Martha Thomases: Don’t You Know, It’s The End Of The World…
If the world doesn’t end today and I really have to write this column, the responsible thing would be to write about the horrific shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
Here we go again.
The usual subjects are making the usual arguments. People who like guns think the killings could have been prevented if more people had guns. People who don’t like guns think the killings could have been prevented if guns were more difficult to get. People who don’t want to change the gun laws think we should concentrate on mental health services. People who don’t want to pay more in taxes for things like improved mental health services say the problem is that we took prayer out of public schools.
And everyone blames the media.
A good friend of mine, one whose values I respect, said he thought part of the problem is that first-person shooter video games are so realistic that players develop an emotional callus, so that it’s easier to make the transition and shoot a real human.
He may be right. A recent study would suggest otherwise, but I don’t think there is a single answer here. Certain kinds of mental illness may be exacerbated by the kind of stimuli contained in vividly realistic games.
It only takes one.
I don’t like violent video games, but then, I don’t much like video games at all. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of violent movies in the near future, including Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty, and I’m not prepared to say my choices in violence are better just because they’re mine.
Here’s the thing. It’s not the media that is the problem, but how we deal with it. As an adult I can separate my fantasies from my realities, and I can enjoy them as such. I know that, as an adult, I can’t shoot people who annoy me, and that knowledge contributes to my enjoyment when I watch Clint Eastwood or Sam Jackson do it.
I wouldn’t let my child watch those films if I thought said child was too young to understand. I didn’t, and we had arguments about it. However, even if I was wrong about specifics, my son knew that I valued his emotional health. He might not have known that if I had just turned him loose in the cinemaplex and let him run rampant.
There’s not a single answer to the problem of shootings like the one in Connecticut. It would help if guns were more difficult to obtain, especially the kind that let the shooter fire dozens of shots at a time. It would help if we had more empathy for those suffering from various kinds of mental illness, including run-of-the-mill teenage despair.
If you want to blame the media, blame the right one: the news media. And then consider why we have so many news-worthy, real-life situations in which we glorify killing.
And consider that even after the national outrage about what happened Friday morning, the violence didn’t take a break.
Are we stuck? Is this the human condition? Is it just dirty rotten hippies like myself who believe we can do better? Isn’t there an evolutionary imperative for the strong to dominate the weak?
No, according to some recent archeological discoveries. The evidence suggests that humans are designed to take care of each other, no matter what our individual shortcomings.
If the world hasn’t ended, and you want to help keep it that way, you still have time to make a difference, either with money or service.
Here’s to more light in the days ahead.
SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman
Yeah, it’s easy to blame the media. But I believe movies and novels and video games reflect us far more than we reflect them. Dirty Harry wouldn’t have been such a hit if the early 1970s environment didn’t favor Dirty Harry.
Censorship is just trying to sweep the dirt under the carpet. But it’s convenient, because it’s easier to censor video games and movies than going to the root of the problem.
Root #1: We still associate masculinity with violence. Parents are proud when their sons stand up for themselves and fight off the bullies in the schoolyard. It’s manly. No one wants a son that is a wuss that goes running for help. And then we’re surprised when some young males take this lesson to heart. Young males used to fight in personal duels long before there was a Dirty Harry.
Root #2: Cluless parents. It’s a fact of life that most of the people who end up as parents are the ones that are not ready for it. The parents are a much greater role model to their kids than any other person, fictional or real. It’s a huge responsibility that lots of parents want to escape of by blaming television or video games.
In this case, it’s far deeper than just neglect. Mommy Lanza was a survivalist gun nut. Need we seek any other explanations for Adam (how fittingly named) turning against her like Frankenstein’s Monster?
Times like this, I’m reminded of the words of Johnny C., protagonist of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, while being interviewed:
INTERVIEWER: So, what do you think of the idea that violence on television and other media have a negative effect on kids and other impressionable minds?
NNY: Any pile of stunted growth unaware that entertainment is just that and nothing more, deserves to doom themselves to some dank cell somewhere for having been so stupid!!! Movies, books, TV, music – they’re all just entertainment, not guidebooks for damning yourself!
(Of course, it should perhaps be mentioned that a few panels later Nny throws the partially-dismembered corpse of the interviewer out his window, after the poor man asks about whether the local serial killer, who drains his victims of their blood, drinks it; Nny hates any contact with human waste, and only took the blood to keep the spot on his wall wet…)
“People who don’t want to pay more in taxes for things like improved mental health services say the problem is that we took prayer out of public schools.”
And just today (well, Friday–yesterday as I’m now typing this; how DOES the Doctor keep all this timey-wimey stuff straight?), it appears as though we need to start getting prayer back in CHURCH. Not too long after NRA nut-in-chief LaPierre was having his little rant conference, a gunman decided to kill a woman who was in a church decorating for a children’s Christmas party.
But yeah, let’s just keep on believing that school killings is part of the plot to take God out of schools. (Though it is rather interesting that it only took some 3 DECADES before this violence really started showing up at the high school and below level.) I would, however, remind all these concerned religious goons that God didn’t seem to have any problem letting Herod slaughter countless children in a paranoid attempt to kill the “newborn King of the Jews.” And, I do believe God was *directly* responsible for killing all the first-born of Egypt and one might ask exactly what God was doing during that whole little “Cain kills Abel” incident.