Violence in the media does not affect young adults. Nowadays, people are always looking for a scapegoat in order to get out of taking the blame. Let’s take a look at the Columbine incident. They blamed the music that the kids were listening to for their actions. Now, sure what they listened to may have had questionable lyrics, but look into the meaning of the songs. You’d be surprised to see that there may actually be a positive motive behind the lyrics. In the movie Bowling For Columbine, the former students said the kids were like any other student, but they kept to themselves and were seen as outcasts. This makes me wonder, did anyone really tried to include them in anything? Or better yet, was there some underlying problem that no one noticed? Going back to Bowling For Columbine, Marilyn Manson was interviewed and was asked if he could have talk to those kids, what would he say. Want to know what he replied with? He had said that he wouldn’t have said anything, he would have listen to them because he believes that no one has ever tried to listen to them.
There are many bands that people think make children angry or violent, such as the Insane Clown Posse, Slipknot, Marilyn Manson. That’s pretty much metal and rap in general. In Slipknot’s lyrics, there is a powerful message of being yourself and not letting anyone walk all over you. Hardly anyone sees past the music itself, which sounds angry. Corey Taylor, the lead singer of Slipknot, has once said “Mosh pits are known for being violent but you know what, I’d rather our kids take all their frustration and anger out in the mosh pits then go to school and take it out on someone”. Now what does that say about the music? They don’t preach to go out and hurt someone, they want to prevent that by giving the kids an outlet for their anger.
It’s not just music that’s under fire from the parents. It’s movies and video games as well. Horror movies, action movies, and also video games such as Grand Theft Auto are thought of as desensitizing our youth to violence. The thing is, is that if you think about it, there are kids who don’t listen to angry music, who don’t play violent video games, and who don’t watch violent movies, that snap and hurt others. Why is that? My thoughts are that maybe there’s something going on at home. Maybe they don’t have a great home life, maybe one of their parents up and left them when they were little, maybe they were raped, molested, abused. What I’m trying to say is that you really don’t know what other factors went through these kids that made them this way. Maybe there is a chemical imbalance in their brain giving them schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, or even being a psychopath or sociopath. Whatever it is, its not the media you need to blame.
These kids who don’t have anything to do with violent media usually are the one’s who snap and hurt others. That’s because they had no release for their anger, they had to keep it bottled up. Everything kids go through at home takes a toll on them. Some kids are pressured to be “perfect” and when they can’t do that, they’re punished for it. It’s too much stress and stress makes people feel like they are going to snap. Haven’t you ever had a day where you were so stressed out or maybe so angry that you wanted to hurt someone? It’s not because of what you watch, read, listen to, or play that makes you violent, there are causes that make you a violent person.
I will use myself as an example for this. I listen to all types of music and some of it is pretty angry sounding. Examples would be Slipknot, Lamb of God, Disturbed, Marilyn Manson and Insane Clown Posse. Now look at how I am. I am a very happy person a good portion of the time. I am only angry under the circumstances when someone really pushes my buttons, but it’s hard to make me that angry. I may get annoyed easily, but in no way shape or form am I violent. Watching horror movies hasn’t made me want to go on a homicidal rampage, reading Edgar Allan Poe hasn’t made me want to dismember someone and hide body parts under the floorboards, playing Silent Hill or Devil May Cry hasn’t made me want to go out and shoot people for thinking they were monsters. So I guess what this all really boils down to is how kids were raised, how much stress they are under, and they’re sense of common sense.
How does common sense play a part in all of this? Well for starters, most people know that if they hurt someone, they’ll get in trouble for it. Now if they were, say blinded by rage or something like that, their common sense and judgment are clouded. If someone has a metal disorder and no one caught it or they denied it, than that will also cloud a person’s judgment. It’s not the media that does this, it is how children grew up and other circumstances that make children violent. The media is just a scapegoat because no one wants to take the blame for their child being violent or wants to admit they might have scarred their child.
This was something I actually wrote for my English class. We had to write about either we were against a 12 month school year or what our thoughts were about violence in the media. This is what I came up with.
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