Julia Michels

12-1-15

Martin

Community Power

If We Burn, You Burn With Us (Unless You’re Real)

The very foundations of the United States of America were built from rebellion and revolution. From the Boston Tea Party and overthrowing the British government during the Revolutionary War to the Stonewall Uprising and protests of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and to Ferguson, the US has a long-standing culture of non-routine collective action. In many of those cases, the civil disobedience was later glorified, the goals of the activists achieved. Some of these events helped to define and found the country. Throughout US history, however, such collective actions have over and over again been redefined, reclassified, and even differentiated between through different words and meanings.

The actions in Boston were actions of rebellion, actions of valor and bravery that led to the conflict known today as the Revolutionary War. The events at Stonewall, though sometimes referred to a riot, are generally considered an uprising of people fighting bravely for their rights. In Ferguson, there are riots. There is looting and violence and uncontrollable anger. It is likely not irrelevant that the events most respected and glorified are those that resulted in ‘wins’ for those involved, but most interesting is how US culture and society talks about different incidents of rebellion, and especially, it views the use of violence in achieving the goals of a movement. Especially interesting, then, is the different types media portrayal of non-routine collective action, and how that could affect the way society responds to these events. In feature films about violent collective action, whether they be fictional or historical, those using violence to fight against powerful regimes are usually portrayed as heroic, while at the same time, news media depicts people involved in real life action as criminals, with each portrayal affecting how these events are viewed by US society.

In choosing media sources for my research, I decided I should use two feature length films about fictional events, and five to seven different news clips about real-life occurrences. In order to keep from writing a novel on this topic, I determined that I would also limit the choice of films to popular, dystopian films in the last decade, in order to keep the films somewhat separate from real events, and in order to better understand the disconnect viewers might have from the events of the films. The films I settled on are The Hunger Games and V for Vendetta, whilst allowing myself the use of the sequels to the first, if applicable. Each of these films takes place in a dystopian future, and each involves a rebellion against those in power, both using violence. My selection of news media clips was a little more difficult, as I was mostly limited to what was easily available on the internet. Most of the clips I found by searching on YouTube for news clips about known incidents of non-routine collective action within the last 50 or so years. While most of the clips I found revolve around recent events in places such as Ferguson and Baltimore, I did find some older clips that I thought would do well to provide some alternative sources.

After settling on my media sources, I watched through each one, taking notes of themes and topics that appeared in them with regards to riots, rebellion, the circumstances depicted around them, and the framing that the media used to discuss those occurrences. After, I compared and contrasted those themes, taking note of patterns within each group (feature films, and news media) as well as of the differences and any similarities between the groups. The first concept that formed a pattern amongst the feature films was that of martyrs. In The Hunger Games, it is made perfectly clear who the martyr of the story is, and that she is indeed an innocent martyr who bears no fault for the events of the film. This character is Rue, a young black girl who is essentially murdered in games the movie casts as barbaric; games that are put on by the Capitol, the story’s form of government. Essentially, Rue is martyred by the government. In V for Vendetta, things are a little less black and white, but there are in fact two present characters that might be considered martyrs for the movement in the film. The first is the central character, V, who fights the whole film for freedom from the unjust government, only to eventually meet his demise at their hands. The second, and more likely martyr is a young girl who is shot and killed by a police officer.

In both films, it is the killings of young, innocent, and helpless girls by government forces that appears to set off violent rebellion and rioting, and in both films, their death scenes are immediately followed by moving images of people rioting (linked below in Clip 1 and Clip 2). In each case, the rioting is framed and viewed as justified, with the films using tools to see that viewers themselves see the girls as martyrs, and the rebels’ violence as both justified and necessary. Comparatively, the news clips about real-life situations all either provide no martyr, or sometimes portray police officers as martyrs. Even in the situations in LA, Ferguson and Baltimore, where the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements put forth Rodney King, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, all harmed by incidents of police violence, as martyrs, the news does not portray them this way. Instead they are presented as thugs or criminals, with news clips focusing on their criminal records or histories, or conversing about how their actions might have led up to their deaths. In one clip, three. witness testimonies are read of the death of Michael Brown. One of the three is that of Darren Wilson, the officer who show Brown, and each of the other two were in support of Wilson’s testimony, which was read aloud on the news, and included descriptions of Brown “making a grunting sound,” “bulking up,” or getting mad at Wilson and charging him full on speed (Works Cited, 4). In another clip, a reported claims that the protests in Ferguson are “based upon a lie,” and the “myth that mike brown was shot in back by a cop while surrendering with his hands up. Wrong, totally wrong,” with the reporter going on the disparage protestors and suggest that those confronted by police are responsible to do what they are told to keep from being harmed (Works Cited, 6).

