Tuesday Tidbit by Asst. Chief Paul Magdich.... You know folks, it baffles me, what we find entertaining anymore. A night at the movies is not an inexpensive endeavor when popcorn and a drink are thrown in and, that makes it even more baffling to me, what it is we choose to relax and be entertained by. When I was a kid, my dad was a WWII veteran and every movie that had anything to do with WWII that came out we saw at the drive-in. Much of it was historical, but artistic license was taken with most of it and, of course, there was a lot of killing. It was about war. Of course, in those days, there weren’t flying limbs and the spray of blood that seems to accompany the deaths depicted in movies today. Back then, you heard a bang and the target grabbed their chest and fell to the ground. You still got the picture without the graphic shock value. This past weekend, scores of people said they wanted to relax from their stressful weekend by watching a movie whose premise was to allow senseless violence of any kind for a twelve hour period without repercussions. What better way to relax, than watch a number of innocent people violently and senselessly killed, with the sanction of society no less? Now that’s entertainment. Really people! When the movie’s over, let’s go home and fire up the video games and shoot the hell out a bunch of other stuff. Make sure you have the latest versions, so the graphics are great and you can actually feel like the blood is real. If I haven’t lost you yet and you’re still reading, I am just trying to make a point. We are entertained by death. Where am I going with this? Why people are so shocked and surprised when someone shoots, bombs, stabs multiple victims when we glorify these actions as forms of our entertainment. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is retired from the Army. He is a member of the Killology research group and is well known and well regarded in the law enforcement community as an expert in the psychology of killing. He has posed the question, “Are we teaching our children to kill?” He uses violence in video games and the movies as examples and how those actions become positively reinforced, “our children watch vivid pictures of human suffering and death learning to associate it with their favorite soft drink and candy bar or their girlfriend’s perfume.” Now I know that there are rating systems that are supposed to limit exposure, but our most recent mass murderers were not pre-teens were they, and the internet provides access to all kinds of things that curious minds are going to seek out; many of which would not be popular with parents. Of course, when we do have a mass murderer, the media tells all about them and their pictures are visible to us 24/7. Somewhere someone sees this and says to themselves, “that guys a celebrity” and where does that lead. How many times have you seen the picture of the surviving Boston bomber in the last month? Who is seeing him as a hero and what seed will that sow? Hollywood types tout the need for gun control and the like, but it’s apparently ok to destroy what and whoever is necessary if there is a big enough paycheck in it. It’s just entertainment. I just challenge you to think about that the next time you decide to relax by sitting down to 2 hours of gratuitous violence when there are so many other options available. I mean, that stuff could never happen here, right?
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:31:11 +0000
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