Consumption Rules

New York City is famous for many things—the Yankees, the Statue of Liberty, Crime, and some of the most expensive private schools in the nation. In fact, some of the private schools in New York now cost more than Harvard University. Will is a student at one these schools. At just fourteen, a freshman in school, Will’s life is consumed by his enrollment in one of the most prestigious schools in the country. His wardrobe is mostly composed of gray slacks, white shirts, red ties, blue socks and blue blazers. Will’s day begins at 5:40am when he wakes up to make it to school by 7:00am. Classes consist of the usual basic curriculum supplemented with courses in Latin, politics, and mandatory participation in the orchestra. At three o’clock school finishes and violin lessons begin. By 6:00pm Will is home for dinner, after which, three hours of homework ensue. Just before going to sleep, Will grabs his Marvel Comic and dives into the newest adventure of Oktane—Will’s one release. With enormous amounts of pressure from society, Will’s emotions become stifled as he conforms to the demands of his life. But with one quick comic everything changes. Amidst all the graphic and violent pictures Will suddenly has a fantasy self–a person who can bear his aggression. Someone who is invulnerable. Once the last page of the comic closes, Will turns off the light and goes to sleep, now able to handle the pressures tomorrow will bring.

Although strictly fictional, Will’s life is very representative of many adolescents and their daily routines–routines which often allow for a release of emotion through some sort of media violence. Whether the violence is in the form of a comic book, a video game, or television program, it is a necessary outlet for adolescents to release certain emotions and feelings that are not able to be expressed in other ways.

Media violence, sometimes referred to as mock or creative violence, is characterized as a display of violence via television, internet, movies, comics, video games, music and music videos. According to Mary Muscari, a professor at the University of Scranton and an established author, children will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence from television viewing alone by the time they become eighteen (Muscari 2002). Professor Muscari also states that since the deregulation of broadcasting in 1980, there has been a proliferation of media violence.

Today’s youth allow media violence to be even more prevalent than suggested above by their use of multiple media tools. Several studies have been conducted to determine the time teenagers are exposed to media. One study suggested that teenagers today are able to fit 8.5 hours worth of media into 6.5 hours of time (American Libraries 2005). An example would be someone simultaneously surfing the internet while watching the television. Another study, published in Advertising Age, entitled Kids cram more hours into media day stated that kids watch 24 hours and 7 minutes worth of cable television a week while spending 16 hours and 48 minutes on the internet (Oser 2005). Consequently, children spend 40 hours and 55 minutes a week exposed to the media—one hour more than the time spent working a full-time job. Needless to say, the exposure of teenagers to the media and media violence is extensive.

Gerard Jones, a renowned author of several books and many comics firmly believes that forms of ‘creative violence’ such as videogames, gansta rap, and certain television shows benefit far more children than they hurt, by giving kids a “tool to master their rage”. In an article titled “Violent Media is Good For Kids” Jones explains his belief in further detail. Jones begins his article with a brief synopsis of his childhood. As a young teenager, 13 to be exact, Jones was taught by parents who believed “violence was wrong, rage was something to be overcome and cooperation was always better than conflict.” As a result, Jones states that he withdrew into passivity and loneliness. Until one day when one of his Mother’s students gave her a comic book and convinced her that despite the obvious juvenility of Marvel Comics, they were devoted to messages of tolerance and pacifism. It was under this pretense that Gerard’s mother accepted the comic thinking it would be good for her son. Jones states the following “They were good for me because they were juvenile. And violent. The character who caught me, and freed me, was The Hulk…suddenly I had a fantasy self to carry my stifled rage and buried desire for power. I had a fantasy self who was a self: unafraid of his desires and the world’s disapproval, unhesitating and effective in action. “Puny boy follow Hulk!” roared my fantasy self, and I followed.” Jones continues, “I followed him to new friends — other sensitive geeks chasing their own inner brutes — and I followed him to the arrogant, self-exposing, self-assertive, super heroic decision to become a writer” (Jones 2000). Through his own personal experience, Jones illustrates how media violence can positively affect a teenager and give them a dimension to their life, an outlet, that would be unattainable through other means.

Jones continues with family stories in his article as he next describes how media violence helped his son overcome one of his fears. “In the first grade, his friends started climbing a tree at school. But he was afraid: of falling, of the centipedes crawling on the trunk, of sharp branches, of his friends’ derision. I took my cue from his own fantasies and read him old Tarzan comics, rich in combat and bright with flashing knives. For two weeks he lived in them. Then he put them aside. And he climbed the tree” (Jones 2000). The example of his son is a very important one in that Jones states his son was afraid of the ridicule he would receive from his friends; and after reading a comic laced with media violence, Jones’ son did not attempt to attack his friends but rather conquer his fear. Therefore, the impact of media violence on Jones’ son was a positive one that allowed him to identify with Tarzan and ultimately helped him overcome his obstacle.

Someone who shares the same belief as Gerard Jones is Melanie Moore, Ph.D., a psychologist whose work is focused on urban teens. Melanie is quoted in Jones’ article as saying “Fear, greed, power-hunger, rage: these are aspects of our selves that we try not to experience in our lives but often want, even need, to experience vicariously through stories of others,” She continues “Children need violent entertainment in order to explore the inescapable feelings that they’ve been taught to deny, and to reintegrate those feelings into a more whole, more complex, more resilient selfhood” (Jones 2000). Therefore, Mrs. Moore is reinforcing the idea that media violence is good for kids by stating that violent media allows them to experience emotions vicariously through others, emotions that society causes to be suppressed. As a result, teenagers are able to have a more complete sense of self.

