How Violence in Entertainment Affects our Society
Although TV was still in its age of innocence when I started first grade, I can remember one recess when a group of boys ran up to where I was playing with a group of girls, threw a rope around me and said I was their prisoner. Kind of flattered to be included in their game, I trotted happily along behind them. They took me to a small enclave of trees and pulled the noose-styled rope up around my neck, while securing the other end of it around a tree branch. They decided that this prisoner must hang. I wasn't totally stupid and realized in an instant that I could actually die if I continued to go along, and thrust my arms through the noose and pulled the rope around my middle. I couldn't pull it any further down to free myself, but at least it was no longer around my neck. I continued to feel myself being pulled up from the ground towards the branch, and the rope was tightening, nearly cutting off my breathing and circulation. I was on my tippy-toes, feet barely touching the ground, when the bell rang and the children all went in from recess. Luckily for me, the teacher missed me and came looking for me. I don't know if someone told her where I was or if she just came looking on her own, but she found me and got me down. I returned to my classroom, and in the normal atmosphere, I didn't think too long about the fact that those boys actually meant to kill me. I don't know if even they realized what might have happened or if they saw the seriousness of their little game and what the consequences could have been.
My mother was, of course, horrified. She told me that these boys probably got the idea from watching Westerns on TV. She went on to tell me that people used to worry about comic books causing juvenile delinquency. How, I wondered could my "Archies" and "Mellie the Model" comic books cause that? Later, I came to realize that the boys were reading comics that showed people (usually women) getting their heads cut off and other gross things I had never even thought of.
I can remember when the movie Psycho came out. I was still in grammar school, but all the kids were talking about it and couldn't wait to see it. My sister and I, along with a neighbor girl rarely missed Saturday afternoon at the movies. It was cheap entertainment and a way for moms to get the kids out of their hair for a while, knowing they would be in a safe, public place. This time, as we made our way to the old theatre that stood in the middle of our small town, we saw that the line to get in to Psycho went all the way around the block. We also found that if you were under 17, you needed a parent with you to get in. No problem, I found a classmate standing with her father and her little brothers, and she said her dad would get us in too. As we stood in line for what seemed like eternity listening to all the bits and pieces of conversation around us, kids talking excitedly about what they were going to see, I began to feel somewhat sick inside and wondered if I really wanted to see such a movie at all and then have to carry around those thoughts. I looked at my sister and our friend and asked if they really wanted to stand so long in line or if maybe we should cut through the town plaza and go see the Western showing at another theatre. They agreed to leave and I was overwhelmed with relief that I didn't go see that movie. The next week, kids were talking about nothing but Psycho at school, and it sounded so horrible that I was all the more glad not to have seen it. Heck, I even felt sickened just hearing them talk about it. I never saw it until 20 years later as an adult, when I finally dared to rent it from a video store. By then, I had seen so many terrible, violent and gory things in the movies and on TV, that the show I was so afraid to view as a child now seemed tame to the point of almost being disappointing. I had become desensitized over a 20 year period.
My point is this; people, especially children, ARE affected by what they view as entertainment. Some will even want to carry out the things that they see. We have gone so far beyond cowboys hanging someone in a Western movie, or a comic book that shows headless people, children far younger than I was when I was afraid to see Psycho have seen the vilest forms of torture, they have seen violence towards women, untold rapes and murder, mass murders and serial killings, all in the form of entertainment. And they don't even need to leave their homes and have an adult vouch for them to get into a theatre, all they need to do is turn on their TV.
I stopped watching slasher movies sometime after the third or fourth of the "Freddy" genre. I knew as I sat there fearing for the victims and hoping they would get away, there were people out there that were thinking, "Hey, I could do something like that." Or, "wouldn't it be cool if I could carry something like that off?" Case in point, after the movie "Scream," some teenagers hanged a teen girl in the woods to finish her off, after having committed all kinds of violent acts on her. They later said that they were excited by the movie and wanted to see how it felt to actually murder someone. There have been many movies that murderers say inspired them to move forward in acts of violence, whereas before viewing said movie, they had not quite thought out their dark urges or tendencies. The student assassins of Columbine High School were said to have been big fans of the movie "Natural Born Killers." There are many other examples of kids hurting or killing someone after watching some particularly violent movie. The point is that if a person that already has psychopathic tendencies watches portrayed violence and is stimulated by it, they are apt to feel empowered to carry out what may have only been a buried thought deep in the back of their mind. Once they see it, the possibility of actually doing it is realized.
Yes, I know all the arguments. Most of us can watch violent acts on TV or in a movie all day and still carry our everyday, sane values and not feel overwhelmed to hurt or kill someone. However, people with the psychopathic tendencies I have been discussing will probably be excited by such violence and some will even become emboldened to carry out violent acts against others. I don't know why we say no, violence as entertainment doesn't lead to copycats; when someone says they were inspired to carry out their dreams in a positive way by something they watched, no one ever doubts it. People, especially young people, are influenced by everything they see, be it good or bad. What is more important, selling violence and making money, or having a social conscience in what you show? And if we did, not that I think we could, go back to community guidelines, decency codes and censorship, wouldn't underground violent films become even more popular, with people even willing to pay more to watch them? I sure don't claim to have all the answers. I know that now that we have come this far in what can be shown and accepted in the entertainment business, there is probably no turning back. . .is there?