It lists these as the symptoms of children who watch what they consider too much violent TV:
• become "immune" to the horror of violence
• gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems
• imitate the violence they observe on television;
• identify with certain characters, victims and/or victimizers
Based on the lack of examples that should be used to support these studies, I cannot trust these findings. They don’t explain in what context the child imitates the violence, or how they “accept the violence as the solution.” And there is certainly no diagram that proves a child’s “immunity to the horror of violence.” I can only assume they interviewed children, and did not put them in real life situations where the result was violence and then immediately stop them and slap their hands. They probably did extensive interviews and used that as their foundation for their information but I believe there is a considerable difference between seeing someone die on TV and seeing someone die in real life. Maybe a child doesn’t flinch when watching a man beating a woman on television, but he probably would cry if his parents fought.
The Academy also gives parents suggestions as to what precautions to take to ensure their child does not become the violent type. They recommend watching TV with the child and explaining what everything means. If someone on TV gets hurt, to explain they are just actors, that the actor isn’t really hurt, and that it isn’t funny when things like that happen in real life. They also suggest taking the TV out of the child’s room, as to better regulate their viewing. I personally didn’t know any kids who had TV’s in their bedrooms at impressionable ages, but I’m sure it must happen somewhere.
I think these suggestions are good, and are probably best in the development of the child. I believe that being active in your child’s upbringing is integral, necessary, and important. It would considerably help reduce how violent the child turns out if the parent is there, explaining what things mean, being a parent, not a cop. It’s important not to censor things without explaining why.
After watching two hours of Saturday morning cartoons, I think I myself am able to form an opinion about the violence level of television. I began at 9am with a program called Ultimate Muscle. It was a fantasy cartoon about a pack of wrestlers that would fight each other and get into wacky adventures. On the surface, hearing its premise and its title, you automatically assume it’s uber violent and slap a TV-PG rating on it.
However, if you dissect this cartoon, it’s rather surprising. There was a lot of dialog. It was a completely developed storyline and plot and action, almost to the point that they barely fought at all. When they did finally get down to the “violent” section, their wrestling was nothing more than pushing each other around in the ring a little bit, with an extremely exaggerated reaction of being genuinely hurt. There’s no way that in real life someone could get that hurt just by being shoved. I think this sends a reverse message to the child, that doing little harm to someone will actually cause them great pain. I see this as a good thing. The child might be overly cautious then, and try not to shove his peers, for fear it may hurt them more than it actually would. If they don’t get this, maybe the parent could explain it to them.
During the commercial breaks I noticed a great difference in the commercials of my day and the commercials of today. The commercials really weren’t violent at all, just really expensive looking, relying mostly on computer graphics. They were mostly for video games, food, or other cartoons.
Another cartoon I watched was The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This was not the same beloved program from my day. The cartoon has gotten less light-hearted and much darker. Darkness, however, does not equate violence. The fighting that went on in this program was really dressed up with artistic imagery. The moves the turtles did were so impossible to imitate, that if children tried they would fail. No one was seriously hurt. Nothing really happened. If anything did happen, it was usually bigger characters picking on much smaller characters. It was more of an example of what not to do, because they were always bad, and were always brought to justice.
I also watched an old Bugs Bunny episode, I think on IPTV. This particular episode wasn’t violent at all; the characters were just mean and manipulative. It made me laugh really hard, even in my old age. I also noticed things I didn’t get when I watched it as a child.
Finally I watched Kim Possible on ABC Family. There was a lot of action, but no violence to speak of at all. Kim could jump from building to building, and jump really high into the air and leap off something tall, but I noticed that the animators paid close attention to detail in how she would do these things. It was more accurate, modeling her moves after gymnastics. I was very impressed. There was a scene where Ron Stoppable was racing a bad guy for some reason, but they couldn’t get over how their hair looked and kept stopping to comb it. Eventually their race resorted to mussing each other’s hair to spite the other. It was reduced to that. Kids watching this won’t hurt anyone.
There is, however, something I’d like to address that has been bothering me a while. Cartoons, obviously, are written by adults for children. The past couple months, I’ve noticed more and more humor that undeniably children wouldn’t get. It isn’t crude or sexual, or about vulgar inappropriate things. It’s just referencing things in a world children don’t know about. It’s not that the jokes aren’t meant for children, they’re just wasted on kids. They obviously wouldn’t catch them until they watch reruns of their favorite cartoons when they’re a little older. Take for example, Ultimate Muscle. There was a scene in which one character lifted another one and said “Oh, he’s so heavy.” To which another character responded, “He ain’t heavy! He’s my brother!” As a music fan, this is an obvious reference to the 1970 Neil Diamond song, “He’s my brother” written by B. Scott, and B. Russell. Even some adults wouldn’t have caught that. It almost seems like cartoons are sometimes written by adults for other adults.
This was not the only example I found. Another reference I noticed was in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. The human character Casey Jones told a girl to meet him at the intersection of Eastman and Laird. As someone who grew up watching the turtles, I caught that Eastman and Laird was a reference to the characters creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. This is just one of many references and older-oriented material I noticed. Cartoons are swarming with them. Some of the other cartoons just had all kinds of conversations that children probably don’t get and therefore just tune them out, using vocabulary that is beyond them. It seems like a waste to me. Unless, of course, in the event the child is confused so he asks his parents what it means, his parents explain, and the child learns something new. That would be the ideal situation, teaching kids about the new adult world hey will eventually be hurtled into someday, just at a much younger age so they have a somewhat better understanding of it.
I suppose when it comes to violence on TV, I think programmers are more conscious about who their audience might be. I think this also has to do with the TV rating system that went into effect in the late 90’s. The networks wouldn’t air a TV-MA cartoon on Saturday mornings, when their target audience is under the age of 12. And there will always be an audience for action-oriented cartoons. If they just replaced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with some fluffy cartoon about kittens on a quest for catnip, they would lose that viewer to a competitor. There’s a demand for action and the fact that violence has been replaced with storyline and detail makes television a more positive thing for children to witness, especially with their parents doing their job to guide them along the way.
