Dying for Some Violence

Dying for Some Violence?
by Ana Cooke

violence 1a : exertion of physical force as to injure or abuse (as in effecting illegal entry into a house) b : an instance of violent treatment or procedure 2 : injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation: OUTRAGE 3a : intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force (the ~ of the storm) b : vehement feeling or expression: FERVOR; also; an instance of such action or feeling c : a clashing or jarring quality : DISCORDANCE 4 : undue alteration (as of wording or sense in editing a text)

violent 1 : marked by extreme force or sudden intense activity , (a ~ attack) 2a : notably furious or vehement (a ~ denunciation) b : EXTREME, INTENSE (~ pain) (~ colors) 3 : caused by force: not natural (a ~ death) 4a : emotionally agitated to the point of loss of self-control (a mental patient becoming ~) b : prone to commit acts of violence (~prison inmates) -- violently

Have you ever had one of those experiences: you're sitting on your couch minding your own business, maybe having a snack or a beer. Suddenly, five feet away, someone you hardly know grabs another guy by the shirt and starts pummeling him, and continues to do so until he's lying on the floor unconscious and bleeding. He then takes out a gun and shoots his companion in the head repeatedly, kicking the guy again for good measure, and the sight of all this happening right in front of you doesn't phase you in the slightest?
Or, you're sitting comfortably in a public place when directly before you, a woman with a head the size of a Buick pulls out a semi-automatic weapon and mows down six men in the space of thirty seconds without ruffling her mini-skirt, and you think nothing of it? Does this sound ludicrous to you? Or, which is more likely; does it sound all too familiar?

If you're anything like me, or for that matter the average media consuming American, this scenario is not only familiar, but something akin to this has occurred repeatedly, hundreds of thousands of times in your life. People are brutally beaten, tortured, maimed, dismembered and murdered right before our eyes almost every day and it doesn't phase us in the slightest. On the contrary, we enjoy it enough to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to have it happen every day, every minute, right in the middle of our homes. On televisions, and in movies, on the Internet, in video games and music, we are witness to acts of violence so often that it has become not only an accepted but expected and desired component of our lives. And the more we witness, the more violent we as a society become.

When Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine came out, people rallied behind the hilarious cultural criticism: the availability of guns made possible by organizations like the NRA, and villains like Wal-Mart and Charleton Heston seemed apt culprits to blame for the events of Columbine, while Marilyn Manson and Matt Stone seemed champions against the difficulties faced by the misunderstood American youth. Moore was hailed as a genius for his insight into the causes of violence in America. Besides, the right-wing conservative Christian groups' condemnation of the violent media had begun to grow stale.

Though Moore may have made a damn entertaining case for himself, the sad and more importantly, scary fact is, the portrayal of violence in the media actually does rot our brains and desensitize us to the existence of actual violence. Whether we want to admit it or not, thirty of years of scientific research has shown repeatedly that witnessing violence via television, movies and video games actually does make us (that's you and me, folks) more prone to act aggressively. In July of 2000, the heads of the country's major health and psychiatric organizations (Donald E. Cook, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics; L. Michael Honaker, The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the American Psychological Association; Clarice Kestenbaum, the President of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry; Dr. E. Ratcliffe Anderson, Jr, the Executive Vice President of the American Medical Association, Daniel B. Bornstein, the President of the American Psychiatric Association; and Bruce Bagly President of the American Academy of Family Physicians) released a signed statement in which they confirmed that over a thousand studies “point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.” (For those of you who are put off by the lack of absoluteness in this statement, remember we’re talking about scientists here- they’re never completely 100% sure about anything, and they don’t pretend to be just to make themselves sound more convincing, which cannot unfortunately be said of the powers that be in the one-hoss government of our great nation.) According to the statement: “The conclusion of the public health community, based on over 30 years of research, is that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior, particularly in children. It’s effects are measurable and long-lasting. Moreover, prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life […] The effects take several forms:

-Children who see a lot of violence are more likely to view violence as an effective way of settling conflicts. Children exposed to violence are more likely to assume that acts of violence are acceptable behavior.

-Viewing violence can lead to emotional desensitization towards violence in real life. It can decrease the likelihood that one will take action on behalf of a victim when violence occurs.

-Entertainment violence feeds a perception that the world is a violent and mean place. Viewing violence increases fear of becoming a victim of violence, with a resultant increase in self-protective behaviors and a mistrust of others.

-Viewing violence may lead to real life violence. Children exposed to violent programming at a young age have a higher tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children who are not so exposed.”

Now, most of us thinking people are well aware of the pervasiveness of the media. According to a study conducted in 1999, the average American consumed media like it were a full-time job, spending an average of 40 hours per week doing it. The violence of the media is undeniable. We’ve all heard the statistics: the average child will have seen over 8,000 murders by the time she starts high school. What’s even more disturbing is how much kids not only witness but seem to enjoy violence: one study found that the majority (59% for girls, 73% for boys) of fourth graders actually preferred violent video games as their favorites.

