Children and TV violence

[con's fly is open]

I've long suspected that violence on TV promotes imitation by children. The purveyors of it, of course, cry "Censorship!" and point out that people have been shooting each other on TV since the 50's.

But I recall watching a Tom and Jerry cartton as a kid: Tom jammed a fork into Butch the dog's hand, and I was shocked: the idea of doing that had never occurred to me. I ran around with my friends, "shooting" at each other, of course, but there were no real guns around, so what was the danger?

I'm convinced that Ultraman in particular has wreaked havoc on my classroom. Takatoshi, my problem kid, does the moves all the time, and frequently approaches me and the other students in playfight mode; but when his temper goes, he punches and kicks- US, the teachers.

At Halloween, we went to each kid's house, where, of course, they showed all their toys to the other kids. Takatoshi played them an Ultraman DVD.

Now, of course, ALL the boys are doing the "YAAH!" HAH!" moves in class. No, TV doesn't compell them to use violence, but it provides the ideation. Real martial arts instructors teach all along the lesson of avoiding violence.

That dumbassed show sure doesn't- it just teaches them some clumsy attack moves, and we teachers deal with the accidents and play-turned-angry consequences. I wish Nobby or the like were here to teach them properly.

The TV industry has a lot to answer for.

[Ruth]

The TV industry has a lot to answer for.

Yes, it does. Particularly children's cartoon programming.

Your long-held suspicions about violence on TV have been born out in research. I can't be bothered looking it up, but I know I studied it in university. I took child development in my first go at a uni degree.

[Mr Nobody]

See David Grossman on the subject, already referred to by myslelf on several occassions. He has some neat summaries.

I think hundreds of studies have shown it to be true, and none have shown otherwise.

However, it does't do as much damage as simulation computer games that do the same thing, but with at least a tenfold greater response.

One good thing about old style stuff was that at least superman etc was on the side of right, didn't do anything nasty really, and had moral fibre.

[con's fly is open]

Nobby, right on the money. Schwartzenegger movies started the rand of violence issued with a cute one-liner, and all of a sudden the killing act itself became charismatic.

And I can't believe the level of ultraviolence in computer games! I'd never let my child play a splatter game.

[gengrant]

One good thing about old style stuff was that at least superman etc was on the side of right, didn't do anything nasty really, and had moral fibre.

and you forgot: He could fly! that made him the coolest of all the superheroes! now the superheroes beat up on each other cause all the villians have pretty much been locked up.

[Ruth]

Shenme? I'm way out of touch on children's progamming. My kids were little when He Man and Skeletor were all the rage.

[Lotus Eater]

One good thing about old style stuff was that at least superman etc was on the side of right, didn't do anything nasty really, and had moral fibre.

And the cowboys always beat the Indians, and the baddies were always easy to pick - wore black, were black, Asian, Russian etc etc.

Not much changes - just the graphics.

[Newbs]

Didn't see too many examples the last time I was in China, but a few years ago you could still see some of the old movies, say ca.1960s, where the westerners were always the bad guys. I was intrigued with the make-up job on them, which was very unnatural, but strewth, it did give them a sinister look.

Conversely, the radiant looks on the Chinese guys, and especially on the heroine, brought tears to the eyes.

[Steiner]

When I was in elementary school, my parents thought I was getting too violent.

They stopped letting me watch Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings.

Very quickly, I became less violent.

And that was just from Bugs Bunny.

[Crippler]

Yes, little minds are very impressionable and they are great imitators of what they see.

[Ruth]

I remember being traumatized when Bambi's mother died. And that was done off-screen. When I saw Lion King, the scene where Simba's father dies, I couldn't believe the difference in one generation. What happens to the kids of today when they watch that?

[Mr Nobody]

Innoculation is the term used in Psych of Violence. They sort of get used to it, but it leaks out of their heads in strange ways.

I meant previously, the goodies at least stood for society, and the baddies wanted to bring it down. I know stereotypes are often racial, but my point is that modern heroes aren't even good or bad. Often they are on the wrong side of the law and what they do is questionable.

There is a message here. People often do heroic things because of the myth structure memes. Knights, heroes, etc. They want to be one too.

Will future generations do the same? Are we destroying our mythic memes, so there will be much fewer heroes?

Events seem to indicate so, at least to a certain degree.

But then, a few thousand years of heroism isn't going to vanish in a single generation due to a few hours of bad TV.

Is it?

[Lotus Eater]

Did Genghis Khan watch TV? Did Qin Shi Huang Di watch TV? How many hours of violent TV did Hitler watch?

I think the studies I have read (IRIS - best citation) also show that violence is exacerbated in children (and adults - but from memory that was a prisoner study) who already have a propensity for violence. Lesser effect on those who don't have the same propensity.

