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August 1997, Week 1

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Subject:
From:
Donald Larsson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 7 Aug 1997 11:04:09 -0600
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TEXT/PLAIN (49 lines)
Stephen Brophy wryly observes:
"Since we're fighting anecdote-based universal censorship decisions
with more anecdotes, here's mine:  My son and his friends used to
watch 1-2 'slasher' movies (they prefered the genre name
'slice-and-dice') every afternoon after school, when they weren't
making up extremely violent Dungeons & Dragons adventures.  One of my
son's friends is now teaching in Namibia for the Peace Corps, and
another is getting a masters degree in philosophy.  But the most
horrible outcome is my son's - he has become a Buddhist, and torments
me every time I swat a mosquito!  I wish I had totally prohibited
violent videos during his adolescence - I could now kill as many bugs
as I want to with impunity."
 
 
Nice one, Stephen!
 
Anecdotally, one can prove almost anything, but that proof has to be limited
to the particular instance (if that).  If John Hinkley really was inpired by
TAXI DRIVER, why haven't millions of people stalked Jody Foster and tried
to kill a politician?
 
The remarkable thing about violence on film/tv is perhaps how much it
*doesn't* inspire others to imitate it.
 
And almost all discussions of "violence"
that I've seen fail in their definitions and classifications.  When
correspondents here were talking about "cartoon" violence vs. "real" violence
on TV, did they really mean to suggest that MORTAL KOMBAT should be
equated with SCOOBY-DOO?  (Only perhaps that both have really crappy
animation!)
 
But comparing Japanese Anime or HBO's SPAWN (not to be confused with
the movie currently out) with Saturday Morning Cartoons is comparing
apples with feldspar!
 
Even talking about influence on "children" rarely deals with the developmental
ages of particular children or their sophistication as readers/viewers of
narrative.  There are 18-year-olds (and 40-year-olds) who are less able to
deal intelligently with some material than some 12-year-olds!  Neither
anecdotal generalizations nor mass longitudinal studies usually have the
sophistication to deal with such differences.
 
 
Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
 
----
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