Tv and Violence

Violence on Television

We hear a great deal about violence on television these

days. Nearly everywhere you turn there is something being

written about it, or a program dealing with the issue of it, or a

news story about a child somewhere who was influenced by it to do

something harmful. The subject permeates our collective

consciousness. Maybe this is due to the ever-increasing number

of gangs in our urban centers. Maybe it's due to the

ever-increasing crime rate that we hear about almost nightly on

the news. Whatever the reasons behind its being such a concern,

the fact remains that violence on television is a very real

problem that is quite definitely a contributing factor to

increasing violence among children and, yes, even among adults.

Cartoon violence has been around as long as cartoons have -

and that's a long time. The first animated Disney cartoons

featured a rabbit named Oswald back in 1928 and the cartoon

industry grew from there. So for seventy years now we've been

treated to the antics of various characters, either through the

opening Looney Tunes at the movies or the five hours of Saturday

morning cartoons that were a ritual with us all growing up.

There was Tweety Bird always getting the best of Sylvester the

Cat, Bugs Bunny always outsmarting Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck,

Foghorn Leghorn constantly getting bruised by the awkward antics

of his little chicks, Yosemite Sam getting his head blown off at

least once a week and of course, the memorable Wyle E. Coyote

who never, in all his forty-odd years of pursuing the Roadrunner

ever bought anything from the Acme Co. that ever worked right

(Siano, 20).

They were truly funny and, in some respects, cathartic for

us and it is this writer's opinion that cartoon violence is quite

probably the least of our worries as far as what is corrupting

the minds of our children today. We grew up on it and there is

not one single documented case of a violent criminal who ever

claimed that he ended up the way he did because he ingested a

steady diet of Roadrunner episodes. Let's get serious. Most of

these violent criminal types weren't home with the family

watching Saturday morning cartoons when they grew up. They were

out tying cats' tails together and throwing them over somebody's

clothesline so they could watch them kill each other. Or they

were torturing the neighbor's new puppy while Mom was at work,

Dad was non-existent, and all 3 or 4 or 5 kids were left to raise

themselves. Or they were busy learning violence first-hand from

their alcoholic father whose chief mission in life seemed to be

using them and their siblings and their mother for a punching

bag.

The difference, I would submit, is that even the smallest

children understand that these are cartoon characters, that they

are not real, and that the violence depicted in cartoons is so

unrealistic that even small children realize that it's purely

make-believe.

Is television really toxic to children? (Chidley, 36). As

David Link says, "The problem isn't that people pay too much

attention to the violence that appears on television; the problem

is they pay too little," (22). Mr. Link proposes that

fictional violence is not at the root of the problem, but the

real violence that is depicted daily on television that should be

our biggest source of concern. In this, he has a very valid

point. Does a rabid, demon-possessed little doll named Chuckie

really influence anyone as he stabs people ten times his size

with a little knife barely long enough to break through all of

the layers of a person's skin? Is that ghoul riding in the

backseat of the car, with his face falling off all over the place

as he strangles the teenage driver really believable?

In fiction, there is a thing called "willing suspension of

disbelief." This must be achieved in order for the person

reading, or viewing, a fictional story to be able to participate

in the story. It's what holds the reader's attention. It's