Canne recently wrote a post about violence in the media in regards to the “Dark Knight shooting,” and John wrote a related post about whether the shooting could somehow affect anime releases in the US. Both posts piqued my interest as well as my agreement – I agree with John that the incident won’t affect anime and I agree with Canne that the media is not to blame…
What we can get away with on TV and the movies nowadays compared to fifty years ago is astounding. In the days of black-and-white TV, they couldn’t even show a toilet or say the word “pregnant,” and now we can show and say just about anything and everything – all forms of violence included. But unfortunately problems can arise with this immense freedom in the media, especially in recent years where Internet and media users are getting younger and younger. It’s human nature to want to find an easy source of blame whenever something tragic occurs. Whenever there’s an unprecedented act of violence such as the Aurora theater shooting or the Columbine shooting of several years ago, people jump on the most obvious expressions of violence in our society as the influence – the media, particularly TV and movies. But it’s always been my opinion that a TV show or movie alone cannot turn an otherwise normal person into a psychotic killer – there always has to be other forces at work in the person’s living environment and mental state that are the main triggers. Seeing a certain movie might give the person ideas, as seems to be the case with the Dark Knight shooting, but ultimately the mentality of the person is what determines their actions, whether they see a movie or not. If they’re prone to that kind of violence, sooner or later they’re going to act on it regardless of what they watch.
This leads to the interesting distinction between the content of kids cartoons in America versus kids anime in Japan. Compared to the blatantly light, comical, and slapstick kids cartoons on American TV in recent years, American kids shows of the 80s and 90s were much more dodgy and less prone to censorship. I remember speculating with a friend once that the reason for this could possibly be, again, a great tragedy like 9/11 or Columbine, where society felt a sudden need to downgrade violence and disturbing themes in kids shows and only give them happy, safe entertainment. But whatever the reason, it seems like kids entertainment in America is still as safe and censored as it can be despite the fact that tons of other parts of society are becoming more edgier and savvy thanks to the Internet.
Then we look at the kids anime in Japan which, as I’m sure you all know, is full of extreme, often gory violence and disturbing themes of pain and destruction, as seen in most mainstreamed shonen anime such as One Piece and Naruto. General anime for older audiences could be even more so; I’m sure we’ve all watched enough anime to know that there are some pretty unforgettable depictions of violence in certain series that you couldn’t find equivalents of on American TV. So if Japanese media, especially for kids and young people, is so full of violence, does it follow that there are more acts of violence and murder in Japan? The contrary – like with every country, there are some incidents, like the Akihabara massacre of several years ago, but overall Japan is known for its low crime rate and peaceful society. Of course, this could be because of a lack of a right to bear arms in the country, which then begs the question of how easy gun possession in America could be to blame, which I’m not going to get into in this post.
I agree with Canne that the media, including anime, is a “mirror” – no matter how fantastical the setting, story, and characters are, they’re going to depict human emotions, ideals, and struggles…violence included. Violence is a part of life and since we’re not allowed to be violent in real society, violence in the media is a great outlet for that emotion. I believe that’s a reason depictions of violence and even sexual undertones are so lax in Japanese kids anime; the culture believes in exposing kids to all the facets of life they’ll eventually have to deal with, even the unpleasant ones, while Americans believe in sheltering and sugar-coating everything for their kids out of concern that their mental state will suffer otherwise. I’m sure there’s a good balance between these two approaches, but the bottom line is that I don’t think realistic portrayals of violence in TV and movies should be censored, degrading artistic expression and ruining a pleasure for others, just because a few already mentally sick individuals can’t differentiate between fantasy and reality. There are other things that can be done to help prevent such violence, but censorship is the most flimsy and less sure way. Thankfully I don’t think the Aurora theater shootings, or hopefully any others, will cause any major censorship in American media, especially not with something niche and completely unrelated like anime. As John said when finishing up his post “…censoring material evidently not even remotely related to the tragedy is not only unnecessary but continues to damage and punish the public instead of trying to encourage a return to the peaceful normalcy of free artistic expression.”
