Commentary by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Years ago while talking to his mother I noticed a six years old with an innocent angelic face looking at a sales catalog. His birthday was coming up so I asked him, “Do you see something you want for your birthday?”
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
When they really enjoy the very best fatalities
Commentary by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Years ago while talking to his mother I noticed a six years old with an innocent angelic face looking at a sales catalog. His birthday was coming up so I asked him, “Do you see something you want for your birthday?”
He looked up and smiled broadly. “Yes,” he said, “I want this video game.” From the description in the catalog, I was a little surprised that it was an extremely violent game. So I asked him, “Why this game?”
He smiled again, “It has the very best fatalities.”
“Excuse me?” Darn earwax, I must have heard wrong.
“This game has the very best fatalities,” he repeated.
His mother did not pay the slightest attention so I asked, “What are fatalities?” He looked up and said, “When people die.”
“What makes them the very best fatalities?”
He broke into a grin. “That is when the blood spurts out and their bones show and the skin burns off while they die.”
His mother gave me the look, “boys will be boys.” Later I asked her if she thought it was good that a six-year-old wants a game featuring death. She told me most young kids feel the same which is why there are so many violent games on the market.
I persisted, “That begs the question. It does not matter that they like it, my question is if it is good for them.”
There has been much concern about violence in our society. Some people think the violence is caused by a lack of communication. I believe we have so much violence because many Americans like violence. The enjoyment of violence, for itself, is a product of the American entertainment industry.
Violence in America is promulgated by those people who find violence enjoyable. Much of the violence in America happens because the perpetrator simply felt like hurting someone. Guns and knives are not the cause; rather, the source is the sickness of enjoyed violence within our society.
There are gentle people and violent people here in America. It is hard to spot any difference in their appearance. The lambs and lions look alike. They lay down together but only one gets up. The difference is lions enjoy the violence while the lambs do not.
I accept that there are times in our lives when violence may be the only option. Still, much of the violence in our society is not needed; it is promoted as personal enjoyment. Even after thousands of years of human intellectual advancement, the same blood lust central to the society which enjoyed going to the Roman Coliseum to watch gladiators kill each other, is alive and well in our own society.
Can we lump those who enjoy watching violence with those who enjoy doing violence? Research certainly does suggest strongly that there is a connection. What is experienced abstractly in a movie theater is often repeated in life. The people who enjoy watching violence may not always commit violence, but statistics indicate that as more people watch violence, we have more violent crime. The reason gangs all over America look and act like gangs in Los Angeles is they are copying what they have seen on television. Do gangs kill people because they have to or they want to? It is their blood lust which drives the violence. They enjoy doing it.
I suspect the government cannot change this, only each of us can protest with our friends. At least we can try. Some people want laws keeping violent games from kids but these are already in effect. There are rating systems and movie theaters make sure kids do not see “mature content.”
The system breaks down right with parents allowing children access to these materials. They say when they were children they played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, etc. and see how they turned out. But they did not revel in violence for violence sake like this generation.
President Theodore Roosevelt liked to say, “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” Amen, we know where to look for the problem, it would seem that is where we must look for a solution
I cannot see a nanny state screening content specific to each child as much as the nanny state would like that much control. One approach would be to (gasp) ban certain media content but can we legally define inappropriate violence? We have been in these waters before in the issue of pornography. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.”
