Some Material Unsuitable
In the days since the terrible Newtown shooting, the media
has been filled with articles, editorials and op-eds on the issue of guns and
gun control. Many call for renewed efforts to revive or institute bans on this
weapon or that armament accessory. Those opposed to regulating guns have cited
– among other things - a decline or degradation of American cultural standards.
Video game and movie violence are included in this list of cultural issues
along with divorce and single parenthood, medical and societal standards for
treatment of mental illness and the de-emphasis of religion in daily life.
Focusing on the first two, video games and movies, is
relevant as they appear to capture a significant portion of the attention and
free time of young males. Coincidentally or not, young males seem to be the
exclusive perpetrators of these horrible crimes.
So what is it about video games and movies that might cause some
to look at them as a causal agent for violent acts? Perusing the New York Times
website recently, here are two descriptions that we find:
Reviewing a video game called Dishonored:
The
game encourages players to resist employing the many creative methods of
killing that it offers. You’re rewarded for the indirect approach: sneaking
around corners, over roofs and through tunnels, and eavesdropping on characters
who provide clues to your target’s whereabouts. But there’s nothing to stop you
from making Corvo charge right through the front door and kill everyone in his
path.There are many ways to accomplish each mission. Corvo can assassinate his
enemies — or bystanders — with his blade, or he can choke them into
unconsciousness with his hands. (New York Times, 10/15/2012)
Reviewing the new Tom Cruise movie Jack Reacher:
Written
and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and adapted from “One Shot” the
ninth in Lee Child’s series of macho best sellers, “Jack Reacher” brings its
hero to Pittsburgh, where a sniper has just shot down five innocent people,
including a nanny accompanying a small child, in broad daylight. (New York
Times, 12/20/2012)
The video game Dishonored
is recommended for age 17 and over while the rating of Jack Reacher is PG-13,
making both easily accessible to a troubled 20 year old such as Adam Lanza.
Is there even the slightest chance that repeated and
prolonged exposure to the likes of Dishonored
and Jack Reacher could push a mentally unstable person over the edge? Lanza
was described in one article as spending hours in his bedroom playing violent
video games. Colorado theater shooter James Holmes committed his atrocity at a
screening of The Dark Knight Rises of
which the New York Times movie
review of July 18, 2012 said the following:
In
“The Dark Knight Rises” Mr. Nolan, working from a script he wrote with his
brother Jonathan, further muddies the good-and-evil divide with Bane. A swaggering,
overmuscled brute with a scar running down his back like a zipper and headgear
that obscures his face and turns his cultivated voice into a strangulated
wheeze, Bane comes at Batman and Gotham hard. Fortified by armed true
believers, Bane first beats Batman in a punishingly visceral, intimate
fist-to-foot fight and then commandeers the city with a massive assault that
leaves it crippled and — because of the explosions, the dust, the panic and the
sweeping aerial shots of a very real-looking New York City — invokes the Sept
11 attacks. It’s unsettling enough that some may find it tough going.
As I recall, the juxtaposition between Holmes’s deadly
actions and the specific movie at which he chose to act received some, but not
a lot, of attention. To the extent that the movie itself was mentioned, the focus
seemed to be on the challenges that the movie studio would have marketing their
product going forward.
As a society, would we be wise to bet against a connection
between entertainment violence and violent acts? Such acts which are typically
characterized as “random.” Remember that
the protagonist of Dishonored has
the option of killing “bystanders” while Jack
Reacher kicks off with a sniper gunning down “innocents.”
In a discussion recently with my 24 year old son (a movie
buff of sorts), I attempted to get at the idea of the desensitization of
violence. I talked about how the 1991 movie Silence of the Lambs was shocking in its time for its depiction of
actual and implied violence, including torture and cannibalism. On a scale of
1-10, with 10 being the most violent movie you have seen, I asked him, how
would you rate The Silence of the Lambs?
I’d give it about a 4, he replied.
By all means, let’s have a national discussion of gun laws
and agree upon what types of guns are and are not acceptable for Americans to
own. That conversation will be meaningless, however, if we do not address the culture
of violence that takes place in the darkened movie theaters and behind the
closed bedroom doors of America.
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