I tend to think of people being responsible for their own actions. Violence is perpetrated by people, not by TV. People shoot people, not guns. I think it is a mistake to to blame the medium rather than the agent. I also think that mistake is common.
Cigarettes don’t kill people; smoking cigarettes does. Cars don’t kill people; driving does. Lots of research into the effects of the media does find correlations between TV viewing of violence and rates of violence on the street or of desensitization to violence. Other research also suggests that exposure to violence in TV or movie programming provides episodes of catharsis, in which violent desires are satisfied through viewing rather than acting out.
Violence is real. It is fascinating because the potential for our own personal reality resides behind our viewing of acted out violence. We imagine it involving us. Violence in the news makes us aware that it happens to real people just like us. Seeing violence is practice for the possibilities of our own lives. So is seeing kindness. We live beyond ourselves. Others affect us; we affect others. We decide how we will present ourselves to others; we also decide how we will receive the behaviors of others toward us.
More than our responsibility for our own violence, we are responsible for our own viewing. Do we see violence in principled ways? For pure recreation? For catharsis? For inspiration?
The most violent scenes I’ve ever watched live were broadcast first on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I couldn’t help thinking how much what I was seeing reminded me of a Die Hard movie. There is a point to that: TV and movie violence provide practice runs. Just as children have nightmares of their parents’ deaths as practice for what will probably be the real thing later, we practice facing violence by imagining it on the screen. We confront our fears.
The towers and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania had a clarifying effect for me. It was real time viewing, unlike the after the fact viewing I’d had of embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole and the first attack on the World Trade Center. I didn’t really have to confront them because they were over before I knew about them. I saw the results, but I didn’t see it happen. On 9/11 I saw the bodies falling at the same time they fell.
I have a much more focused mind on matters of world affairs now. I know more of what I think. Watching the 9/11 scenes simplified life for me, and I owe that simplification to televised violence. That’s a positive thing.
Cigarettes don’t kill people; smoking cigarettes does. Cars don’t kill people; driving does. Lots of research into the effects of the media does find correlations between TV viewing of violence and rates of violence on the street or of desensitization to violence. Other research also suggests that exposure to violence in TV or movie programming provides episodes of catharsis, in which violent desires are satisfied through viewing rather than acting out.
Violence is real. It is fascinating because the potential for our own personal reality resides behind our viewing of acted out violence. We imagine it involving us. Violence in the news makes us aware that it happens to real people just like us. Seeing violence is practice for the possibilities of our own lives. So is seeing kindness. We live beyond ourselves. Others affect us; we affect others. We decide how we will present ourselves to others; we also decide how we will receive the behaviors of others toward us.
More than our responsibility for our own violence, we are responsible for our own viewing. Do we see violence in principled ways? For pure recreation? For catharsis? For inspiration?
The most violent scenes I’ve ever watched live were broadcast first on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I couldn’t help thinking how much what I was seeing reminded me of a Die Hard movie. There is a point to that: TV and movie violence provide practice runs. Just as children have nightmares of their parents’ deaths as practice for what will probably be the real thing later, we practice facing violence by imagining it on the screen. We confront our fears.
The towers and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania had a clarifying effect for me. It was real time viewing, unlike the after the fact viewing I’d had of embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole and the first attack on the World Trade Center. I didn’t really have to confront them because they were over before I knew about them. I saw the results, but I didn’t see it happen. On 9/11 I saw the bodies falling at the same time they fell.
I have a much more focused mind on matters of world affairs now. I know more of what I think. Watching the 9/11 scenes simplified life for me, and I owe that simplification to televised violence. That’s a positive thing.
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