Part of the problem is because of how the news is depicted and the way children and parents are taught to be overly cautious, we live in a paranoid world. Parents don’t let there kids walk to the store up the street alone, and even if they did, it would be frowned upon, but 20 years ago it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all. I can go on with examples, but the point is people worry too much and all this sheltering causes more harm than good.
Actually, some censhorship is already in the works because of the Aurora shooting. There’s a new batman cartoon that’s coming out soon enough, but they’re now going over the scripts and making some animation changes (such as making the guns look less realistic), but ya, anime probably won’t be effected.
Yeah, in Japan even elementary school kids can walk to school and take public transportation themselves, while the most we’ll see in America is kids riding their bikes only within a small residential neighborhood. So perhaps the relative safety of Japanese society means they’re not as paranoid with what they show kids on TV.
And I didn’t know that about the new Batman cartoon being censored – interesting.
I agree that the media is not to blame. Same thing with the blame put on computer games as being addictive. The problem is not that the media is addictive, or leads to violence, but some people are prone to addictive or violent behaviour. So pointless censoring will not avoid these kind of issues.
As for the reason on why this happens, or how to avoid it? There really isn’t one. Everyone is different, and there will always be someone with addictive, or violent tendencies. There will always be people that like to bully others, or act superior. That’s where family comes in, and friends, and the educational system. If people are provided proper support and guidance, they can curb their tendencies, or channel them in different directions. Instead of trying to fix it by censoring (which would not fix it), the governments should try to improve the education system, give some kind of guidance to parents (nobody is really taught how to be a good parent)… There are many things that can be done, but censoring is one that won’t really have any effect (sugar coating everything and hiding bad things under the rug do not work either).
Good thoughts. I agree that there will always be people who will have any excuse to act violently, and censoring whatever it is that made them violent is not going to change anything and will only punish those who didn’t do anything wrong. A better method would be to prevent the problem at the roots, like what you suggested, proper support and better safety measures such as stricter gun laws and guidance about being a parent.
As Moviebob on The Escapist’s Big Picture series pointed out, the main problem with censorship, is that even if it is POSSIBLE that certain content in certain entertainment ends up inspiring some crazy people to go start killing, after the tragedy already happened, it’s too late to censor that specific content, and you can’t censor preemptively becaue you don’t know what will inspire violence next. Beatles songs, literary classics, and video games were all identified by seriall killers as their inspiration. Since they are crazy, you can’t predict what will trigger them next.
So even if it is POSSIBLE that it will be a bloody scene, a gun’s image, or whatever else, it’s not very LIKELY, because it could as well be anything else, so the censors are shooting blindly.
Heh, that’s kind of what I was trying to say in the post but I couldn’t say it as eloquently as you XD But yeah, I totally agree. Like I said to Kal above, someone could claim anything drove them to murder, but it’s impossible and unrealistic to censor everything.
I agree that the problem is not with the media, but the person them, rampant bullying problem and perhaps the easy availability of guns. Violent video games, movies and television shows doesn’t necessarily cause people to become violent, but how people perceives it. I think majority already know that media is fictional, so they won’t attempt to replicate dangerous and illegal actions in movies like killing and murdering people. However, there is always going to be a very few people that will do this. I think there is one incident where a teen shoot up his parents when they took away his Halo 3 disc…
On the other hand, I think environmental issues in society can also contribute to this and also psychologically. We know that America has a big bullying problem because of prejudice against minorities and homosexuals. If you heard about the web cam bullying case involving Ravi and Tyler Clementi, it shows how big the issue is. It also resulted in school shootings which the victim decides to massacre the whole school over his grief from bullying. I think the issue isn’t as clean cut as government is ultimately to blame. If we had stricter Anti-bullying laws and Gun control laws in limiting the amount of ammunition and guns a person can buy (who needs a 100 round magazine), perhaps these shootings and act of violence will happen less often although it won’t completely solve the problem. Then again, with America’s obsession of guns, I don’t think it will get resolved unless people are willing to give up full gun rights for the greater good of society.
I can see how bullying has become more of an issue in recent years because the people who fifty years ago were pretty much shunned from society and kept to themselves, like homosexuals and minority groups, are now becoming embraced by society and able to express themselves online and whatnot. But unfortunately the right to bare arms has been a part of our Constitution since our country began, so it’s going to be extremely difficult if not impossible to ever fully get ride of gun possession in America – even though I’m sure the forefathers of our country weren’t referring to the kind of massively accessible and incredibly advanced weaponry we have to today when they were talking about “baring arms.”
