Task 4

In this scene from Scarface (1983) it shows the audience that violence is acceptable. The medium shots of Tony Montana with the machine gun show power and strength, the protagonist feels in power whilst holding the gun, it also acts as a phallic symbol to emphasise his manliness. The adult audience see the text as negatively, as it shows violence. This scene also contains bad content that children may pick up and copy, referring to the copy cat theory, which believes to inject the audience with actions and then they copy those actions.

The constant sound of gunfire may result in the audience to become desensitised to violence. Yet it can be argued that the audience could watch the film in order to be educated on the consequences of drugs and power. The audience may watch the film in order to escape from real life, as the audience's feel they need to watch a film to relax and forget their own problems. As the gangsters are wealthy and represented as powerful, audiences may aspire to these characters and do things like them.