...THE EFFECTS OF MEDIA VIOLENCE IN RELATION TO THE COLUMBINE MASSACRE...
This is any essay I wrote for a school assignment a couple years ago.Media violence (meaning any entertainment violence that it is put out by the media) has been a difficult issue for quite some time now, but the recent Littleton massacre triggered something in all of us. It made us realize that Hollywood's warped perceptions of life and death are at least partly to blame for trivializing murder, death, and violence and sensationalizing them purely for the purpose of entertainment. The two boys involved in the Littleton shootings were reported to have said that the movie "Natural Born Killers" (which, incidentally, has been mentioned in over ten murder cases throughout the United States of America) was among their favourites. Just the title of that movie gives you that the sense that it'll be a crude display of violence; making murder seem like one big game that's easy to get away with. This is very worrying, because it gives people a false sense of the consequences of their actions. If movies are going to portray violence, they should at least show everything that goes hand in hand with it: extreme remorse on the parts of the families and friends of the victims, and the REAL consequences of the law. Another example of unnecessary violence that is put out into society is magazine ads, which have been using violence as one of their main themes for many years, and most likely will for many years to come. There have been advertisments in magazines and billboards that show a person tied up and gagged just so that someone else could have their, say, chocolate bar. While this supposedly works to make money for the company that's product is being advertised, it also numbs us, society at large, to the real effects of such actions. Also, lots of music that is on the market today is filled with neo-Nazi slogans, racist commentary, and sadomasachistic language (not to mention all that gangbang crap) that is WAY too outrageous to hear in such an environment. It's really sad that the people who have the power to put out these messages care more about making money and sounding cool than about their morals and ethics. The Littleton massacre was a good example of how vulnerable people (teenagers in particular) are to what they see around them. If, for example, a movie like "Natural Born Killers" decided to portray the REAL consequences of mass murder, then maybe those boys wouldn't have been so inclined to do what they did. They got a sadly unlrealistic view of the world, which resulted in the deaths of over ten people. And who's to blame for this? Is it really the boys? Or were they just acting out what they'd always seen as normal and cool? It seems to me that the entertainment media is mainly to blame. What's really upsetting and disappointing is that the media, cinema, etc. has so much power over what we see, hear, and think, and they use it in such a disgusting way. Why can't they realize that violence is not a game? And who better to tell us that than the families and friends of the thirteen murdered Littleton victims...? ...*Delia Byrnes* May/99
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