Back To The Watchers Connection
Click Here To Vote On This Topic
Story by: Yves Adele Harlow Reporter
Imagine you live in the 1950s. You are watching the TV and you barely see anything damaging to your mind. Everyone on the TV sounds sort of cheesy. Now think of watching TV in the present day. FOX gets away with basically anything. On the news, they’re always sneaking in dead bodies and shootings into the broadcast. Flip through the channels on the TV and I guarantee that you will see some sort of violence on one of the channels, especially if you have cable. We’ve come a long way since the cheesy TV shows.
I hate to touch on this, but I think I really have to. Here goes. Professional wrestling. I don’t totally want to bash wrestling because I do watch it. Look, maybe it’s just a spur of the moment type thing. Maybe a loss of the blood flow to the brain, maybe the TV really is killing brain cells, or maybe they were born stupid already, but some people are dumb enough to try wrestling moves with their friends and one of them ends up getting seriously injured. In a few cases, some people have been killed. But not everything happens because of the TV. Something has to have been there beforehand in order for these people to try these dumb things. On the other hand, you can’t just say that the TV had nothing to do with it. TV shows like the WWF and other wrestling programs show wrestling moves. I’m not entirely blaming Vince McMahon for this because there has to be a little stupidity already lurking in the mind of the regular people in the world who try the moves, even though they tell you, “Don’t try this at home. Leave the danger to us.” But you just can’t deny that the TV had a part in it.
TV shows with a lot of guns also play a part in the problem of violence in our daily lives. When kids of any age see a show with a lot of guns, they get the idea that guns are cool and they want to be cool just like the people on the TV. So that’s where you get the seven year olds shooting guns from. I have a whole theory on guns, so click here to read about it. Anyway, kids do think guns are cool. Little kids are very naïve about things like that. A friend of mine, when he was younger used to like Superman a lot. So he would put on a red towel and pretend like he was flying, just like Superman. I’m sure many guys have done that. Then he tried jumping off of tables, chairs, even a bookcase to fly. It didn’t work obviously. But one day, he decided to go out in the middle of the street. He wanted to stop a semi-truck with only his tiny little seven year-old hand. *laugh* He almost got ran over, but luckily his mom got him out of the street. Even a kiddie show can be hazardous. But then, maybe he was just a little stupid too. *laugh*
Here’s the clincher. I mostly blame the media like the news programs. Everyone has an opinion on the Columbine shooting and so do I. The media has gotten more resources that enable them to gather more news and broadcast it. Columbine wouldn’t have been as big a deal as it was and still is without the media coverage. Now everyone is hyped up about all the quiet people killing everyone in the school. Yes, it was a terrible thing that happened. No, it shouldn’t happen at schools where supposedly kids are safe. But it isn’t like that anymore. We have gangs going to our schools. We are in danger everyday because they don’t take anything from anyone and if you look at them the wrong way, you could have a gang member after you. That’s been going on for a while, so that’s nothing new. People can’t control their anger as well as they were able to in the Victorian era. Everyday words are f*** and s***(I’m censoring myself because I’m a prude and I don’t like those words very much). It was unbelievably wrong and rude if anyone ever said those words in public or even at home, but occasionally they must’ve did it in their home.
When you saw that I censored the words, you probably wondered, why? Why did she bother to block them out? Well, it’s because #1, I don’t like them, but #2, you hear them everyday at work, school, TV and maybe even at home and the words have become meaning less. Then #3, maybe your parents haven’t informed you that those are bad words. Well, they are. My parents told me that a long time ago. They still are today. Why else would censors censor music artists who swear in every single song? Just because you say them everyday, doesn’t make them good to say. In fact, I know this guy, named John Lezueski, who in every sentence, swears. I’m not even kidding. Every single sentence. He’s a little nerd who no one likes, but he swears in every sentence because he thinks he’s cool. And he says it without thinking and the words don’t really fit into his sentences, but he does it anyway. Stephanie Littman does the same thing almost except she only swears in about half of the conversation. Then out of nowhere, if there’s a lag in the conversation, she’ll say, “S***,” for absolutely no reason. I just can’t figure it out. It was practically unthinkable to say a bad word on TV in the 50s and when they did say a bad word, it was only once in a great while. Censorship was very strict way back then. Now we’re barely censoring any bad word on TV. Actually, to tell you the truth, I’m surprised that PBS hasn’t started using bad words somehow during their programs. I’m glad that they still remain for the little kids, so that they can have some sort of happy childhood, before they start going to school with all the kids who know all the bad words in the book. Sorry, had to get all that off my chest.
