A new study uncovers a notable increase in violent dialogue in movies over the past five decades, spanning all genres. The findings highlight the growing presence of violent language in film and its potential societal impacts.
The presence of violent language in movies has surged significantly over the past 50 years, according to an eye-opening study that scrutinized a vast database of film dialogue. By employing machine learning, researchers analyzed subtitles from over 160,000 English-language movies produced between 1970 and 2020, focusing specifically on variations of the words “murder” and “kill.”
While the use of these “murderous verbs” varied from year to year, an unmistakable upward trend emerged over the five-decade span, according to corresponding author Brad Bushman, a professor of communication at The Ohio State University.
“Characters in noncrime movies are also talking more about killing and murdering today than they did 50 years ago,” Bushman said in a news release. “Not as much as characters in crime movies, and the increase hasn’t been as steep. But it is still happening. We found increases in violence across all genres.”
The study, published online today as a research letter in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, underscores a compelling increase in violent language for both male and female characters.
Although men generally had more violent dialogue, women also displayed a significant rise over time, explained lead author Babak Fotouhi, an adjunct assistant research professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information.
“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,” Fotouhi said in the news release. “This is more evidence that violence is a bigger part of the movies we watch than ever before.”
The researchers sourced the movie subtitles from opensubtitles.org, examining the dialogue in 166,534 films. They computed the presence of “murderous verbs” by dividing the number of verbs rooted in “kill” and “murder” by the total number of verbs in the dialogue, year by year. Approximately 7% of the movies analyzed contained these murderous verbs.
To ensure a conservative estimate, the study counted only active constructions of murderous verbs, excluding passive constructions, negations and questions. This narrow focus likely resulted in an underreporting of the true prevalence of violent dialogue, as co-author Amir Tohidi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out.
“We focused exclusively on murderous verbs in our analysis to establish a lower bound in our reporting. Including less extreme forms of violence would result in a higher overall count of violence,” he added.
Highlighting the significance of the dataset, the researchers explained that no previous study has examined such a vast number of films to assess trends in movie violence comprehensively.
The trajectory of increasing violent language in movies shows no signs of reversing, according to the researchers.
“The evidence suggests that it is highly unlikely we’ve reached a tipping point,” Bushman added.
“Movies are trying to compete for the audience’s attention and research shows that violence is one of the elements that most effectively hooks audiences,” Fotouhi added.
Given these findings, the researchers advocate for promoting “mindful consumption and media literacy to protect vulnerable populations, especially children,” emphasizing the need for awareness in how society engages with media content.