Not all of the news clips followed this pattern. In many of them, King, Brown or Gray were not mentioned at all. In these cases cases, the television news discussion of the collective action made no mention at all of African-Americans beaten or shot by police, instead focusing on the violence of the riots, or in a few cases, of injuries or deaths suffered by police as a result of those riots. In one such clip, the reporters discuss the Ferguson protests as occurring in “the aftermath of the Grand Jury deciding not to indict officer Wilson,” rather than what most Black Lives Matters activists would claim, which is that the protests occurred in the aftermath of decades of systematic racism, as well as the police shooting death of Michael Brown (Works Cited, 3). Two other clips from Baltimore mention several times the number of police officers who had been injured, with one person exclaiming that one of those officers was unresponsive, all the while making no mention of Freddie Gray, who was not injured, but killed.

In other clips, the visuals provided do more talking than the reporters themselves, with images focusing on protestors committing property damage as well as looting, and images of buildings on fire. Even while reporters are describing scenes elsewhere, the camera focuses on a CVS being looted, or of police cars on fire or of protestors throwing things. In all of these clips, individual activists are almost never focused on, with the camera instead seeing people as a mass or ignoring the people entirely and focusing on physical property. This is different in the films. One of the ways in which both films force viewers to root for the rebellions is by humanizing the people involved (whereas news clips often dehumanizes them), and focusing on them instead of on the violence or the damage. Certainly, there is violence, but the most moving scenes in each film are about the people. In V for Vendetta, for example, viewers are likely to become attached not only to the main heroes of the film, but also even to the masses of people, when at the end of the film, they all take off their masks and show they are all individual, real people involved in the revolution.

It is the portrayal of heroes; too, that provides a stark difference between the films and the news clips. In V for Vendetta, we experience the story through Natalie Portman’s character Evey, who over time learns of the need for the revolution, and to whom viewers become attached and root for. Evey is us as we are Evey, just as in the film, everybody is V as V is everybody. In rooting for Evey, and seeing her as a hero, we then find ourselves rooting for the revolution. The Hunger Games is similar, with the central character, Katniss Everdeen, presented to all as a reluctant hero, but a hero nonetheless, with compassion and a desire for peace. Despite this, she does commit violence, and when she does, the viewers root for her. In both films, the rebellions are provided individual heroes, with the residing governments then portrayed as villains. The news clips, however, paint a very different picture. There is no mention of heroes within any of the protest movements. The only people individually named are usually the ones who have been killed or beaten by police forces. In fact, in many of the clips, the protestors are not only not portrayed as heroes, but as villains, with the role of hero instead being cast on police forces. Over and over, the clips discuss damage being done to police property as well as injuries sustained by police who have put their lives on the line to protect the very communities that are attacking them.

Many of these clips also admit that there may be individual bad cops, but that cops as a whole are generally good, thereby suggesting that the problem is one of a small, individual scale despite protestors’ claims otherwise. It is the protestors’ claims that the issue is of systematic police racism and brutality that can be seen in the films. In both movies, the narrative recognizes that although there may be good individuals in the systems of power, the systems as a whole are bad and must be destroyed as a whole by whatever means necessary, therefore justifying not only violence against property, but the violence against people the rebels use. This is made especially obvious in especially The Hunger Games, when over and over again, the film shows us the violence being perpetrated against the people by the government, with people starving and children being murdered. The framing within the news clips, then, not making such statements, put forward the violence used by protestors us entirely unjustified. This is done so by keeping from focusing on the violence done unto the protestors that preceded their own violence, and furthermore, through usage of language that gives viewers negative images of the protestors.

Throughout the small sample of eight clips selected, the protestors were referred to as looters, vandals, hoodlums, rioters, snipers, killers, and angry, violent, brick-throwing protestors with unbridled lawlessness. Certainly, any person to fit even just a few of these descriptions is a terrible person, and the use of such language to describe them, just like the use of the word riot rather than rebellion, is meant to frame the protestors in a negative light. The heroes in the movies, however, are heroes. They are brave and compassionate and they (often selflessly) stand up for what’s good.

