I mentioned that too, how every new form of information/entertainment is heralded as the downfall of civilization.
Here's the essay, if anyone cares.
Certainly there is a lot of violence in the world. Ethnic cleansing in Africa, religious hostility in the Middle East, and murder and domestic violence almost everywhere. Chechen separatists attack Russian military convoys with rocket launchers and land mines, and South and Central American drug cartels bring violence into Mexico and the southern United States. It would seem that the world is a very violent place.
At the same time, the media is very violent. The news continually assails us with images of mangled cars, missing children, and atrocities committed at home and abroad. Television shows regularly have their protagonists doing violence to other people, and rarely show the consequences of such actions. Video and computer games are almost universally violent, and allow their players, some as young as 7 or 8, to kill or maim people in exceptionally graphic ways. One may wonder if there is a connection between real life violence and media violence.
Of course there is, but it's not in the way that many activists and lobbyists in the field would like it to be. They would say that media violence spurs people to commit real life violence by desensitizing them and glorifying violence, without showing them the consequences. In reality, the connection is likely the reverse. The media is violent because mankind is violent. Media-makers create content for one reason: To make money. They make money by making content that people will want to watch, and people want to watch violence. Man has killed man since there were men to kill. The Assyrians didn't have television when they were covering pillars in the flensed skin of their enemies, and Genghis Khan's horde didn't kill 40 million people because they played video games.
Until technology abolishes scarcity of resources, people will fight over those resources. Even when there is enough to go around, people will likely find a reason to fight. Violence is as natural and prevalent on this planet as air and water.
In addition, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, “the levels of both interstate and societal warfare declined dramatically through the 1990s and this trend continues in the early 2000s, falling over 60% from their peak levels” (CSP Global Conflict Trends” 1). Compared to the long grind of attrition in World War 1, the incendiary bombing of civilian targets in World War 2, and the constant threat of nuclear holocaust in the Cold War, we are in somewhat of an age of peace. On a similar note, studies have shown that “most children may be able to differentiate between fantasy and real life, thereby inhibiting video violence from being a model for aggressive behavior” (Curtis 2).
It is quite clear that media violence is a result of real life violence, and not the other way around. Why then, do people insist on blaming television, games, and music for all of society's problems? The answer is simple. If it's the TV's fault a child has problems, then it's not the parent's fault. People use the media as a scapegoat because they don't want to own up to the fact that if they had sat down with their children and had meaningful conversations, the kids wouldn't have problems. In a fast-paced world where most households see both parents working 40 hours a week, it can be difficult to find time to spend as a family. One must make time however, because if parents don't show their children genuine love and attention, and don't teach their children how the real world works, they have no one to blame but themselves when the children behave in destructive ways to garner attention. Then they're diagnosed with behavioral disorders, and are given medication because the parents are too busy with their own lives to discipline their children, and the problem is never truly solved. Similarly, the fact mentioned in the second paragraph of this essay, that children as young as 7 or 8 are playing violent video games, is again the fault of the parents for not restricting their children's access to such games. Games have parental ratings so parents can make sure their children are playing games appropriate for their age.
Another point that needs to be addressed is that this isn't the first time activists have decried a form of entertainment as the downfall of western civilization. Superhero comics were seen as promoting crime in the 50s, Elvis Presley precipitated a moral panic with his music, and the 70s and 80s saw intense fear that Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplaying games were inspiring violence and suicidal tendencies, leading to the made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters and Jack Chick's patently absurd “Dark Dungeons” comic, which made the claim that roleplaying games taught children how to cast real spells. In the 21st century, the Internet has received criticism for its anonymity, leading to a Lord of the Flies situation where perfectly normal people log on and behave in aggressive and racist ways because no one can know who they really are. Of course, the previous points still apply to this. These people always had these feelings, they just didn't express them until they had a place where they could do so without fear of the consequences. The Internet is not the cause of this behavior any more than back alleys are the cause of muggings. It is merely a place where such acts can be perpetrated anonymously.
The idea that the media makes people violent is fundamentally flawed. People are violent for many reasons. They fight because other people believe or look different from them, they fight because there aren't enough resources to go around, they fight simply because it's fun. They fought before television, and they'll continue to fight even if the last television is destroyed. Media violence is a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself. People want to believe that forced outside of their control are causing society's problems, so they don't have to own up to the fact that society is causing society's problems. Violence is endemic to the human psyche because violence is how the earliest people survived in a world where you couldn't simply go to the store and buy food. It is a fundamental, immutable truth of life on Earth.
Three pages, two sources, easy-mode.
Author
Topic: Cthulhu essay on media violence (Read 1510 times)