VIOLENCE
IN FILMS AND TELEVISION
Which
came first? The chicken or the egg? Violence in films and
television or violence in real life? Who can say for sure?
As far as violence in films and television is concerned,
we can rest assured that these visual media have been only
faithfully mirroring the views and the sentiments of real
life. Films and Television cannot move away radically from
reality because, let's face it, such a proposition would
not be economically viable in the sense that the basic objective
of making profit on investment would be defeated. After
all, people cannot be expected to relate to and entertain
such deviations. And films and television are commercial
enterprises.
One
common grouse against violence in films and television is
that it spawns such emotions in the impressionable youth.
The usual clichéd statement that children love playing
with toy guns and knives and that they have become indifferent
to even the thought that they are inflicting pain to their
adversaries in their make-believe games cannot hold water.
This is simply because these are the very same impressionable
youth who sit on the branch of a tree, which has now become,
in their minds, the cockpit of an inter-galactic spaceship
taking them to faraway universes beyond even their own comprehension.
The main point being missed is this: children do not look
at things the same way grown-ups do (or is it the other
way round?). Of course, there have been, and always will
be, exceptions. But, hasn't this always been the case? The
point is that children realize, by themselves, where their
make-believe world and where the real world begins. These
children grow up to become the future citizens of Society.
Homo
sapiens have evolved from lower orders of life and,
therefore, it is but natural that some animal instincts
still remain from the days of yore, in varying extents.
In some people, it is bound to be significantly more and
this manifestation cannot be attributed to the influence
of films and television on the rise in crime rate in society.
It would be naïve to think that Man has come a long
way since Creation and has become civilized. If that was
so, how can one explain away the mob instincts that have
been exhibited ever so often, in all strata of Society,
in all countries around the globe? Or, for that matter,
the barbaric behaviour unleashed against fellow men in so
many countries for such flippant reasons such as variation
in skin pigmentation, or theological beliefs. Or is the
favourite whipping boy, films and television, the main perpetrator
of this, too?
Society
has its ills. And it is bound to have its far-reaching effects
on the human psyche. Right or wrong, inequities and inequalities
will have intense psychological ramifications on the individual
and considering the concurrent and cumulative effect of
sometimes even, conflicting causes, it will be well nigh
impossible to compute the exact nature of the impact. Thus
it becomes almost laughable to try to calculate the component
of the contribution of films and television to the rise
in the crime rate.
