Violence on TV

makes us violent - true or false?

Did anyone else look at this thread title and think of that Gilda Radner routine?





[Edited on Sep 19, 2004 by Kris7]

i grew up on gi joes, transformers, heman, rambo, chuck norries, a-team, and many other shows that would be considered violent.

i'm fine, i've never gotten into a fight, other then once in grade 4.

personally i dont think it 'makes' anyone violent, you do need some checks and balances on things.

ie, parents shouldn't let the boob tube 'teach' their kids.

that, is where the 'blame everything on tv' is coming from.

I feel sorry for small children these days -- we're going to be the first generation that's going to be "harder core" than our children.

No. Violence on TV does not make people violent. Violence on TV with a lack of decent parenting and education might.

If I ever have kids, I'll let them watch TV. And they'll probably see some violent shows. The thing is, I'll be damn sure to teach them that TV is not real life and that violence is not acceptable.

If you don't want your kids to be horrible little shits teach them how not to be horrible little shits.

Fat Freddy's Cat!!



-Hippy!

true

i argue nature over nurture - my parents let me watch whatever i wanted and let me get into fights (and lose) - basically do whatever i want

i never became violent - i was able to become a rational non-violent adult on my own - think there has to be a genetic predisposition towards violent behavior - perhaps tv can help trigger it

All i watched when i was younger were violent TV shows. I dont try to fix a situation with violence, because they can be talked through or just left alone. Its the same thing with music. If a child doesnt know the difference between: what you hear and see, and what you should do in situations.

I think violent people are naturally attracted to violent media. People, looking for a scapegoat, mistakenly blame the media.

agreed.

How about a little back up on that? From either of you.

ok. the advertising industry is a trillion-dollar business based on the simple idea that people's behavior is influenced by images and ideas that they see repetitively, whether in positive or negative context, and whether they like it or not. it's a well established fact that television advertising works, hence the lucrative ad industry. people in general will almost always choose a brand they've heard of over a less expensive "no-name" brand, even though they are obviously utterly ignorant of the relative merits of the two products.

this is all very simple, verified, intro level stuff. in advertising, if you were to question whether or not people's behavior is influenced by what they see on television, you'd be considered a lunatic-- the very question flies in the face of decades of evidence.

to hold as self evident that people are influenced with regards to something as inane and superficial as fabric softener choice and yet deny that they are affected by something as visceral as violence seems foolish.

unfortunately, the idea is repugnant to those of us who despise organised censorship and will defend free expression to the death, and is therefore pretty widely rejected by many otherwise free thinking and reactionary individuals. I love my GTA and my Kill Bill as much as the next guy and I don't have any solutions for the concurrent preservation of absolute free expression and the reduction of violence in the media, but I feel like the issue is a huge pink elephant in the corner of the room that a lot of people are refusing to see.



edit: when was the last time you saw someone write something that long without an edit?

[Edited on Sep 19, 2004 by coughee]

What violence... all i see is drama from all the reality shows....

The difference is that I have every intention of buying fabric softener, regardless of whether or not I see an ad for it. All an ad does is influence which brand I purchase, and the only reason it's able to do that is because I have no preconceived moral objections to fabric softener or laundry and am therefore open to fabric softener suggestions.

and violence is a fundamental and ancient aspect of human nature. think of it as a far deeper intention than buying fabric softener, and far older than ethics.

I wasn't aware that there was any such established fact except at the highest level of generality.

Many MANY individual advertising campaigns fail. Many products bite the dust, many businesses fail, despite all their efforts at promotion, brand enhancement and name recognition. Ask John Kerry how easy it is to "persuade people" based solely on name recognition.

People can be influenced by TV advertising, and I'm sure people can become desensitised to violence. But there isn't some simple causal chain that says "see violent imagery => increase propensity to undertake violent acts".

This is a variation of the hypothesis that "porn causes rape." I'm sure many rapists have violent porn imagery in their private stashes but I'd be hesitant to jump to any causal connection about how the porn "caused" them to become rapists.

Really? The idea that we're purely "socially constructed" -- that is, the sum product of all our "environmental experiences", including our schooling, family environment, and exposure to" the media" -- is right at the heart of how modern academic humanities disciplines view people.

For a while, this led to a strong tendency for those on the left to decry porn, and violent imagery. Now that the postmodernists have mostly taken over, there's a far more sanguine and agnostic view about such things being "individual choices", which is why you can get postmodern feminists arguing that something like Suicidegirls represents "empowerment of women" rather than "exploitation of women".