I’ve already written on violence in anime (http://nopybot.com/2012/03/20/murderous-intentions-in-mirai-nikki/) so I won’t go into detail here, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. My parents took the approach of exposing me to what the world is really like when I was a child and I turned out fine. If things like anime and video games really did make kids violent, we should have a generation of murderers and serial killers by now.
I read your post – very good for a 30-minute time limit!
But yeah, there are always other factors at work with these acts of violence and murder – whether it’s a strained relationship with the person being murdered or a mental problem of the murderer. I agree with what you said in the post that by a young age kids can understand the consequences of such violent actions, so if they go through with it anyway, they’ve got to have some kind of extreme motives and emotional problems, regardless of whether they got a bit of influence from something they watched.
Thank you for the mention :)
Speaking of media acting as mirror to the real world. I can’t help feeling that some media (eg. news) starts acting more like magnifying glasses. They depict small violent events and make it look bigger.
I personally support more strict gun control but one can’t expect crime rate to turn around in a matter of months or even years. There’s no quick way out of this, really.
I agree about gun control, but like I said to chikorita157 above, because it’s something that’s so ingrained in our country, it’s going to be a very difficult thing to change. It’s kind of sad to think how many incidents like this need to happen before people start changing their views.
I tend to agree that many parents and society are over paranoid and as a result, kids suffer from it.
Anyway, as for the topic at hand, I would certainly say that violence in the media does not really do much. Look at all the stuff from our history, such the fairy tales that we now considered beloved, such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Beauty & the Beast, and somewhat including The Little Mermaid. They are all water-downed these days, some of which that even the people that do the Grimm fairy tale anthologies supposedly did not want to put in the original version of the tale. However, the kids from those times certainly seemed to turn out right, since many of them are our ancestors.
Interesting examples with the Disney fairy tales but it certainly holds. There’s always been violence in media and people have always acted violently for reason too numerous to list, but never solely because of what they read in a book or watched on TV…but I would actually say we’ve gotten better compared to “the old days” when laws about violence were much less strict than today. But there’s no stopping it so the best we can do is try to restrict it at its roots, such as better gun control and research into mental disorders that may drive someone to act in such a way.
As long as humans are around, crazy people will do crazy things. That’s normal and resorting to censorship to cater to a very small subset of “unstable” people is really pathetic.
Hopefully it’ll get forgotten under a pile of new things like it happens every time…:P
I agree, there’s always been crazy people as long as people have existed. Doing something mild that punishes others and doesn’t get to the root of the problem, like censoring a few things, is not the way to go XP
Mild digression: Saw your comment on Shoujo Corner and was interested to see your thoughts on Haruhi, then I decided to check out some of your other posts and decided to comment here. Hope you don’t mind me following you. :3
On-topic: Like everyone else, I agree with your argument. Media, by itself, could never make someone kill anyone. It can desensitize us to violent acts though. By that I mean we aren’t as shocked by the brutality when we see killings or gore in real life and in the media. We grow accustomed to it, so to speak. This however, doesn’t mean we would actually kill someone, like you pointed out. There are definitely a bunch of things to take into account, and mental state and upbringing are pretty much big influences.
Also, I find it interesting that you emphasis the pain and destruction in shounen shows because shounen shows, while they can get quite violent, always emphasized that killing is wrong and in general are big on good versus evil. Not to say that they aren’t violent, oh they are, I agree with you there, but I think it’s sort of a weird quirk that while they are violent, they also try to limit what can go. Punching is ok, killing is not, for example. xD
Another thing that piques my interest in this whole debate is that the media is quick to jump on violent tv shows and games (especially games), but when we hear about ex-military personnel committing horrendous crimes, there really isn’t much of a discussion, is there? I find that very peculiar, especially since I do think it is the military’s influence that messed those people up. Watching violent things, is one thing, but being trained to commit them and then finally murdering actual people, well that’s a whole other thing and it’s really telling how much silent there is about this, but outcry about the former. Whew, sorry about that, this is just one topic that I’ve been considering a lot in the past few years.
