The Myth of Media Violence

Moore

Hennessi Moore

Professor Decker

English 101

October 2, 2017

Media Violence

Synopsis:

The summary of the article is how O’Hehir wants people to understand that it’s not a direct relationship between media violence and real life violence. As you read the article he wants his audience to understand it’s not a relationship because people should know right from wrong. In his opinion, he feels like television shows, video games are just as violent they were almost 40 years ago. As a parent he feels like your child playing video games isn’t going to affect them. He feels like it’s more what their minds are storage their parents should be worried about. In fact, they should be worried why their child isn’t becoming more active and engaging with other children their ages or even being in a type of sport. The quote Hillary Clinton’s states in the first paragraph “They’re playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them.” (O’Hehir 1) In that statement she refers to Grand Theft Auto and she feels like it’s showing children how to interact with prostitutes and killing them. She feels like the game is showing them too much of reality at a young age and even might encourage them to act out on these things. Clinton is probably afraid of that actually becoming a reality. Even though Clinton has a point, she just can’t assume that videogames are the route of all violence because it’s probably on 25% of the cause. It’s probably a major cause because everyone it’s becoming a major effect everyone is going to blame for their actions. O’Hehir tries to prove that it’s other things that can affect your child not just media violence.

Context:

Clinton states” Parents worry their children will not grow up with the same values they did because of the overwhelming presence of the media”. (O’Hehir 1) As parents tend to worry about the values their children won’t have, they need to limit their children spare hours on media and let them become active. A parent can influence their children to rely on media if they don’t show their children about culture, interact about school and their peers and behavioral. They can’t always rely on teachers or education it has to be a 50/50 way. “Although a few juveniles charged with murder, or their victims’ families, have argued that video games were responsible for murder, kids who play video-game shooter aren’t outside gunning down the neighbors.” (O’Hehir 6) Families would blame the video games or the media on their children's behavior and actions because they can’t believe their child is capable of doing a crime.

O’Hehir mentions a case that involves two boys shooting at cars on the highway. According to the article “these boys ages 15 and 13 stole their father’s rifle, hid near a highway and shot at a passing car, killing a passenger. The youths defended themselves on the grounds that playing “Grand Theft Auto” made them do it.” (O’Hehir 4) These young boys know right from wrong. Yes, they probably spent hours playing Grand Theft Auto, but how can video games influenced you to commit murder? All in reality other teens play the same game or games with more violent and know they can’t just go outside and commit murder. Those boys wanted to know how it feels to commit murder but they didn’t expect to get caught so they blame it on the video games. It has been more violent games before “Grand Theft Auto”, in fact violent games been for a while but since the 80s crimes haven’t been so rapid because media violence has been active more. “As Rhodes puts it, “We live in one of the least violent eras in peacetime human history.” (O’Hehir 7) It’s just saying that the generation we in is not as violent as it was in other generations. If parents would have known this ahead of time they probably wouldn’t expose their children to this type of violence. He even states “psychologist L.Rowell Huesmann presented the Senate Judiciary Committee with a dramatic bar graph purporting to show that boys who watched violent TV at age 8 were exceptionally likely to have been convicted of serious crimes by age 30.” (O’Hehir 3) This study is basically showing how this sample size isn’t showing the true population among the serious of crimes. Among people they would only see this as a scientific case.

Audience

O’Hehir has the type of language and vocabulary not everyone will comprehend on his level. O’Hehir intended audience is any gender well educated around the ages of 30-50. Another intended audience would be parents with children who play video games or just parents interested. This article had a great amount of information dealing with how parents feel about how the media violence influenced their children's behavior. In his article he states “The games revel in their pseudo-noir amorality, and they’re basically designed to be loathed by parents, school principals and tweedy psychologists.” (O’Hehir 1) This refers that parents, school principals and tweedy psychologists would agree that media violence is designed to influence children's behavior. Those groups wouldn’t understand the enjoyment of playing video games they only see how it can brainwash our minds. Since O’Hehir is an editor for Salon Magazine, people who read from this magazine would be interested in O’Hehir article. Those types of people would be other editors, critiques, or just freelance writers. Even parents read from this magazine and older generations. He addresses TV shows like “Gunsmoke and Bonanza” which is TV shows my parents would have watched live and are now giving reruns to my generation on television even though we don’t watch them. He refers to parents or guardians by saying “Kids these days!” He even refers to himself by also saying “My own kids… we can’t protect our kids”, phrases like those as saying O’Hehir is a parent and he feel like we can’t always protect our kids from the cruel world out there.