Does the media presented in our society, by television and computer games offend you? If you said, yes, you are not alone. There are millions of people out there that who find what their eyes are watching is offensive. And there are many other people out there that who don’t find the media offensive and others who might be offended but believe in the first amendment. This paper is going to look at three articles, all written by different people, which propose the three? (Anyway, you should keep open the possibility that more than 3 views are possible.) different sides there are to media violence.
Does watching the media violence, make up all the violence a child display? Subject/verb No, according to Richards Rhodes article, “Hollow Claims about Fantasy Violence” in which he makes a point that violence in America isn’t all caused by violence on television. Experts say that by delete by just watching violence on the television, doesn’t make us violent in real-life. Studies have shown that with the increase of violence on television, which delete the homicide rates in America have been declining, even though the violence on television is rising. Many say that violence isn’t learned from mock violence, but is learned from the real-life encounters we have with violence, beginning with the beating of children by their parents when they are younger, or by peers. Even though there is evidence supporting that entertainment promotes violent behavior, it only accounts for about 10 percent of our violence, the rest coming form outside influences (328). Explain where Rhodes gets this 10% figure from. The violent behavior that is displayed by young children or by grown adults is said not to be caused by watching mock violence, but rather is caused by other factors that have happened in their lives.
Shooting, yelling, and killing. Some of the crimes committed today, are being committed by killers acting out video games they have played at home. Marching through large buildings and using various bombs and guns to pick off victims is a conventional video game scenario (330), and in the essay by John Leo, When Life Imitates Video, he explains that violence today is in an act enactment? of video games kids play everyday. In his story, he explains how the killers of the Colorado massacre ran through the hallways “crackling and shouting as though playing one of morbid video games they loved” (330). Do the kids playing these games know the difference between fantasy and reality? Many don’t, and use the video games as a “dress rehearsal for the real thing” (331). Many kids use the video games they play today as lessons for the real life thing. For example, the schoolboy shooter in Paducah, Ky, coolly shot nine times, hitting eight people , five of them in the neck or head, which gives bonus points when played in a video game (331). And now even the army is using hyper violent video games for training purposes. In many new video games the player is no longer the hero but the sociopath killer, killing elderly woman, pedestrians, and innocent by standers in video games. Even with cops showing up more in video games, kids are supposed to shoot them because they are labeled “the bad guys”, and this killing makes is more easier to shoot them in real life. Therefore, “pilots use flight stimulator, drivers on driving stimulator, and children on murder stimulators” (331).
In John Grisham’s story, Natural Born Killers , he writes about how to innocent teenagers, both with no past history of violence can watch one movie and be greatly influenced by it. The movie the teenagers watched was a movie about two lovers who decided to travel across the country and while doing so, kill 52 people in the process. Well, the two teenagers in the story see this movie and decided to act it out. But Hollywood is partially to blame; if they didn’t make movies about killing sprees, and all the money you get from killing, kids now and days nowadays wouldn’t watch these movies and imitate them. But the two kids in this story were not at all rephrase. This sounds persuasive. to blame. They both were found partially at fault and the other half of the fault came from the kids watching the movie. Explain/develop further.
Does watching the television, playing a video game, really influence our behavior? It might, and there are many sides to this issue and many debated that come from this topic. Many think that media does affect a person and their actions, and other think that is had nothing to do with it and it is just who we are. But you decided tense if media plays a part in violence or not.
