I’d like to reply to some comments I just discovered on a slightly older post, the post called Creative Violence. In that post, I talked about a favorite article of mine by comic book author, Gerard Jones, “Violent Media is Good for Kids.” The essential argument of that article is that the conventional wisdom to keep kids away from violent media & stories is inadequate, because it robs children of an emotional outlet for them to vent their own frustrations and angry feelings. Neither the article, nor I in my response, suggested that actually committing acts of violence was a “good” thing, but I received the following comments, from BillG88 which seemed to interpret it that way:

Oh come on! If you could only hear yourself. Doing violence on some inanimate object like a dart board, bowling pin, firing range target, bottle, beer can, punching bag, yada..yada..yada, may be fine. But do we condone violence on fellow homo sapiens just cuz were a little ticked off by what they’re being, doing, saying, thinking? Not!

Look at martial arts practicioners, for example. They emphasize control over strength and power and they also stress that martial arts is not to be used to strike first. They are to be used only when the individual is definitely defending self or others.

And as for the idea that watching violent movies can’t hurt us: don’t forget that Nazi officers were shown films of violent actions against civilians (Jews and others) as part of their training to be a part of Hitler’s killing machine. Watching those movies desensitized them to the pain felt by enemies of the State when they tortured them in prison.

Bill, I invite you to re-read my original post, as well as the article which it’s based on. I’m guessing that you just gave it a cursory glance, because I feel like you entirely missed what was said. The article basically postulates that negative feelings, anger, frustration and even violence are all part of the natural experience of being a person. They may be unpleasant, but they are also unavoidable on some level. Rather than run and hide from these feelings, and pretend like they don’t exist, or they are wholly bad, we need to have outlets for them. Having acceptable cultural outlets for anger and aggression allows us to deal with these negative feelings in a way which does not really injure anyone, and which allows us to better integrate and balance our personalities.

In other words, we need to be able to vent our negativity so that we do not explode in rage. Acceptable cultural outlets, of course, do not include actually physically hurting people over disagreements we have with them. Your examples about using inanimate objects for this purpose was a good one. But not necessarily a complete one. Humans tend to anthropomorphize everything, and the closer something is to a human being, the more effective it will be psychologically. Along those same lines, Jones’ article and my post advocated that fantasy stories and media were a good place for kids to be able to explore their negative feelings in a creative setting. Rather than stifle kids and tell them that even their feelings are wrong, it allows us to help them understand and channel their feelings into culturally acceptable forms, and there by overcome them on some level. Of course, there are even levels within that of what is more and less appropriate, and the most important way for kids to learn things is by testing boundaries.

Of course, it’s not just kids that need to do this either. Grownups have just as much a need, if not more, because of how much less appropriate it is for them to explode in rage. The social consequences tend to be much higher for adults, whereas if a child throws a temper-tantrum, everyone understands. The modern entertainment industry has largely evolved in such a way as to fulfill the (especially male) human need to vent anger without suffering negative social consequences (physical injury, jail, lawsuits, ostracization, etc).

I also don’t agree with your bringing the Nazis into this, since what you’re referring to was just one facet of a much larger more intense military training program (ie, training them to kill) and ideological social system (training them to see themselves as superior) designed to de-sensitize, de-humanize and de-individualize both soldiers and victims. It was not through merely watching movies that Nazi stormtroopers and prison camps were created, although certainly culture was used and abused by individuals in power to further their ends. And furthermore, everybody’s always trying to compare everything to the Nazis and I’m just tired of it as a rhetorical device…

Similarly, from a modern perspective, I don’t believe that watching a television show in which a person was murdered would suddenly wash away all my socio-cultural upbringing and morals, and make it suddenly very easy for me to go out into the street, and find a real live person, look them square in the eye and murder them. All because of a television show, and nothing more. If that were the case, I would have already murdered tens of thousands of individuals, and so would you. In fact, we all would have immensely genocidal pasts. There would be none of us left on earth left to argue over the effects of violence in the media.