A definitive 1990s study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that in every society in which TV was introduced there was an explosion in violent crime and murder within 15 years.
Upstate New Yorks Catskill Mountain Range is a bucolic place near and dear to my heart. Its where storybook character Rip Van Winkle enjoyed his legendary slumber and its scenery hasnt changed much since he was born of Washington Irvings fertile imagination. Yet like Van Winkle if Id fallen asleep for 20 years when first arriving in that verdant heaven I too would have noticed some profound changes upon awakening.
About two decades ago many rural Catskill teens sons of farmers and hunters and fishermen suddenly started donning baggy pants and reflecting gangsta" counter-culture despite living nowhere near any large urban center. The following generation of teens experienced todays recent cultural evolution and often sport multiple tattoos and body piercings despite living nowhere near NYCs grungy East Village. Yet Im wrong in a sense: those places were actually very close a television set away.
My old hinterland haunt was once place where if you wiggled the rabbit-ear antenna just right you could pull in one or two TV stations. And what could you see? Perhaps reruns of The Brady Bunch perhaps the news. But about a quarter century ago came VCRs and video stores; then cable and satellite TV; and finally the Internet. The serpent had entered Eden.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy much fire has been directed at gun advocates in general and the National Rifle Association in particular. In response the organization has implicated Hollywood and popular culture in general for mainstreaming mindless violence. Yet even many Second Amendment advocates part company with the NRA on this point. After all blaming entertainment for crime smacks of blaming guns. Yet theres quite a profound difference: guns dont transmit values. But how we use guns and knives fists and words on screen certainly does.
This message is often a tough sell however as its very natural to defend ones entertainment. We grow up with certain shows movies characters and music and often become emotionally attached to them; in fact we may identify with them so closely that an attack upon them can be taken personally. Its the same phenomenon that causes an avid sports fan to defend his favorite team as if its his favored son. And it is then we may hear that old refrain It isnt the entertainment; its the values learned at home" (theyre actually one and the same since entertainment enters the home with in the least the parents tacit approval).
Yet it appears few really believe that refrain. Sure depending on our ideology we may disagree on what entertainment is destructive but that it can be destructive is something on which consensus exists. Just consider for instance that when James Camerons film Avatar was released there was much talk in the conservative blogosphere about its containing environmentalist anti-corporate and anti-American propaganda. At the other end of the spectrum liberals wanted the old show Amos n Andy taken off the air because it contained what they considered harmful stereotypes. Or think of how critics worried that Mel Gibsons Passion of the Christ would stoke anti-Jewish sentiment or that Martin Scorseses The Last Temptation of Christ would inspire anti-Christian feelings and how the Catholic League complained that The Da Vinci Code was anti-Catholic. Now Im not commenting on these claims validity. My only point is that when our own sacred cows are being slaughtered few of us will say Well yeah the work attacks my cause but I dont care because its the values taught at home that really matter."
The truth? Entertainment is powerful. This is why Adolf Hitler had his propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and why all modern regimes have at times created their own propaganda films. Its why the ancient Greeks saw fit to censor the arts and American localities traditionally had obscenity laws. And it is why while The pen is mightier than the sword" and a picture mightier still being worth a thousand words" we have to wonder how many words moving footage coupled with sound would be. How mighty art thou Tinseltown? Well we worry that a child witnessing one parent continually abuse the other will learn to be violent as children learn by example. Yet often forgotten is that while a person can model behavior seven feet away from the television he can also model it seven feet away through the television.
And what effect do our entertainment role models have? Much relevant research exists and the picture it paints isnt pretty. For instance a definitive 1990s study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that in every society in which TV was introduced there was an explosion in violent crime and murder within 15 years. As an example TV had been banned in South Africa for internal security reasons until 1975 at which point the nation had a lower murder rate than other lands with similar demographics. The countrys legalization of TV prompted psychiatrist Dr. Brandon Centerwall to predict that white South African homicide rates would double within 10 to 15 years after the introduction of television…." But he was wrong.
By 1987 they had more than doubled.
Then the Guardian told us in 2003 that …Bhutan the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture barely changed in centuries was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutans first crime wave murder fraud drug offences." The serpent had struck again.
And exactly how it strikes is interesting…and scary. Lt. Col. David Grossman a former West Point military psychologist and one of the worlds foremost experts on what he calls killology" explains the process well. In his essay Trained to Kill" he speaks of how the military learned that during WWII only 15 to 20 percent of riflemen would actually shoot at an exposed enemy soldier. Yet this rate was increased to 55 percent during the Korean War and then 90 percent in Vietnam. How? By applying psychological principles says Grossman identical to the forces our children are exposed to through entertainment. They are (all quotations are Grossmans):
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Brutalization and desensitization: this occurs in boot camp where the training is designed to break down your existing mores and norms and to accept a new set of values that embrace destruction violence and death as a way of life." Entertainment can perhaps be even more effective when doing this to children because the process often starts when theyre too young to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Grossman explains:
- To have a child of three four or five watch a splatter" movie learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend letting him play with that friend and then butchering that friend in front of your childs eyes.
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Classical conditioning: the Japanese employed this during WWII. Soldiers would have to watch and cheer as a few of their comrades bayoneted prisoners to death. All the servicemen were then treated to sake the best meal they had had in months and to so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure." Likewise today our children watch vivid pictures of human suffering and death learning to associate it with their favorite soft drink and candy bar or their girlfriends perfume."
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Operant conditioning: When people are frightened or angry they will do what they have been conditioned to do…. Its stimulus-response stimulus-response." Thus one of the ways the military increased riflemens willingness to shoot exposed enemies was to switch from the bulls-eye targets of WWII training to realistic man-shaped silhouettes that pop into their field of view." The soldiers have only a split-second to engage this new stimulus" with the response of firing reflexively. As for kids every time a child plays an interactive point-and-shoot video game he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills." This can help explain says Grossman why robbers under stress will sometimes reflexively shoot victims even when it wasnt part of the plan."
If the above seems at all simplistic note that its a lifes work boiled-down to 500 words. Suffice it to say however that entertainment has an effect. And do we really consider todays entertainment benign? Weve transitioned from a pre-TV America where boys sometimes brought real guns to school for target shooting to a TV-addicted America where boys bring toy guns to school and get suspended. And of course the reasons for this societal sea change are complex. But if were going to point to one factor is it wiser to blame the AR-15 than PG-13?