I was recently rereading Frankenstein, and in the preface, the author tries to refute the then-common notion that the writing and reading of novels represented a moral plague of laziness and indolence. The exciting plots and long page-counts were blamed for helping readers escape the real world and shirk their responsibilities.
The only fact the author cites to support his claim, that people are mostly unaffected by television, movies, and video games, is
"Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You, writes that over the last ten years—a period of unprecedented fictional violence in television, movies, and video games—“the country simultaneously experienced the most dramatic drop in violent crime in its history.”"
doesn't actually support his argument very well. The rest is loud opinion appealing to those who already agree with him to begin with.
I mostly agree, but to play devil's advocate a little:
It's easy to say this is all correlation not causation, that it is the homes the media is consumed in not the media itself. But knowing that, and knowing you have a limited reach into other people's homes, media being the primary interface, what do you do?
A kid playing GTA is obviously not going to shoot up his school simply because of GTA, but I'm not sure it's fair to say GTA didn't play any role at all (combined, of course, with a sick mind), and that it wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. I, too, see that this is a stretch, but it's a possibility (one that conveniently can't be 100% ruled out), and in the minds of those who aim to control the media I think this is the primary motivation. If you're trying to affect change in a "free" society, control of media is pretty much the best place to do it.
As for how to respond: it's not "this is an unsolvable problem," though in many ways it is the "last war." The answer is to produce more and better media than the opposition, in this case censorship committees, game ratings boards, etc. That fight never stops, but I think fighting it is part of our responsibility in the whole stewardship of culture thing, regardless of what side you are on.
It could also work out the opposite way: instead of blowing up schools, kids today can simply let off steam by playing GTA. That scenario seems pretty likely to me.
A friend and I were discussing this once. I don't like horror films because of the gore. He told me that when he first started watching them, the gore creeped him out and made him uncomfortable. After years of watching them though, it doesn't faze him at all. To me, that's the very definition of media changing someone. Of course that doesn't mean he's going to become an axe murderer, but it had a noticable impact on his thought patterns. Take someone that is unstable to start with, and maybe... ?
Man, it sure is good Prince Charming has lost some of his manly muscle. We wouldn't want young boys saddled by gender stereotypes aspiring to be physically fit or anything.
We never miss an opportunity to assign blame. We shoot people because of video games. Our kids are dumb because of "bad teachers". We're fat because of corn syrup.
Clearly the fact that you're blaming people for these excuses shows that you're above them and their petty blame.
Seriously, why is it always about blame and responsibility (or lack thereof) for some people? I mean, sometimes things that lie beyond our control cause problems. Like corn syrup... which does have an impact on obesity. It isn't shirking responsibility to discus things outside one's control if they really do exacerbate our problems.
The author is no exception. The last sentence is that "Video games, movies, and TV are not the problem. It is the homes in which they are being viewed." He's blaming parents the same way that he complains that others blame video games. But I have the same question. What about all the people from broken homes who are not shooting up schools?
My parents raised me with nothing but love and understanding. But I'm young enough that if I murdered/raped someone, they would be blamed. They were abusive/neglectful. They left me alone at home watching Grover too often. Or something like that.
