Our always changing lifestyles are impacted by hundreds of factors, with one of the major ones being films and movies.

Flesh craving ghouls overwhelm everyone in “Night of the Living Dead“, which reveals the idea of zombies. Space explorers adventure across the galaxies in “Star Wars”, from which begins one of the biggest movie franchises. The shark infested waters of “Jaws” created the craze of sharks and suspense. Each one of these movies are different in their own ways, but there is one thing in common with each and every movie. They are shaping and altering our lifestyles, and defining our cultures.

These fantastic movies and films have been shaping us our entire lives. Some movies create noticeable impacts, and others are mild changes that may just be inside our minds. However, some movies become so popular, it’s hard to miss the impacts it has had on us, or even on our society. Over all, these impacts creating lasting impacts that are represented in all sorts of ways.

Image by Maraisea – Pixabay

The idea of the dead walking the earth was brought to view by the film “Night of the Living Dead“. In fact, the new popular television series “The Walking Dead” was based off this movie and its plot. The movie became one of the first modern horror movies to host a swarm of monsters as the antagonists.  In today’s time, horror movies have become exceedingly popular, and most of which include a similar plot to “Night of the Living Dead“.  Our culture is always being changed by what is popular to our society, and since this film, horror movies like this one are becoming more and more common. The issues that stand, are the limitations on who can watch these movies and who isn’t suited for these types of films. Some peoples minds aren’t suitable to be watching these movies. Our bodies all react differently to different levels of fear stimulated from horror films. However, horror has now become more accepted, despite it’s content. This is a growing problem that is not getting enough attention. This article shows that horror films have to potential to increase a clot in proteins.  Now that films have the ability to mess with your health, how do you feel?

Movies that contain crude violence are growing in number at an alarming rate.  To most adults this doesn’t seem to be an issue, but for children this could be a major flaw in recent move productions.  An article written by Victor B. Cline, shows that his research proves that violent films stimulate kids to make aggressive actions.  In this article, Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham lays out a scary thought when he says, “Through TV and moving pictures a child may see more violence in thirty minutes than the average adult experiences in a lifetime”.

Image by Jarmoluk – Pixabay

This terrible realization should be enough to make anyone concerned.  Later in the article, Wertham explains, “Killing is as common as taking a walk, a gun more natural than an umbrella”. Our culture has been heavily influenced by the violence of action or adventure movies and will continually be affected by them. According the ResearchGate.net, 142 out of 216 boys aging between 13-17 thought after being exposed to this media the actions taken were acceptable. If we continue to allow these films to be shown to our future generations, who knows what the outcome will be.

The most controversial impact of films is the deception of reality that they expose to society.  It is arguable whether this deception has a positive or negative impact, due to the simple fact that it has two sides to the outcome.  Either it can be perceived as a break from the stress of the real world, and freedom from it’s issues and problems, or it can be seen as an false image that creates unrealistic ideas in the viewer’s mind.  Philipp Schmerheim, author of Skepticism Films: Knowing and Doubting the World in Contemporary Cinema, explains the false reality of a film’s environment compared to ours; “Fake environment films tend to focus on the ways in which our conceptions of reality co-depend on the worldwide view of the culture we are a part of”.  By this he is showing that this “False Reality” that films create are completely dependent on where and how we live our lives.  So, if someone lives in an area with more violence, they will be more inclined to be part of a violence act if they are viewing a movie that makes them see a similar area experiencing violence.  In this case, our culture is affected by movies, yet at the same time our culture impacts the movies that are being produced and watched.

Our culture is always being impacted by the lives we live and our experiences over time.  Movies and films are one of the largest influences on our lives, which can be both good and bad.  It is clear that there are plenty of movies that have negative effects, and are created simply for entertainment purposes, but there are also cases where we are positively benefited. We cannot know where movies and films will direct us in the future, but it is almost certain that they will still be just just as influential and impacting as they are today.  Our world and it’s culture will remain touched in both negative and positive ways, yet both of which will never be forgotten.

Link to featured image – Pexels