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<blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 388163" data-attributes="member: 697"><p>There's two factors at play here.</p><p></p><p>First, television violence qua television violence does not necessarily have to breed actual violence. I'd love to see the same studies replicated in different nations and compared to the results found in the US. My personal theory is that the specific instantiations of violence depicted in the US media is the root cause. Compare a Hollywood action movie to an Hong Kong action flick or a Japanese anime. All three depict loads of violence, but Asian cinema focuses much more on the effects violence has on the hero. In an American movie the hero regularly walks away from a fight in perfectly good health (or with a few cosmetic wounds) and the audience can easily tell which sympathetic characters are disposable stand-ins who are meant to die.</p><p></p><p>OTOH, Asian cinema has no qualms about killing off likable characters or showing the main characters in genuine pain or sustaining serious injury in a fight. Violence is shown to have dire consequences. The heroes don't effortlessly walk through fights.</p><p></p><p>Second, drawing a line between TV violence and alcohol causes a few problems. First, alcohol provides a specific context for violence. That doesn't excuse it, but it does make it more predictable and easier to handle. If I see an angry drunk, I can better deal with it. With TV/videogame violence, the issue is general behavior. Beer may cause me to pick a fight in a bar, but too much TV violence may cause me to pick a fight in the office, or at a bus stop. That doesn't excuse violent behavior driven by alcohol, but in such a case the violent behavior is tied to a specific stimulus. We can combat it by restricting sales to certain age groups, or holding bars and bartenders responsible for allowing customers to drink themselves insensible, and so on. The basic human desire to get messed up on something, anything, is too deeply ingrained for it to be easily countered via legislation (witness huffing, sniffing glue, and other patently stupid things teens do to get high. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegutt, when someone has to deal with a reality they don't think they can change, they alter their insides to make the world seem better.)</p><p></p><p>Violence in the media, OTOH, is something that can at least be tinkered with, and is a pervasive problem as it affects everyone who watches TV. Worst of all, consider how many people expose themselves to violent content on TV without realizing its effects. As the study I pointed to mentioned, it's alarmingly how thoroughly the study results have been covered up or ignored in the media.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mearls, post: 388163, member: 697"] There's two factors at play here. First, television violence qua television violence does not necessarily have to breed actual violence. I'd love to see the same studies replicated in different nations and compared to the results found in the US. My personal theory is that the specific instantiations of violence depicted in the US media is the root cause. Compare a Hollywood action movie to an Hong Kong action flick or a Japanese anime. All three depict loads of violence, but Asian cinema focuses much more on the effects violence has on the hero. In an American movie the hero regularly walks away from a fight in perfectly good health (or with a few cosmetic wounds) and the audience can easily tell which sympathetic characters are disposable stand-ins who are meant to die. OTOH, Asian cinema has no qualms about killing off likable characters or showing the main characters in genuine pain or sustaining serious injury in a fight. Violence is shown to have dire consequences. The heroes don't effortlessly walk through fights. Second, drawing a line between TV violence and alcohol causes a few problems. First, alcohol provides a specific context for violence. That doesn't excuse it, but it does make it more predictable and easier to handle. If I see an angry drunk, I can better deal with it. With TV/videogame violence, the issue is general behavior. Beer may cause me to pick a fight in a bar, but too much TV violence may cause me to pick a fight in the office, or at a bus stop. That doesn't excuse violent behavior driven by alcohol, but in such a case the violent behavior is tied to a specific stimulus. We can combat it by restricting sales to certain age groups, or holding bars and bartenders responsible for allowing customers to drink themselves insensible, and so on. The basic human desire to get messed up on something, anything, is too deeply ingrained for it to be easily countered via legislation (witness huffing, sniffing glue, and other patently stupid things teens do to get high. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegutt, when someone has to deal with a reality they don't think they can change, they alter their insides to make the world seem better.) Violence in the media, OTOH, is something that can at least be tinkered with, and is a pervasive problem as it affects everyone who watches TV. Worst of all, consider how many people expose themselves to violent content on TV without realizing its effects. As the study I pointed to mentioned, it's alarmingly how thoroughly the study results have been covered up or ignored in the media. [/QUOTE]
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