Hi, thanks for visiting my blog and reading the post ^_^
I see our being desensitized by the media as having its good and bad points. It’s good because it allows us to better cope with gory, violent acts we may come across in real life if we’ve already experienced them on some level in the media. But a possible bad affect is that it could also make us less shocked and sympathetic to such acts if they become so commonplace to us.
Shonen series seem to advocate that fighting is okay as a means of proving worth or solving a certain problem as long as both parties consent to it (so ruthlessly beating up an innocent person who doesn’t want to fight is wrong). Killing is usually advocated as a bad thing though (other than for an evil villain) except for some rare cases, like mercy killing someone who’s too far gone or something.
Good point about the military too. Since Japan doesn’t even have a military (in addition to not baring arms) that probably also contributes to the overall peaceful nature of the culture.
Good article. It never ceases to amaze me how the media find a scapegoat for the same stuff (violence, in this case) and the public buy into it hook, line, and sinker. You’d think the public would learn a lesson, but apparently not. Ultimately, I feel that beyond ratings grabbing, media scares about violence (sexuality, too) denote a lack of trust in human inhibition – the fear of a new technology dehumanizing humans by limiting their capacity for human emotion, I guess. While this is hardly new, it always packs the same air of distrust.
It’s worth noting that violence in the media is distinct from real-life violence since it maintains enough separation to where the viewer doesn’t feel like a direct participant; using the example of a game involving military combat, the player cannot feel the weight of a gun, is not actually performing the motions of handling a gun and walking around, and there is no recoil (even if there is vibration, controller vibration is pre-set). There is also a feeling of sensory disconnect; using the game example again, the player cannot smell gunpowder, dead bodies, ember, etc. and thus the feeling of actually being immersed in a warzone is lost.
Forgive me if this was a bit long; this is just a topic I feel passionate about.
It’s interesting but some people may argue about what you said in your second paragraph that precisely because a violent video game can’t offer the same experience as real violence, people may become influenced because they think it’ll be just like the game – they don’t know about the weight of the gun or the smell of dead bodies or anything like that…until after the crime is committed I guess. But I think that most people, even children, know the difference between fantasy and reality in this case, and if they do become influenced, other factors are at work, such as their mental health.
Oh, I didn’t think of that counterargument; thanks for bringing it up.
Well, if someone were to present such a counterargument, I would respond by saying that the problem is not inherent to the media but to the person playing. Furthermore, if one were to present the argument that people might want to commit real violence because simulated violence felt lacking after mentioning an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality, that would be a contradiction – wanting to commit real violence because of the lack of realism in simulated violence would denote some understanding between fantasy and reality, thus invalidating the original claim.
I agree with you that people who imitate violent acts on television and movies have to be mentally ill in the first place. There’s no way the suspect in the Aurora shootings, James Eagan Holmes, a man in his twenties, could casually act as a comic supervillain and open fire at several dozen people and be mentally sane at the same time.
It’s been my opinion that easily-influenced minds can be affected by media in general. When incidents like this arise, people always feel the need to point fingers and accuse certain mediums of entertainment for being too much of an influence. They’re either going to blame ONLY anime, ONLY video games, ONLY movies, etc. when they aren’t the direct causes of psychological illness. It’s true that they are all equally influencing to certain individuals, though, but that would mean the only solution is to censor everything, which would do more harm than good. Media is a form of art, and art is a form of self-expression. Being over-sheltered is just as bad as being over-exposed to violence. That’s why parents should monitor what their kids watch, though moderately. Paranoia with your children is never a good thing (I heard stories of parents accusing other people of being child molesters upon returning their lost children at the mall).
The problem is that parents buy into the whole “media is an influence thing” and refuse to ever take responsibility for what their kid becomes.
Excellent thoughts. I agree with everything you said, too. When it comes down to it, EVERYTHING is a potential influence for bad behavior, so we should either censor everything or just be more careful of what children are exposed to and more aware of those who are mentally ill. Extreme paranoia on the part of parents or whomever isn’t a good thing and hurts more than helps.