I’ve seen Django Unchained and Inglorious Bastards and I’ve even read The Turner Diaries. I partook more from curiosity and concern than entertainment. But I didn’t pay for any of them. I refuse to encourage that sort of thing with my financial support. I consider all of them revenge fantasies and demonization of the worst sort in that each portrays a whole group of people as evil. The heroes run around massacring others but, hey, they deserved it because the story was written such that the “hero” was justified in murdering and even torturing them. So the audience is tricked into feeling good about murdering people. That’s sick. Now tell me how that doesn’t bleed off into someone’s subconscious?
One can say, “Oh, it’s just a movie. Everyone knows its not real!” But that doesn’t keep it from affecting one’s subconscious as if it were real. I’m amazed that people who cry at sad movies or startle when a cat jumps out at a particularly intense horror scene think they’re not being influenced on a subconscious level. Fortunately, Django may not have that effect because its so ridiculous few could get sucked into it. I’m more concerned about the influence from less bombastic, more realistic movies.
Or even video games.
If watching a movie where people are shot is bad then what about video games where one is actively trying to shoot people? I think its no coincidence that every mass shooter the last few years has been a video game junkie. Of course, not everyone who watches a movie or plays a video game is going to shoot people. Otherwise, everyone who watched a movie or played a video game would be shooting people. And that ain’t happening. But I think there is a certain type of person who is susceptible to that sort of influence. And its worth hooking some of them up to instruments to see if these games affect their brains differently from others. What is learned may help to screen for potential shooters and criminals in the future. Someday it may even be used to develop therapies that reprogram people away from those tendencies.
Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.
It’s sort of disconcerting the way I’ve personally experienced and grown-up with the ‘media-violence’ debate and effect: while in my 20s and working as a pop critic, I often sort-of laughed at the censorious view, minimizing the effect that violent images and lyrics in rap and other pop music styles as well as in movies, had on kids.
But later, as I moved on to other beats, and now that I work as a school administrator, of all things, I of course see with unromanticized blinders just how profound an effect such imagery and its glamour has on kids.
It’s indisputable, really. I understand the theoretical opposition to censoring music and movie content —— but to say that it doesn’t profoundly influence young, impressionable minds is to deny evident truth.’
It’s funny, but when I find myself lamenting that truth nowadays, I often find myself in hypothetical debates in which my younger ‘pop-muse’-self is coming up with pithy and sarcastic replies to my wiser-’educator-administrator’-self; the latter prevails in practical belief, but i’ve yet to fuse my being into a single, solid position on this issue.
Guess that’ll just come naturally with a few more years of wisdom, eh?
I often sort-of laughed at the censorious view, minimizing the effect that violent images and lyrics in rap and other pop music styles as well as in movies, had on kids.
Most kids do. They want to be “cool” and free to do what they want irrespective of the consequences. And kids rarely consider the consequences. The prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for “good judgement”) doesn’t fully mature until one is in their mid 20′s. You see things differently now because you have more mature judgement.
http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familylife/tech_assistance/etraining/adolescent_brain/Development/prefrontal_cortex/
That’s why teens and early twenties tend to be liberal but a lot of them become conservative in their late twenties and early thirties. Though I’m sure liberals would disagree. haha
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I’m really on the fence when it comes to censorship. I’m not interested in horrors or violent video games. And I’ve never listened to music with explicit lyrics. As far as I’m concerned, they can ban it all and good riddance. But censorship is a slippery slope. Special interests would immediately start lobbying politicians to censor other things.
Its a slippery slope on the other side, too. Horrors and pornography have become more extreme and widely available. Without restrictions they will likely become more so. I’d probably exclude nudity and grotesque violence of the sort one might see in horror movies (i.e. torture, mutilation, etc.) from freedom of speech protections. And I’d like to see more restrictions on obscene language. Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with censorship laws the way they are.
You’ll notice that restrictions on nudity, grotesque violence and obscene language wouldn’t have prevented the movies or book mentioned in my post. I don’t believe in passing laws for every hangnail. Too often the cure ends up being worse than the disease.