He did a really great job with the x-axis.

It could be a rise in blood lust, it could also be laxer(word?) regulations and a similar level of blood lust. This graph doesn't mean anything outside of what you want to read into it.

good call on the speculate.

Probably because films which depict violence are just better these days. Everybody gets down on Michael Bay, but have you ever actually watched a John Wayne movie? Ugh.

Rampant speculation--maybe movies in the past had more options for shocking plot points because more things were generally seen to be socially horrifying (pre-marital sex! adulterous embraces! well-born women having to work as waitresses!)?

Now that many things are not particularly horrifying to society in general, maybe murder is just the easiest remaining way to push the "badness" button and move a plot?

Maybe movies have always tended to show 'bad' stuff to get the audience worked up, but there are just fewer things that can be assumed to universally fit that category these days.

I guess this comes down to the "people are harder to scare these days" argument that you see as an explanation for the much-increased gore in horror movies.

And since I have no study of the number of 'bad' things that happened in movies in the time periods discussed, this should again be specified as the rankest speculation.

The linked article and the title of the graph both use the word "killing," not murder. I'm curious what prompted the change of word in this post, given that killing and murder are not always synonymous.

The more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed by this graphic. The sample sizes are too small to be using percentages, and there are a bunch of explanations for why depicted killing is more common, and there's not nearly enough explanatory data.

For example, four of the 40s films are Disney animated features. Four of the 50s, the same. Four of the 60s films are also for children. In the seventies, Jaws is listed. Does that count? How about Rocky Horror?

Normally you guys post great stuff, but this graphic sucks.

Those are pretty small samples, mostly top 10s.

One factor seems to be the decline of the musical. I suspect "The Jazz Singer", "The Singing Fool" and "Broadway Melody" didn't have any killings, but they were 30% of the Twenties top ten.

There also seems to have been a decline in comedies in the top ten.

These genres seem to have been replaced by more action/adventure movies.

The big-budget, heavily-hyped "tentpole" movies tend to be action-adventure these days. I suspect if it was widened out to all movies, the rom-coms would reduce the proportion with killings somewhat.

Maybe in the 40s people had closer encounters with death and did not find it as entertaining on the screen.

I've never been one to subscribe to the theory that violent images make for violent people. Personally, I think it the other way around. I don't really have any figures to back that up, but having studied archaeology I always learned of artwork produced representing the people that produced it, so I don't see why this would suddenly change in the 20th or 21st century.

Having said that, I am pretty sick of violent movies. I don't see them as immoral or bad, but they are pretty boring and played out. I have seen more than enough explosions and gunfights, and it's pretty rare for a movie without violence to make it as more than an arthouse curiosity. Things like 500 Days of Summer are a real breath of fresh air but each time I come across them I end up realising how long it has been since I saw a film without any gunfire.

Still, there are problems with this graph (the Lion King would be counted in the same group as The Silence of the Lambs, for starters), and I don't think it is fair to imply from a very simplistic graphic that lethal violence in our society is the result of violent movies growing more popular. For one thing, violent movies wouldn't be popular if violent movies weren't popular. People may be shaped in some sense by the films they see, but the movie industry is heavily shaped by the people who go to see their films.

Where is the companion data series that shows the rates of "lethal violence" by decade?

Homicide rates per 100,000 are at a 40 year low, while depictions of homicide in film is at an all time high doesn't strike me as the point you're trying to make here.

Why would this person use descending years? That's just odd and distracting.

Hm. Interesting that personhood is equated with the ability to speak.

Good fail on the X-axis there. Way to put the graph backwards.

I'd chalk it up to the volume of movies produced.
See here: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/number-of-movies-made-per-genre-wo

(1) People hate themselves more nowadays because from infancy they've been exposed to TV ads which tell them they're ugly, fat, smell bad, and have awful hair. Therefore they hate other people for seeing them look so awful. So they like to see people killed. (2) This also explains the bigger budgets for such movies. More and more people of all ages want them. (3) There are many fewer movies made nowadays than in the past, so the predominance of violence is even more arresting.

lethal violence has been decreasing since the 90's

actually all types of crimes have been decreasing since the 90's.

source:
http://www.stateoftheusa.org/content/fbi-report-violent-crime-down.php