Now although Jones and Moore argue that media violence is beneficial to many kids, they do not argue that it is completely risk-free. In his article Jones states “I’m not going to argue that violent entertainment is harmless. I think it has helped inspire some people to real-life violence. I am going to argue that it’s helped hundreds of people for every one it’s hurt, and that it can help far more if we learn to use it well.” Acknowledging that media violence is not without risks, Jones believes that the benefits outweigh the risks. He continues “I am going to argue that our fear of “youth violence” isn’t well-founded on reality, and that the fear can do more harm than the reality. We act as though our highest priority is to prevent our children from growing up into murderous thugs — but modern kids are far more likely to grow up too passive, too distrustful of themselves, too easily manipulated…When we try to protect our children from their own feelings and fantasies, we shelter them not against violence but against power and selfhood” (Jones 2000). Thus according to Jones, it would be a great disservice to the teenagers and kids today if they were sheltered from the stories of Tarzan, The Hulk, and other fantasy characters that allow them to have a sense of pride, power and to explore the feelings they have been taught to suppress.

However, not all of his colleagues agree with Jones. Many, in fact probably most, feel that the suppression of the feelings—feelings stirred up by media violence—is more beneficial than the expression of those feelings. One such person is Susan Villiani. Susan is an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as well as the medical director of school programs at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. In her paper titled Impact of Media on Children and Adolescents: A 10 year Review of the Research, Villiani quotes a well-respected study. In this study, the authors concluded “exposure to media violence increases aggressive interactions with strangers, classmates, and friends” (Villiani 2001). This study would then contradict Jones’ belief that media violence is an outlet for the expression of rage and other strong emotions, but that media violence is teaching tool for kids on how to act with their environment.

Another study that seems to contradict Jones’ belief was carried out by Brandon S. Centerwall, a psychiatrist from Seattle who measured homicide rates in three different countries for time period of more than twenty years. From 1945 to 1974 Centerwall compared the homicide rates in South Africa, a country where television was not allowed until 1975, with Canada and the United States—two countries where television ownership was abundant. Centerwall’s findings were “White homicide rates remained stable [in South Africa],” he reported, but “in two control populations, Canadian and
U.S., white homicide rates doubled following the introduction of television” (Rhodes 2000). Following his findings, Centerwall follows up with a hypothesis that “If, hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer
rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults” (Rhodes 2000). If television were truly responsible for this enormous amount of violence in the United States, I would personally start a petition to ban all television sets in the country and put patrols at the borders that would stop screening for non-native vegetables and fruits, but screen for televisions.

However, I do not believe that will be necessary. In his article, The Media-Violence Myth, Richard Rhodes presents the findings of Centerwall and then refutes them with a study conducted by two legal scholars at the University of California at Berkeley. The two scholars, Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins tested Centerwall’s theory by applying it to four other industrial, democratic countries—France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. The results are indeed interesting. During the exact same time period as the Centerwall study, Zimring and Hawkins found the opposite of the initial results to be true. They state “incidence of murder in those countries either remained more or less level (Italy) or actually declined (France, Germany and Japan) with increased television ownership.” They then conclude that their findings completely “disconfirm the causal linkage” of television violence to actual homicide rates (Rhodes 2000). After having disproved Centerwall’s findings, Rhodes includes another study that correlates television violence to violent crime rates. A sociologist by the name of Steven Messner wanted to determine whether metropolitan areas with high ratings for violent crime shows exhibited a higher rate in violent crimes. Messner himself states that the findings are “quite surprising.” His results are that “Metropolitan areas where large audiences are attracted to violent television programming tend to exhibit low rates of violent crime.” He offered a simple explanation for his finding: When people are home watching TV, they’re not out committing violent crimes” (As quoted in Rhodes 2000). As a result of the supplemental research and findings, it is clear that no causal relationship exists between media violence and actual rates of violent behavior.

Violent behavior is appalling. The tragedy of the Columbine massacre affected thousands of people across the country. Shortly after the incident occurred, Harper’s magazine published a study attacking violent video games as a catalyst for school shootings. Joe Stavitsky, a teenager from New Jersey responded to the essay by saying “As a ‘geek,’ I can tell you that none of us play video games to learn how (or why) to shoot people. For us, video games do not cause violence; they prevent it. We see games as a perfectly safe release from a physically violent reaction to the daily abuse leveled at us” (As Quoted in The Media-Violence Myth 2000). What Joe is expressing is that cyber bullets do not kill. Violent media is not a poison to adolescents, it is an escape from the pressures that parents, teachers, and society places upon them.

For reasons stated above, media violence benefits many adolescents because it gives them a necessary avenue to release the stronger emotions that are suppressed by societal constraints. Gerard Jones and The Hulk were able to overcome his loneliness, find friends, and he eventually became a successful writer. Jones’ son utilized the help of Tarzan to withstand the derision of his friends and climb the tree. Joe Stavitsky is able to cope with the pressures of adolescents because he spends quality time playing video games. It is true that media violence may need to be curbed for the few who already have tendencies toward violent behavior, but for the vast majority, it is a therapeutic release of bottled emotions.

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