Use of 'murder and killing' words in movies has surged in past 50 years

Major study shows clear increasing trend in use of 'murderous verbs' in all genres of movies over past half century

Joaquin Phoenix in a scene from 'Joker'. AP

The use of language about murder and killing in movies has surged over the past 50 years, according to the largest study of its kind, involving more than 160,000 films.

Researchers said there was a “clear increasing trend” in the frequency of use of “murderous verbs” over the past half century – and that the trend was not confined to the crime genre. Characters in non-crime movies are also talking more about killing and murdering today than they did 50 years ago, said Prof Brad Bushman, corresponding author of the study from The Ohio State University.

The increase in non-crime movies has not been as steep as that in crime movies, but is still notable, he said. Increases in violence were found across all genres, with mentions of murder and killing rising 1.7-fold in 50 years, from 0.21 per cent of movies in the early 1970s to 0.37 per cent in 2020. The increase is about 10 points higher than in typical English use.

Prof Bushman told The National the rise could be because people are “hard-wired”, from an evolutionary perspective, to pay attention to violence. “Violence grabs our attention,” he said. “People who make movies want to grab our attention, and using violence is an easy way to do that. It also suggests that members of society like to consume violence because they watch such movies.”

Prof Bushman and his fellow researchers used machine learning to search a database of subtitles from 166,534 English-language movies produced from 1970 to 2000, calculating the amount of dialogue using variations of the words “murder” or “kill” in each of the films. No other study has analysed such a large dataset of movies.

The study counted only murderous verbs used in so-called “active construction”, such as “She killed X.” It did not count passive constructions like “He was killed by X”; or negations such as “She didn’t kill X”. Questions like “Did she murder X?” were also omitted. Less extreme forms of violence were also not included.

“We designed this to be a conservative estimate,” said Babak Fotouhi, lead author of the study and adjunct assistant research professor in the College of Information at the University of Maryland. “It is likely there was more violence in the movies than what we calculated in terms of the dialogue.”

Overall, about 7 per cent of movies had murderous verbs over the period studied. Women did not generally have as much violent dialogue as men, but they did also show increases over time.

“Our findings suggest that references to killing and murder in movie dialogue not only occur far more frequently than in real life but are also increasing over time,” said Prof Fotouhi. “This is more evidence that violence is a bigger part of the movies we watch than ever before.” The researchers say society must respond by promoting “mindful consumption and media literacy to protect vulnerable populations, especially children”.

Many medical and scientific organisations have issued warnings about the harmful effects of media violence, said Prof Bushman. “For example, exposure to violence can make people more aggressive and can desensitise them to violence,” he told The National. “Although exposure to violence can harm viewers of all ages, I am especially concerned about children.”

The upwards trend looks set to continue. “The evidence suggests that it is highly unlikely we’ve reached a tipping point,” said Prof Bushman. The study was published as a research letter in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.