes up rules for stuff, is like wow, this explains everything, but is so, so, so not methodologically rigorous. Half her focus is on the news, and she spends the whole book saying lead instead of lede!
But more to the point, she never explains how she chooses any of her samples, then is just like check out my table, this totally works. Sorry, no. And in some of the sections, especially the one on painting, she's really stretching. Especially with the visual stuff, she never explains any of the theory behind what she's doing! It's just, "oh, people look at stuff and see it this way."
Now, I don't think I'm so special that I've been saddled with some freak brain that is completely unique from the rest of the world. But I disagree with some of her readings of this stuff, which implies to me, you know, other people do too. Which means you can't base your whole argument on effing fundamentals of cognitive processing!
Especially since you never explain any sort of biological or cognitive basis for anything, you just assume it. And have the balls to put it in your effing title! Gosh. Cerulo may be the Dave Eggers of the social sciences. At least for me, anyway.
But more to the point, she never explains how she chooses any of her samples, then is just like check out my table, this totally works. Sorry, no. And in some of the sections, especially the one on painting, she's really stretching. Especially with the visual stuff, she never explains any of the theory behind what she's doing! It's just, "oh, people look at stuff and see it this way."
Now, I don't think I'm so special that I've been saddled with some freak brain that is completely unique from the rest of the world. But I disagree with some of her readings of this stuff, which implies to me, you know, other people do too. Which means you can't base your whole argument on effing fundamentals of cognitive processing!
Especially since you never explain any sort of biological or cognitive basis for anything, you just assume it. And have the balls to put it in your effing title! Gosh. Cerulo may be the Dave Eggers of the social sciences. At least for me, anyway.
Displaying 1 of 1 review