And for those of you whose mouths are forming around the words “art imitates life,” bite your tongue a minute. Whereas 87% of the crimes that occur in the real world are nonviolent, only 13% of the crimes portrayed in most programs (yes, even the supposed "reality tv" shows like America’s Most Wanted and Cops) are nonviolent. If art imitates life, than television ain't art. I’m particularly fond of film critic Michael Medved’s argument: : “The most violent ghetto isn’t in South Central L.A. or Southeast Washington D.C.; it’s on television. About 350 characters appear each night on prime time TV, but studies show an average of seven of these people are murdered every night. If this rate applied in reality, then in just 50 days everyone in the United States would be killed and the last left could turn off the TV.”

So, the media’s violent. Does that really mean that people become violent just from watching it? Let’s put it this way: according to the findings of the over a thousand studies, the correlation between media violence and aggression is higher (that means they’re more sure) than the correlation between second hand smoke and lung cancer, between exposure to lead and lower IQ score in children, between use of the patch and quitting smoking, between calcium intake and bone mass, and between doing your homework and doing better academically. Researchers are more confident that exposure to media violence causes aggression than they are that exposure to asbestos causes cancer. The level of assurance is second only to scientists’ confidence that smoking (that is, smoking your own cigarettes) causes lung cancer. So then the question is, if media violence is so bad, why don’t we hear more about it?

The reason is so obvious it’s frightening. The media’s not going to harp on the negative effects of media violence any more than the tobacco companies are going to admit that smoking causes cancer. The sad fact is, violence sells. We gobble it up like Fritos and Burger King. And like those yummy, cardiac-arrest inducing fried consumables, the media rots our souls from the inside out. But not directly. Media violence is perhaps more insidious and disgusting than fast food, because it doesn’t kill us directly. It just makes us kill each other.

So now that I’ve gone and sparked your appetite, let me give you something else to chew on. As the amount of scientific evidence that points to the effect of media violence on aggression has grown, the amount of time this topic has been addressed in (gasp!) that same media has declined. According to a study conducted published in American Psychologists: “As it became clear to the scientific community that media violence and its effects were real and significant, the news media reports actually got weaker […] In 1995, Newsweek magazine published an article that claimed there was no solid evidence that exposure to media violence increases aggression (Leland, 1995). We wrote a letter to the editor in an attempt to correct this factually incorrect statement. The reply said that they were not interested in publishing our letter.” For those of us familiar with the profit-driven structures of the corporate media, such a resistance comes as no surprise. Corporate news networks like Fox and NBC know better than to tell people that the very programming that they are watching, the programming upon which their profits are based, may actually be detrimental to the peaceful conduct of our society. If they said that, we might stop watching.

But then again, would we? Certainly none of us enjoy the thought that we may actually enjoy or be entertained by the site of someone being arrested or beaten, by a rape or a murder or by Neo blasting the hell out of the superstructure of a building with an arsenal big enough to equip the Michigan militia hanging from his belt loop. Besides, Neo was fighting the bad guys. And the people who get arrested and beaten on Cops are drug dealers and thieves. We'd like to believe we just like to see people suffer who seem somehow to deserve it (which explains our urge to make villains of innocent Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent), but such is not the case. The recent movie Irreversible featured not only the most brutal 15 minute rape scene ever shot, but ended with one of the central characters literally bashing someone’s head flat with a fire extinguisher. It was received with acclaim and garnered various awards. California just elected a governor (the former Mr. Universe) whose fame is based largely on movies in which he brandishes various automatic weapons, blows things up and kills people. And it’s not as though he always played the good guy. He's a movie star- so what if Schwarzenegger’s entire career (much like that of Michigan governor Jesse Ventura) is based largely, if not soley, on the glorification and proliferation of violence? Terminator is a classic. Isn't it?

As we continue to witness acts of violence and aggression in the 'fictional' media, our ability to distinguish and become horrified by actual, real-life violence rapidly diminishes. Despite the deaths of over 450 American soldiers and countless innocent Iraqies, the president's approval ratings are comparable to the most popular leaders of our times. Not only that, but Bush's approval ratings shot up when he donned a uniform, hopped in an airborne killing machine and proved himself a true solider (or at least how sweet he looked in a flight suit.) And sitting at home in front of our televisions, we ate it up like ants at a picnic. It's what years of witnessing violence on our tvs, on movie screens and video games has trained us to do.

Sources:

Bushman, Brad J. and Craig A. Anderson. "Media Violence and the American Public: Scientific Facts Versus Media Misinformation." American Psychologist (Vol. 56.6/7, June/July 2001) 477-489.

"Joint Statement on the Impact of Entertainment Violence on Children: Congressional Public Health Summit July 26, 2000." http://www.senate.gov/~brownback/violence1.pdf. July 18, 2001.

Posted by quan at April 4, 2004 10:01 PM