192. REMEMBER THE CHILDREN by un'Americana a Venezia

Abbiamo tutti qualche responsabilità sulla recrudescenza degli episodi di violenza. Il filosofo Karl Popper ha scritto: ‘E in che cosa consiste fondamentalmente un modo civilizzato di comportarsi? Consiste nel ridurre la violenza. È questa la funzione principale della civilizzazione ed è questo lo scopo dei nostri tentativi di migliorare il livello di civiltà delle nostre società’. (RR)

 

You don't have to be a paid researcher to come to academic conclusions about the effects of violent media on people, especially on children and youth.  You need only analyze what kind of "entertainment" they have been fed for the past few decades and then watch the news.  Events like the Aurora, Colorado shooting spree ought to sound the alarm.  Yet again.  In fact, the 24-year-old sicko who killed at least 12 and injured another 59 was imitating an evil screen villain at the time.  He himself was a quiet but anti-social video game player who managed to purchase four weapons and a large amount of ammo over a few months' time.  Obsessed with vengeful thoughts, obviously, this young killer is living proof that a diet of gratuitous violence and easy access to real weapons is too deadly a combination for American society to keep pouring on.  The effects of our perversely violent media on our youngest citizens' minds all point to present and future social disaster.  Meanwhile, studies officially show: 

1) Violent media reduce normal brain response to violence.

2) Violent video games increase aggression long after the game is turned off.  

3) Violent media numb viewers to the pain of others, even in real life.

4) Violent movies can increase violent responses to provocation as well as acceptance of violence in real life.

5) Violent media promote a "mean world" mentality in people.
  6) Violent images incite violence:  In an experiment, children made to watch Batman and Superman cartoons showed increased destructive activity afterwards, in contrast with those shown "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood."   Fred Rogers, a man who nurtured a generation of pre-school children by offering an educational, uplifting daily show on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) said before he retired, "Please, when it comes to programming, remember the children."  How disgusted he would be if he were still alive, to know that among the victims in that packed theater were young kids and at least one newborn.  Young adults, themselves raised on media violence, had dragged those innocents after midnight to see the final edition--let's hope--of a sinister Batman trilogy.  No one arrested the 25-year-old father who escaped with a 4-month-old babe in arms.  He was interviewed instead.  Few have openly questioned that children should be admitted to a movie theater late at night to see what should be rated as adult entertainment!  Most observers have chalked this umpteenth episode up to the fact that gun control is lacking.  Yet so far, no one has bothered to put two and two together:  The ugly violence and the dark atmosphere of far too many movies breed and encourage the sort of deviation played out by the Aurora killer who dressed up as The Joker, as if it were Halloween, and set out to destroy as many living bodies as possible.  He had turned into a stock character of the very worst kind.  I say that what happened in that theater was a case of cause and effect.  As Shakespeare said so famously, "All the world's a stage."  The scripts that we want to pass down to future generations definitely depend on us.   UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA