Sensitivity Level: Maximum

The level of concern that individual people maintain about the existence of violence rarely ceases to amaze me.  I'm in a position where I can observe other people's thoughts and beliefs on a near-daily basis, and the disparity in people's opinions and thoughts can be jarring, at times.  Much like Kelsey's post earlier in the week, my entry is going to focus primarily on video games, because... well, because that's what I know best.

One of the most common things I hear from parents is that they don't want their child to play a game with violence in it.  This kind of request is, by far, the hardest for me to deal with, simply because it's almost impossible to fulfill while making everyone involved happy.  I've lost count of the number of times that I've wanted to enter into a discussion with the parent, if for no other reason than to explain to them that their view on the subject is too broad, and needs specific definition.  The below picture is one of the best examples that I can give anyone.

You don't -actually- get extra lives for killing stuff.  Usually.

Violence is something that exists, in some shape or form, in the vast majority of entertainment-based media that is available today.  From Call of Duty (where you kill people to save the world), to Star Wars (where you kill people to save the galaxy), to Mario (where you kill turtles and other things to save a girl that may or may not be into you) - there's violence everywhere.  You could draw the distinction between games like those and non-lethal violence (say, Pokemon, where the worst that happens is that your Pokemon faints) - but is that really enough of a difference to be consequential?  My basic thoughts on the matter are that violence is something that exists within our everyday life, and I don't think trying to keep people completely sheltered from it is a good idea.

So wait, John, you say.  Are you advocating that people let their kids play whatever they want, do whatever they want, and run rampant, because they're going to be exposed to violence anyway?  No, not at all.  I believe that it's the responsibility of parents and guardians to teach children the difference between real life and a fantasy world (of any kind).  I can speak, personally, from the viewpoint of someone who was raised without any restrictions on the content of things I was exposed to.  One of my earliest memories is of watching the movie Basic Instinct (which is rated R, and very much deservedly so) with my family when I was young.  The experience of watching people get killed didn't desensitize me to the concept - if anything, it helped to ingrain the idea that reckless violence was a terrible thing that I should never do.  Playing "Cowboys and Indians" with my sister when I was little didn't teach me that I should become a genocidal maniac.  ... I don't think it taught me anything, actually, which still doesn't hurt my point.  I don't believe that media on its own is powerful enough to directly influence most of the population.  I believe that the environment people are in, combined with personal experiences, do most of that.  I've seen a lot of parents smack their kids around in the store (or, in some cases, right after they leave the store), and that seems a lot more likely to influence behaviors and thinking than games, in my opinion.

At my previous work location, I had a customer who would come in regularly (at least once a week) with her son to find a game to play.  I spent enough time at that location that I watched the kid grow from a young child to a preteen.  The mom was fantastic about asking questions about the different games - more specifically, about the content within.  One of the concessions that she made early on was to allow him to get the game Halo.  This is typically one of the first barriers that comes down for parents, mostly because in Halo, you're killing aliens.  Which is, apparently, much more acceptable than killing humans.  ... Seems a bit   speciesest to me, but I digress.  Playing Halo didn't change the kid into some monstrous killing machine - he seemed to really enjoy the experience of it, particularly since he could do it with his mom.  Some time later, the two of them got one of the Call of Duty games, hoping for a similar experience.  The kid brought it back that night, and I couldn't help but smile at his reasoning for doing so.

"You have to kill people in this, and that just really makes me sad, because I don't think they're bad people."

This kid, who couldn't have been more than ten years old, was able to recognize that he wasn't emotionally ready to play a war game involving humans.  To me, this is the best indication that the kid is being raised properly (in the area of our discussion, at least).  He hadn't become desensitized to violence - if anything, he seemed to be more aware to the content in the games, and how it affected him.  I've helped a few other kids like this since him, but sadly, they're not as prevalent as I'd hope.

This has turned into a fairly long post, so I'm gonna start wrapping it up - but before I do, I feel the need to point out two other mediums that are violence-heavy, yet more socially acceptable.  I grew up on cartoons, and nearly every single one of them involved violence of some sort.  Even things like Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry feature violence more often than not (heck, one side of the Looney Tunes focuses on a coyote trying, eternally, to kill a bird).  But because they're cartoons, I think, there's less worry there about it influencing kids to do things in real life.  I mean, when's the last time you saw someone try to drop an anvil on a bird?

Poor Wile E. Coyote.  He can't win.

Finally, there's been an entertainment medium around for a long time that's naturally violence-heavy.  It's marketed to all ages, and often deals with issues that are rooted in everyday life.  I'm referring to comic books, of course.  The first issue of Action Comics was published in 1938, and it featured the debut of a character named Superman.  A year later, a different publication debuted the character that would eventually be known as Batman.  More and more comic book heroes have shown up through the years, and they've always served as role models, of sorts, for kids.  But they all have to combat the villains with... violence.  Some heroes are more deeply rooted in it than others (I'm looking at you here, Batman), but it exists in nearly every comic out there - after all, one of the key elements to a good story is conflict.  But there's a lightheartedness around comic book violence that somehow removes it from being too influential to kids - I've never heard of someone being desensitized to violence from reading too many comic books.

I think I veered off-topic a few times in my post, but my basic point is that violence, by itself, is so ingrained into almost everything we do that I don't believe it holds enough power to influence people.  I think that the prevalence of violence almost serves to dilute it as an influence for most people - and, as stated, I think that the environment people are in plays a much larger role in shaping who they become.  There may be some level of desensitization that occurs from near-constant exposure to violence, but I don't think that it can reach a harmful level by itself.  In my opinion, there have to be some other external factors.

Thanks for reading through this - hopefully it wasn't too random.  Please feel free (nay, encouraged) to leave any relevant comments - feedback, questions, it's all welcomed.  We'll have a new topic announcement tomorrow, and I'll post for you all again next week.

Blood, Blood, Gallons of the Stuff

In trying to figure out how to approach this topic, I thought about to what extent I might feel desensitized to violence. For this, the most immediate medium that came to mind was television, largely because Netflix was one of the greatest things to happen for my spring semester. Right up there with knitting, which is also sometimes rather violent.

First, there's Law and Order SVU. For those of you that live under a rock and have never seen it, go check it out immediately. It's pretty great. That being said, the cases can get a lot more brutal than most of the crime shows out there. Despite this, the show doesn't leave me cringing in horror when I watch it. I'm fascinated by the way that the characters handle the atrocities being committed, and the degree of terror innate in the rapes, murders, etc. featured in the show doesn't end up factoring into it as much.

Grey's Anatomy, on the other hand, has entirely the opposite effect on me. I always find the scenes of the surgeries to be highly unnerving, and most of the time I just flatout avoid looking at the screen during these sequences. The sight of human skin being cut open and the organs being prodded at leaves me feeling rather grossed out, even though what's going on is 1) noticeably fake and 2) not really violent, just graphic. Watching all of the organs being moved around and the blood spurting is just... jfsdfkjdsfds. It freaks me out.

I think that this is the distinction that affects how I handle violence in media. It might just be that I'm a very visual person, but the description of something horrifying doesn't really affect me that much, while the sight of something much more mundane does. When it comes down to it, this kind of attitude toward violence is probably responsible for things like the glorification of wars that Kathleen mentioned yesterday. It's easy to talk about violence and not be affected, but the minute that photos or videos of what actually going on hit the public eye, perception of the events changes.

In a way, I actually think that making more visually violent acts appear in the media, we can more deeply link the ideas of violent acts with the reality of what they are. By being exposed to it, we're not becoming desensitized; really, the opposite is occurring. Or maybe I'm just being ridiculous and overlooking psychotic homicidal children that are being created by violent video games and television. I kind of doubt that, but you never know. The moral guardians might be onto something, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I hope you've taken something away from that, or maybe have something to add. I completely encourage commenting to start a more in-depth discussion on this subject, and that really applies to all of our topics. John will be back tomorrow to wrap this week up, and I have it on good authority that there may be an additional post on this topic coming. Until next week, have a happy June.

Violence and Stuff Like That

I'm always slightly bother by people bringing up the idea of desensitization of violence, as if such an idea is an undoing of morals and a bringer of our own doom. Now, that doesn't mean I don't believe it exists, but on some level it is an awareness of the violence, an acceptance that such violence exists, and I do not think that it is a bad thing. I am reminded of the viewpoint people had before World War I started, that it was going to be a romantic affair, glorified war, and it turned into one of the messiest, horrible wars we have ever had. Perhaps then, some understanding of violence can be an enlightening thing.

And then, perhaps in a cliche manner, history comes to my mind. I think most of the Romans, the gladiators and their fighting to the death. Yet, guns have made war messier and more horrifying than swords and shields, or perhaps we glorify that ourselves.

Of course, I see the way the world currently views violence, with more action oriented movies, more action oriented video games, clips of war and crime on the news every night. Yet, part of me feels like I lack the ability to comment on the world 10 years ago. I am young enough that I have matured with the way the news and movies and video games are today, and part of me views my desensitization of violence as growing up and accepting the world as it is.

The only thing that I fear such desensitization will do is create indifference. That is half the fear and distaste that people seem to have towards the idea, and I agree with them. Never should we lose our believe that we can do something, change something, making something better, or less violent. We should not become indifferent to the body count, to the faceless graves, to the people who die but we say they are only one out of so many, we should not care. If I had to define desensitization of violence, it would not be the getting used to, the accepting of such a violent world, but the indifference to its existence and the lack of desire to try and create change.

I do not know if my viewpoint really adds anything to you reader's viewpoints. Even though I wish people wouldn't be desensitized I easily see the symptoms in myself. I say it's easier to be indifferent because caring is hard when the world is so large. Or perhaps you are so exposed to it that you do not see how the world could ever be any different. Or you think that the best way to make your way in the world is to accept it as it is and work with the system, not against it.

Well, I suppose all I have to say is that we live in a desensitized world, and that when our lives can be neat little boxes were the television is as close to violence as it gets, we have to fight to care that we could change it. Yeah, I usually hate the person of interest stories on the nightly news, but they are there to keep us from being completely desensitized.

Accessibility and Such

I think the main problem with how desensitized our youth is, when it comes to violence,  how accessible it is. Let’s face it: violence in entertainment has been around for forever. But today, you can download it whenever you want and we just don’t really think anything of it at this point.

Kelsey covered the medium everyone seems to be most concerned about, video games. This is a big one. This is the one all the plastic surgery fixed, suburban mothers whine about all the time. And while it is a big issue, I don’t think those same mothers think much of it when they go home and watch the new episode of Grey’s Anatomy or when they buy their kids the second book of The Hunger Games.

Violence is pretty much everywhere. In the news, in your daytime Soaps, in that new book you picked up that everyone is saying you just have to read. It’s everywhere. That’s the problem: we are, as a generation, getting a lot more used to it. I mean, some of Shakespeare’s greatest scenes were fight scenes but you couldn’t download them in 5.6 seconds in 1520, could you? Today, you hear something on the news about a shooting or you want to know who died in this week’s episode, you can figure it out in pretty much no time. We have all the information someone could imagine wanting in a few clicks. That is really scary. Out of all the people I asked for opinions on this, I think the one quote that sums it all up is: “Convenience is a double-edged sword (which is a perfect metaphor in this context).” (Taylor, grade 11)

Another problem I thought about a lot during the outlining of this topic was: I think a lot of the times the media over glamorizes violence so that we like it. Because they aren’t going to produce something you won’t buy. So, is it our fault that it’s everywhere then? I will say, we as humans seem to almost thrive on violence in our entertainment world. Like, the gorier it is, the more we all flock towards it. I can't say if that is a result of overexposure or over-glamorization or just human nature. No matter what though, I think people blaming this big bad looming presence we call 'the media' for our desensitization is a little odd, seeing as they only give us what we are willing to pay for.

This post was extremely short and it sucks because I have so many opinions on this, but I do not want to over work this topic because I think it has to potential to be very clear and direct.

Kathleen, I cannot wait to hear what you have to say tomorrow. Hope everyone has a nice and safe Memorial Day!

I saw a deer today

When I think of violence in media, first off, I think of video games, because I work in a video game store and I'm required, legally, to have an adult's consent when selling rated M games to minors, and that happens a lot.

As I've mentioned before, I have a bit of a video-game-related bent on things so I might as well start there. Now, I've occasionally wondered why almost every game has combat as a core mechanic. I mean, there are exceptions that rely on escape or maybe running wind into flowers to grab petals, but for the most part, combat is a core mechanic, and something most games are judged on as much as (or more than) they're judged on aesthetic or writing.

I would watch that for a minute or so and then leave it playing while you read the rest of this entry. It's really a beautiful game.

So then are people really being desensitized to violence because of video games? Well, maybe. It's certainly expected of us in video games, and there's definitely a satisfaction to absolutely slaughtering someone. A lot of games display this moderately realistically (though usually with a bit more spectacle) with people emitting blood when they die as most people would if you slashed them with a sword. But what does that really mean? Does it mean I'm going to go out, buy a sword, and kill someone with it because I saw it on Skyrim? Obviously not. Killing people is wrong. Being desensitized to violence doesn't suddenly make you into a sociopath. I would never hurt another living being. That said, these Falmer on the other hand totally deserve it.

There are at least a couple professions I can think of that require desensitization to violence and those are military and medicine. You have to be able to stay calm under situations that would reduce some people to hysterical messes. You don't want your doctor saying "Oh god, so much blood." when you enter the ER. You want your doctor to calmly explain to you what's wrong and what can be done to fix it. I think the military actually uses video games and other simulations (that are probably not so different from Call of Duty) to purposefully desensitize people to violence. So what exactly are we worrying about?

Are we worrying that people not being emotionally traumatized by violence might make them aggressive? Well, personally, I think if it would, then you're too young to be playing these types of games. I strongly believe in the ESRB and it's rating system, and I have talked to parents and convinced them not to buy games for their young children. Of course I've had parents to say "Well, if I didn't buy it, they'd just play it at Jimmy's house" or "Yeah, that's fine, I don't care," and both of them are sad, but I've also had parents say "Let's go look for a game rated T" or "My daughter is a mature young woman and I trust her to make the right decisions regarding the games she plays," both of which are wonderful reactions. Like I said, even if I am desensitized to violence, that doesn't erase my concepts of right and wrong. At worst, it'll cause me to react less emotionally if I'm ever in a violent situation.

That said, I'm not 100% sure that the games I play are really enough to desensitize me to much. I don't really play shooters or games that use gore as a spectacle (I'm looking at you, Mortal Kombat), so the over-the-top intense violence rarely enters my PC and/or console. That said, Skyrim is a pretty bloody game. Not only did you kill a lot of things, but there were multiple instances of seeing bloody skeletons and corpses and sometimes their flesh was implied to be eaten. It was a really gross game at times, and the first several times I saw human bones covered in blood (or was it leftover muscle tissue?)  my stomach turned. That said, as the game went on, they showed up a bunch and eventually I stopped caring.

A few days later I was driving to a friend's house and I saw a deer on the side of the road. I was driving on a gravel road at the time, the kind that doesn't often get cleared of roadkill and this was particular deer was dead and highly decomposed. I've tried to block out the details, but this was every bit as bad as those skeletons in Skyrim, except this was in real life. I remember being really shaken and disturbed and honestly a little distracted on the rest of the drive.

There is a huge difference between being desensitized to textures on a wireframe model than being desensitized to real life that's happening in front of you, and I honestly think if the deer hadn't disturbed me as much as it did, I probably would've been driving more safely. It's hard to find good research about this issue for several reasons. First, the media loves any conclusion that could cause an upset. That's why you have to tune in at 11 to find out if wearing high heels will cause you to get cancer. Second, people are terribly biased. When I was doing research for this post, I came across this article and there was a point where one of the scientists behind the study said "Surprisingly, the amygdalas in the subjects as well as in the control group were similarly stimulated." Were they expecting the people who played video games to not react at all? Did they expect sociopaths with no reaction to other humans in pain? Video games are such a maligned form of media that people like to blame them for society's woes. Because of that, I really think that unbiased science is going to be hard to come by. People are going to be looking to either valiantly defend the world from video games or valiantly defend video games from the world and there is no valor in science (there is, however, science in science, and that's much more cool to focus on).

In short, I don't think desensitization is an innately bad thing; I don't think video games desensitize (at least not me personally), and if you play video games and now want to shoot people, you need to tell your mother and get some professional help.

But That's Entertainment

It seems like today we can't even watch the evening news without learning of an act of violence that occurred not very far from our own neighborhoods.  And while we sympathize with the victims of these violent acts, violence seems to occur so often that it would seem strange for there to be an evening where the only reports we hear on the evening news would be about charity events and sports.  Violence also plays a key role in the basis for numerous non-cable television shows such as the Law and Order franchise and one of my favorite TV shows, Southland.  And while the consequences of violent acts are almost always shown, we are still repeatedly exposed to/ exposing ourselves to violence through a media outlet that many families keep on in the background during dinner time.

While many of us hang our heads and talk about what a shame it is whenever an atrocious violent act is committed, for some reason there is something that still attracts us to entertainment media that contains fictionalized violence.  Maybe it is our desire to understand that draws us to media that portrays fictionalized violence.  I mentioned earlier that one of my favorite TV shows is Southland, which is about a group of fictional officers and detectives of various ages, experiences, and backgrounds who work in the LAPD.  The show prides itself on presenting a realistic image of violence and crime and how these issues are dealt with by law enforcement.  Besides the good writing, the main aspect of the show that attracts me is that different characters give their interpretations of why these violent acts were committed and why they continue to happen.  There's just something fascinating about hearing the different views each character has considering their background.  And while I have to remind myself that the show is fictional, many of the characters' thoughts on the reasons for continued violence in the world ring true to reality.  We as a society are fascinated by violence and the reasons for the perpetuation of violence, because even though we are often exposed to real life violent acts, we continue to flock to numerous other media outlets that contain fictionalized violence as forms of entertainment.  The search for understanding may not be the only reason that we are attracted to media, and in my case namely television shows that contain violence, but the more often we expose ourselves to situations containing violence, whether they be real or imagined, the more normative the actions, but not necessarily the severity of the consequences, become to us.

Looking forward to hearing from Kelsey tomorrow!              

Week of 5/27 - Desensitization of Violence

This week's worth of entries are going to revolve around the idea of desensitization of violence.  This is a fairly broad topic, and it'll be interesting to see what sources our different members observe in discussing it.  The common line of thought around this topic is that violence has become something ever-present in both media and everyday life, and something that people have come to accept as "normal".  I'm curious to see opinions on that idea as a whole, as well as any examples, concerns, or other musings that our bloggers might share.

Pendleton kicks this week off tomorrow, and I'll be back on Saturday to finish this week up.  Enjoy!