The comparison between the two portrayals, fiction and film and news media clips, can be taken one step deeper, with regards to Useem’s theories of Breakdown and Resources Mobilization. For while it is usually agreed upon that real life movements tend to work with aspects of each theory, neither the films or news clips studied portrayed them as such. In both movies, but especially in V for Vendetta (as seen in Clip 2 below), the rebellions are framed as portrayals of resource mobilization, with the movements carefully planned out to utilize all the resources available, including violent action, to achieve their ends. This is done so positively, of course, with the actions framed as necessary and justified. Additionally, despite a clear portrayal of resources mobilization theory, there are some hints of breakdown within the movies, each time with the martyrdom of characters such as Rue and the little girl, wherein those killings immediately set off violent rioting.

The same cannot be said, however, for the news clips. In these, the movements are almost always framed as portraying breakdown theory, with discussion of protestors being highly emotional and reactionary with no real goals beyond showing anger over the police violence. In this, much of the news coverage tends to miss that many of these movements have also formed out of economic needs and disparity as well as decades of experience with unfair policing and brutality, with the incidents of police brutality then possibly being used as mere catalysts of movements rather than the inciting force. This explanation allows for both resource mobilization theory and breakdown theory, but is not considered within any of the clips. The power of framing in different mediums of media, both popular and real news coverage, is incredibly influential, often affecting public opinion on incidents. This is to such a degree that even when incidents extremely similar to real-life ones are portrayed in fiction, the public opinion of those fictional events may differ completely to the public opinion of the real-life ones they mirror. In The Hunger Games, for example, the rebellion is portrayed as a positive movement with heroes and martyrs and an organized purpose. Millions of viewers have seen the movie and almost all of them support that fictional rebellion, and see the violence they use as justified. News media clips, however, have portrayed the movement in Ferguson as dangerous riots, and the protestors as violent and lawless criminals and vandals, and the police themselves as heroes. This result of this framing is that many of the people who rooted for the rebel movement in The Hunger Games, are set entirely against real-life protestors who are fighting similar real-life causes to the fictional ones in movies, and see their own violence, even that against property, as unjustified.

Works Cited

  1. "Baltimore Riots News Coverage (April 27, 2015, 5:00 PM)."YouTube. Ed. AbsolutelyDefine. CNN. YouTube, 27 Apr. 2015. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <
  1. "Breaking News: BALTIMORE PROTESTERS ATTACK POLICE - POLICE BRUTALITY (Baltimore Protest / Riot)."YouTube. Ed. News Channel. Fox News. YouTube, 27 Apr. 2015. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <
  1. CNN. "Riots, Bullets, Tear Gas in Ferguson."YouTube. YouTube, 25 Nov. 2014. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <
  1. "Ferguson Riots Looting LIVE- Ferguson Protestor Grabs - CHAOS IN FERGUSON."YouTube. Ed. Lucylove. YouTube, 24 Nov. 2014. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <
  1. "Los Angeles Riots, 1992 (1)." YouTube. Ed. Inglewood63. ABC News. YouTube, 22 Oct. 2011. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <
  1. "Megyn Kelly Absolutely Unloads Over Media's Ferguson Coverage: 'Enough Is Enough!'"YouTube. Ed. Sophia Duffy. Fox News. YouTube, 13 Mar. 2015. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <
  1. "'Stop Blocking My Camera!' Geraldo Nearly Comes to Blows with Baltimore Protester."YouTube. Ed. YouHotNews. Fox News. YouTube, 28 Apr. 2015. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <
  1. The Hunger Games. Dir. Gary Ross. Perf. Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Banks, and Stanley Tucci. Lionsgate Films, 2012. Blu Ray.
  1. V for Vendetta. Dir. James McTeigue. Perf. Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, and John Hurt. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD.
  1. "Watts Riots News Reel."YouTube. Ed. Sekoust. Universal News. YouTube, 10 Dec. 2006. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <

Clip 1: Hunger Games, District 11 Riot:

Clip 2: V for Vendetta, The Dominoes Fall:

Mockingjay Part 1, Blowing up the Dam:

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