How do movies and television influence people's behavior?
A famous scientist once mentioned a television as a dumb box. This definitely makes sense in some cases when we watch television without thinking. It also makes sense with movies in a same way. By absorbing information given by Television or movies without filtering in our head, we get to copy the fashion , words , actions or thoughts.
TV can lead young kids to a disaster. Some young boys tend to follow actions that show in the movies or tv that seems cool. That action could be baseball hitting posture or hiphop dance. However if that action is intended to show toughness or power of the character, its better not to follow doing it. For example, in the U.S one of two young boys who tried to do the wrestling movement using a chair died after being hit by his friend. This sad case was a result of the tv show.
Every movies has a thesis that they initially purposed to tell the audiences. These topic idea could anything from pleading to save the earth or supporing the certain political power. I had a strong influence from the Korean movie 'While flapping the Korean national flag'. Before watching the movie, I knew very little about North Korea and even had bad feeling about it. However, the love of separated family of North and South Korea depicted in the movie was so beautiful and sad that I began to have compassion towards separated families that exists now. I no longer have any hatress to North Korea.
Whatever influence do TV and movies give us, one thing is definite. We should work hard to get only useful information from these media, not the bad ones.