Back to Columbine. We had four bomb threats here at Taylortucky High School after Columbine. People were rumored to have guns, knives, and bombs with them. It was all because of Columbine. People were trying to be funny, but actually were being stupid, saying that there was a bomb in the clock in the gym and that it would blow up at 12:05pm. Yes, I remember the exact time because I was scared. It’s not funny to joke about stuff like that that day after a school shooting. The whole Columbine thing was all over the news and that was where those people got the bright idea that it would be fun to scare the entire school. I blame the news for that.
I hate to bash the TV because it’s my best friend. *laugh* Sometimes I watch almost 11 hours of TV (and no, I’m not kidding, I have a very boring life), but lately I haven’t been watching as much because I’m too tired. But I’ll be watching TV most of the day during the summer. I watch that much TV and I’ve turned out okay. I know the difference between right and wrong because my parents taught me. I know that the stuff they do on TV, is bad, and someone will get hurt if we all start doing all that crazy stuff, so I don’t. Some people can’t handle watching TV it seems like. They don’t know that they’re not supposed to do all those things. They’re not supposed to try to stop semi-trucks with their hands. Obviously that’s just Superman and Superman isn’t going to do any harm unless someone, like David, is dumb enough to try it. I think maybe there should be just a little more censorship on the airwaves. It has a lot to do with all the problems here in the U.S. and all over the world and it has to stop.
George Carlin: They try to blame movies and TV for violence in this country. What a load of shit. Long before there were movies and television, Americans killed millions of Indians, enslaved millions of blacks, slaughtered 700,000 of each other in a family feud, and attained the highest murder rate in history. Don’t blame Sylvester Stallone. We brought these horrifying genes with us from Europe, and then we gave them our own special twist. American know-how!
Violent American movies like “Die Hard”, “Terminator”, and “Lethal Weapon” do very well in places like Canada, Japan, and Europe. Very well. Yet these countries do not have nearly the violence of the United States. In 1989, in all of Japan, with a population of 150 million, there were 754 murders. In New York City that year, with a population of only 7.5 million, there were 2,300. It’s bred in the bone. Movies and television don’t make you violent; all they do is channel the violence more creatively.
Americans even manage to turn positive experiences into violence. Like sports championships. In Detroit, in 1990, the Pistons won the NBA championship: eight people dead. The Chicago Bulls, 1993: nine shot, 1,000 arrested. Montreal, the Canadiens, 1993: 170 injured, 47 police cars vandalized, and $10 million in damages. I’m glad it’s happened in a place like Montreal, so these bigoted shit stains who call in on sports-talk shows can’t blame it all on the blacks.
I could mention of things that contribute to violence. One is simply the condition of being violent; the predisposition. Everyone knows this is a cranky species. It’s especially well known among the other species. And most people can see that the particular strain of critter found in America is especially prone to graceless outbursts, being, as we are, a collection of all the strange and restless castoffs and rolling stones who proved such an ill fit back home. God bless them all, and give them the guns they want.
Two other things that contribute to violence are religion and government, because they seek to repress and regulate natural impulses like sex and self-gratification. Of course, the two of them will always try to scapegoat movies and television. The truth is, no one knows enough to stop the real violence, so their answer is to tone down the pretend violence. It’s superstition: “Maybe if we tone down the pretend violence, the real violence will go away. Or not seem so bad.”
And maybe the father who forbids his son to watch violent television will not beat the shit out of him when he disobeys.
Maybe.