Television And Violence Essays - Dispute Resolution, Crime, Ethics

Television And Violence Boink! Boom! Crack! The sounds of the fight scene rage on. Many have fallen in this particularly bloody battle. The good guys have taken their losses but struggle on to what is seemingly a victory. Their aggression is fierce and helps them. Fires consume the background; men and women lie on the ground in pain. Even if it weren't for the bombs, missiles, bullets, etc. that are flying around, hand-to-hand combat would have got the better of them. It was a classic battle scene when looking back at it, a true testament of blood, hell, and gore. This may sound like a heroic made-for-TV movie shown only on primetime in the hopes of recruiting a mature audience. But it is not. In fact, it is just another Saturday-morning special of GI Joe, "The Real American Hero," that I watched with my brother and cousins. We were religious followers of the show, tuning in every week to see how Sergeant Slaughter, Duke and the rest of the gang would handle the likes of King Cobra and his cronies. GI Joe's early morning time slot encouraged kids, like us, to tune in every weekend. While eating our CheeriosTM and Frosted FlakesTM we got a dose of some real fightin' action, in excess of fifty violent scenes for the morning: there is more than enough to fill the appetite. The truth is, violence on television is on every single day. It takes its toll on society, especially children. The damage done by violence on television is detrimental and confirmed by statistics, case studies, and personal experiences. Fistfights, shootouts, car crashes, rapes... Take your pick. Violence is everywhere on television, sometimes gory and gruesome, other times clean and remote. It is not just the Saturday morning cartoons; clips from action-adventure series, the nightly news and MTV are interwoven with violence and extremely mature content. Prime-time programs can average eight hostile acts per hour; children's shows four times as much (Bajpai, 1996, ps. 45-52). To television Programmers, violence is depicted as a normal, justified response to conflict and threat. They will encourage identification with the aggressor; domination and submission, to them, are often equated with pleasure and worth. Yet numerous researchers have put much time into discovering why children are so attached by the television and the action that takes place within it. They prove that it is definitely a major source of violent behavior in children. Their research proves time and time again that aggression and television viewing do go hand in hand. The truth about television violence and children has been shown. Many people and critics try to ignore it and hope that it will go away. Others do not even seem to care and try to attack these ideas. However, the facts are undeniable and all the results point to one conclusion: Television violence causes children to be violent and the effects can be life-long. The effects of the television are first visible even at the most basic level of life, children and adolescents. The modern-day extent of viewing by humans, especially Americans, is astronomical. Children begin to watch television at very early ages, often when they are newborns. At this time they are obviously not able to follow along or be influenced by it, but they are subjected to it nevertheless. This early start will lead most childhood viewers into a cult-like trance by the time they reach the age of three. In between breakfast and lunch, playtime and naptime, class and dinner, all children find a way to watch the tube. The typical American household has the television set on for more than seven hours each day and children ages two to eleven spend an average of twenty-eight hours per week viewing (Murray, 1996, p. 1). Some research has also estimated that by the time a child or teen of today's generation reaches the age of seventy, he will have spent nearly seven years of his life watching television. That is nearly ten percent of one's life lives watching television. That is insane; to say that you and I will spend years upon years, watching television. There is so much that people, even we, could do in a seven-year period. Entire wars can be fought in seven years, college educations can be attained, millions of people will be born and millions will die, many things can happen that have more significance than seven years of television. That is a very large percentage of time to be doing solely one thing, and the fact that that one