Media Analysis

Media Analysis

Synopsis

The piece of media that I have used for the analysis is a film named, 'Natural Born Killers'. This movie was filmed in 1994 and based on two teenagers, Mickey Know and his wife Mallory having discontent against the rednecks. After that they begin killing the different people and begin deciding the fate of others on their game of "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe". Both the killer were youth figures having the age of 18 and showcasing themselves as teenagers. After they had got rid of their final victim who was a waitress, they left a cook as a sole survivor so that he can tell the story of their eternal love of the delivery boy Mickey Knox with his customer Mallory Wilson.

They start killing people including Mallory's father for abusing her and even her mother too. Although, they left Mallory's younger brother alive and told him to live free. Afterwards, their endless rampage began to start and had gained popularity with the help of Wayne Gale. They hit one countryside after another and even met their counterpart Jack Scagnetti. Just before the trial of them, the reporter had them interviewed thereby gaining enormous lead in the television ratings and also caused a grand deal of havoc within the prison as well as nationwide. The story is the depiction of exploiting role of media along with the public opinion and attitudes of psychopaths (IMDb, 1950).

Criminological Theory

Although there are several theories for depicting the plots of criminal minds. However, as per the behavioural characteristics of the two murderers are found to be related to individual traits and fell in the psychological criminology domain. This theory is mainly based on the analysis of traits which can be the customary pattern of behaviours, emotions, as well as thought. As per the perspective, the traits vary from individual to individual and take time to stabilize. Moreover, these traits also influence the behavioural traits (Kassin S., 2003).

In the individual traits domain, Gordon Allport was the founding father of this specific type of criminological traits study. He refers the traits as dispositions sometimes in his literature. In his perception, the central traits are common in an individual's character and the secondary traits are quite marginal. Among them are 'Common Traits', which are found within the cultural domain, and sometimes exists between the different cultures. Cardinal traits are those traits having strongly recognizable behaviours. At the time of Allport, the theorist focuses on the group as well as individual's statistics. Allport named them as nomothetic and idiographic (Allport, G.W. & Odbert H.S., 1936).

There are huge numbers of ways to determine the core traits which will be helpful to recognize as well as describe the personality of criminal. Summarizing the work of Gordon Allford, Hans Eysenck summed up the key behavioural traits into three major groups; namely, introversion/extraversion, neuroticism/Emotional stability and psychoticism (Eysenck, H.J., 1992).

Another common theory is the five-factor theory, which is put forward by Carrell and Eysenck. Researchers have argued that Carrett has emphasized ...