![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Which came first...?
Oct. 21st, 2000 09:02 pmWas it the music or the misery?
That's pretty much the first line in High Fidelity, starring John Cusack. He goes on to wonder whether listening to thousands of songs describing heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery, and loss affects the people who hear them. "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable," asks his character Rob Gordon, "or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"
What is interesting is that I asked a similar question while watching one of the newsmagazine shows - they look so much the same, it's difficult to recall which one it was - during a segment that explored the question of whether violence in entertainment promotes violence in real life, and whether anybody Ought To Do Something About It.
There are several essays hidden inside this issue, but the question that formed in my mind as I watched the segment was: "Do people who watch violent entertainment become violent and thereby contribute to increased violence in society, or are people increasingly violent for some other reason, and simply attracted to violent entertainment as a side-effect?"
The segment last night seemed fairly well-balanced, although I'd say the "entertainment-violence-is-no-big-deal" side got the better coverage, while the "ban the violence" side was repeatedly pressed with some pretty hard questions. This was particularly apparent in the questions about methodology and the statistical significance of the "scientific" results of anti-violence research that purports to show a correlation between exposure to make-believe violence and a propensity to commit violence.
The first objection concerned the issue of what constitutes "aggressive" behavior. According to one of the critics, the standard for considering someone as "aggressive" was - if memory serves - a positive response to the question, "If a friend of yours had a balloon, would you pop it for no reason?"
Excuse me?
Also, the shrink who claimed that watching The Three Stooges was a particularly "bad" influence did not do his credibility much good, in my opinion.
(On the other hand, who knows? Maybe the doctors opposing entertainment violence said a great many things that were intelligent and insightful that were left on the cutting room floor. We'll never know, will we?)
I happen to believe that if music, lyrics, poems, pictures, illustrations, etchings, plays, movies, and stories have the power to inspire us to greatness and elevate us to a higher plane, then those same sources of entertainment must have the power to urge us on to perfidious, evil acts as well. In each and every case, though, it is the individual's interpretation that is the key factor, the big unknown, that elusive quantity x.
However, efforts to legislate the promotion of "good" entertainment and the suppression of "bad" entertainment will fail, with ultimately disastrous consequences. What then, is the solution?
I don't know.
Yet.
Cheers...
That's pretty much the first line in High Fidelity, starring John Cusack. He goes on to wonder whether listening to thousands of songs describing heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery, and loss affects the people who hear them. "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable," asks his character Rob Gordon, "or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"
What is interesting is that I asked a similar question while watching one of the newsmagazine shows - they look so much the same, it's difficult to recall which one it was - during a segment that explored the question of whether violence in entertainment promotes violence in real life, and whether anybody Ought To Do Something About It.
There are several essays hidden inside this issue, but the question that formed in my mind as I watched the segment was: "Do people who watch violent entertainment become violent and thereby contribute to increased violence in society, or are people increasingly violent for some other reason, and simply attracted to violent entertainment as a side-effect?"
The segment last night seemed fairly well-balanced, although I'd say the "entertainment-violence-is-no-big-deal" side got the better coverage, while the "ban the violence" side was repeatedly pressed with some pretty hard questions. This was particularly apparent in the questions about methodology and the statistical significance of the "scientific" results of anti-violence research that purports to show a correlation between exposure to make-believe violence and a propensity to commit violence.
The first objection concerned the issue of what constitutes "aggressive" behavior. According to one of the critics, the standard for considering someone as "aggressive" was - if memory serves - a positive response to the question, "If a friend of yours had a balloon, would you pop it for no reason?"
Excuse me?
Also, the shrink who claimed that watching The Three Stooges was a particularly "bad" influence did not do his credibility much good, in my opinion.
(On the other hand, who knows? Maybe the doctors opposing entertainment violence said a great many things that were intelligent and insightful that were left on the cutting room floor. We'll never know, will we?)
I happen to believe that if music, lyrics, poems, pictures, illustrations, etchings, plays, movies, and stories have the power to inspire us to greatness and elevate us to a higher plane, then those same sources of entertainment must have the power to urge us on to perfidious, evil acts as well. In each and every case, though, it is the individual's interpretation that is the key factor, the big unknown, that elusive quantity x.
However, efforts to legislate the promotion of "good" entertainment and the suppression of "bad" entertainment will fail, with ultimately disastrous consequences. What then, is the solution?
I don't know.
Yet.
Cheers...