However, the news is violent, many current affairs programs are violent. We become desensitised to violence and therefore are more shocked when it actually happens to us, as we believe we can continue to stand up and fight or that we are immune to pain by watching the superheroes or any fight scenes on TV.

And if you are going to use these 'bad effects' arguments for violence then we also need to apply them to pornography etc as well.

And then we are into that dirtiest of all words - 'censorship' and controlling peoples rights to view, read, write and speak.

[Wolf]

I don't think that violence on TV is good for the soul, so to speak.

I don't really have much in the way of cold hard scientific fact to back that up. Just lovely anecdotal evidence; I'm the oldest of 5, and we're all boys, and as I'm still under 30 we were of course raised on TV. There was a point in our youth where I was the only one of us who could sit through the daily regimen of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (don't laugh. Well, okay. Laugh. I guess it's funny.) without pulling a Takatoshi.

Thinking back to another thread, I remember when Robocop came out (in theatres when I was 10, on VHS when I was 11.) I remember that there were Robocop toys sold to kids at the time. A friend of mine even had one. That's a movie that ought to have been rated NC - 17. The Great Souless Industrial Machine had no qualms about selling toys to a movie that no kid should really have seen.

I think that it's important to funnel a kid's energy into something more productive. This is just me, but personally I think that TV is an outdated means of entertainment, except maybe for sports events and the like. Surely between books, internet pirates DVD box sets of worthwhile stuff, and various assorted other passtimes; kids can give the Land of the Trite a miss.

But then again I'm not a parent.

[Mr Nobody]

Ghengis Khan etc were raised in mythic memes, as is everyone from the dawn of time. Once it was songs and stories, then books.

TV is now the main source of mythic memes. It wasn't the beginning of this, nor the end. it is movng on now, to computer games.

REAL violence is also part of nature, human or otherwise. innoculation (or desensitizing) is part of the way we deal with it. Not everyone responds to the memes in what I would consider a positive way. While most people emphasize that superman fights baddies for justice, others see him wearing undies on the outside of his longjohns and can see through women's clothing. But most get the message.

Violence is roughly proportioned thusly - 85% with avoidance, 13% will commit it if they feel they need to, and 2% don't mind it or even like it (although many of these may have ethics to not commit crimes, or use their propensity for 'good'. ). This is of normal people, not psychos. So, violent programs do affect those with more propensity, yes, but that number is huge, not a small part of society. For an average saturday night in my home town 20,000 people are out partying. So, even at 1% that is 200 people looking for fights or violence. 1,600 can commit it if they feel the need to. Newcastle is a small city.


So what I am saying is we need the good guy/bad guy image fixed so that some of these people are on 'our' side. So people dive in the river to save the drowning kid or tell the bullies to leave that kid alone or say, "hey, she said no, ok, so leave her be".

We need heroic memes.

[Wolf]

Good points. Fairy tales, etc were often violent. The Sigurd/Sigfried ledgend is violent as all get out in all its forms - even that German poem replaces pagan-ish blood feuds with good old down home mysogeny (personally I prefered the blood feud.)

A lot of hero stories I've seen from all sorts of cultures seem to be designed for giving people the inspiriation to stand up against injustices. The Ramayana, at least in my version, explicitly states that this is why that poem exists in the first place. China's The Outlaws of the Marsh was popular for the same reason. Also the two negotiation scenes from The Return of the King (extended edition) come to mind; Theoden's final refusal of Saruman by threatening to "hang him from a gibbet for the sport of [his] own crows" was one of the most stirring moments I can remember seeing on film. Second possibly only to Aragorn's "response" to The Mouth of Sauron's observation that "it takes more to make a king than a broken Elvish blade." Sigh. If onlly the world of (wo)men had real leaders like that.

Computer games are awesome for heroic stuff. They're more epic in length for one. Movies are closer akin to a short story; TV dramas to a serialized novel. Some of my biggest emotional reations to storylines were from video games; seeing Sephiroth emerge after the burns down Neibelhiem (Nobby you'd love FF7; it's stuffed with mythology; Norse and otherwise), or when Sephiroth and the protagonist go mano e mano at the very end. There had been 40+ gaming hours of build up to these two having a final showdown; it's hard to get that kind of commitment from a listener/reader/gamer unless from an Illiad or Ramayana.

Don't get me wrong; many video games are crap; but if you want to see storytelling on the computer; try Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger (Playsation) or anything from the Badur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights series (PC; probably available pirated from your local retailer.)

Heck; people have been captivated by video game story lines since Dragon's Lair; which came out something like 23 years ago.