I think the huge pink elephant that no-one's talking about is the biological roots of all of this. Why would we be influenced towards violence by seeing others doing it, unless we had some kind of predisposition towards violence "hardwired" into us in an evolutionary sense? Yet, and I've noted this elsewhere, there's an overwhelming tendency amongst today's groovy young college grads to deny that biology plays any part in anything to do with human behaviour.

I'd be inclined to agree with this, but I'm not sure how it fits with what you were saying before...

Nevermind, someone else made a better post in response.

[Edited on Sep 19, 2004 by robosagogo]

I don't see a conflict.. it seems to me to tie together pretty neatly.

you set this up as a contradiction, but as it seems to me to be something of a non-sequitur, I believe you may have missed my point.

of course commercials don't forcibly compel us to buy a product, but they do influence our choice. this is, as I was saying, the basis of modern advertising. studies have shown that, while entertaining commercials are more effective than obnoxious ones, brand awareness is really the most essential thing. people are influenced by ads they hate on the exact same level as ads they enjoy, indicating that mere repetition is disturbingly fundamental in its effect on our behavior and beliefs (note that the bush administration find this a very effective tool ). it's not just a theory; ad campains put it into practice.

I never claimed that TV puts knives in people's hands and makes them go insane (on my more cynical days I might-- but I can't back it up rationally), I just said that-- and I can't imagine any clearer way to put it than to say it again the same way-- to hold as self evident that people are influenced with regards to something as inane and superficial as fabric softener choice and yet deny that they are affected by something as visceral as violence seems foolish.

oh bullshit. that's a low blow and I resent the connection. the proper paralell would be to say porn makes people horny. do you deny that?

I'm tempted to call this another non-sequitur. I wasn't talking about mainstream academic circles. tabula rasa, by the way, was always bullshit and has pretty well started to lose credibility in the past few years.
I was talking about people like us, who like porn and movies and video games, and if I may make a not-so-bold generalization, are big fans of free speech. People like us have a hard time considering the viewpoint that media violence influences behavior because to admit to the presence of a problem is to admit to the need for a solution, and we HATE censorship. the discourse is also crippled by an unfortunate association with tort-happy soccer moms and religious fundamentalists, but if jerry falwell told me that 2+2 = 4, I'd have to say he was right.

Well, the proposition was that violence "makes us violent", and you agreed with it.

I think our disagreement is boiling down to the fact that we interpreted that differently.

I read it as a stronger proposition than you seem to have. You're arguing, I think, violence on TV as a proximate cause, part of a set of influences on us that can (in some combination) lead to violent actions, but that it's not the fundamental and underlying determinant.

I took it as an ultimate cause proposition: that violence on TV (or in the media generally) "creates" violent tendencies where they otherwise would not exist, and it's that that I was rebutting.

Since I appear to be rebutting something you were not arguing, I don't think we're disagreeing about much at all, really. And I'm very glad to hear you're not a tabula rasa fan. Scarily many people still are.

yeah, I think we're more on the same page now. you are right that I don't believe that media violence causes real world violence all by itself, but I do maintain that, with repetition, and in combination with good old human nature, violent acts are committed that would not occur in the abscence of bloody TV and video games. most importantly, I don't think that's a sign of insanity or the confusion of TV with reality, I think it's just a kind of fucked up reaction of ancient impulses to modern culture.

I suspect you aren't willing to go quite that far.

I have no problem with it... in fact, I think they're rather pretty.

Not violets? Violence?

Well, as a whole, the human race is disposed to watching acts of violence. Its been going on since written history started. Now that its more readily available, we're getting more and more hostile to each other. Do the math. However, I am all for it because sometimes, I need to watch stuff blow up.

I'm of the opinion that violence can exacerbate individuals who are already inclined towards violent behavior for one reason or another. It seems to me violent children seek out violent media to consume, be it television or film, video games, music, and so on. The ideas expressed in gratuitiously violent media reinforce their own ideas and wear away their ability to see the application of violence any more than one-dimensionally.

I see the same thing happen with politics and sex.

Edit: Going back over the posts I didn't read... I've just repeated arguments already stated. Oh well. Obla di obla da.

[Edited on Sep 19, 2004 by Cigarette]

I concur!

Tane