From: jd@latcs1.lat.oz.au (John Dimogotsis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: cartoon violence
Date: 1 Oct 92 06:03:07 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia

In article <1992Sep30.215554.1578@HQ.Ileaf.COM> johnf@HQ.Ileaf.COM (John Finlayson) writes:
>In article <1687014427.MHART00@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> MHART00@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (mason hart) writes:
> 
>>... a vent for the perfectly human need to see violence expressed.
>
>Kids who grow up in crime-infested inner-city neighborhoods see lots
>of violence expressed.  This is not good.
>
>I think we should make a distinction between a "need to see violence 
>expressed" and a "need to express one's own sometimes-violent feelings".
>I think the former is dubious, the latter valid.  The latter need is
>met by education (teaching a child to express him/herself), and an
>accepting, listening home environment.  The screen does neither.
>
>>We, as children, satisfied that need by watching Wile E. Coyote and
>>Yosemite Sam fall into ravines.  Today's children, forced to settle
>>for frustratingly less, eventually turn from their TV's to draw and
>>quarter the cat in the backyard.
>> 
>>How's that for delightful irony?  The very act of sheltering the
>>kiddies from violence is what leads them to explore it independently.
>>Be wonderful if it was true ...
>
>I'm not sure "delightful" and "wonderful" would my first choice 
>of adjectives here.  And I've seen too many healthy, non-violent 
>kids grow up in TV-less homes to buy this argument.
>
>Last week an MIT student was senselessly murdered by three local 
>high school students.  When asked why they thought it had happened, 
>fellow students suggested that they had too much free time after 
>school.  Keeping thugs busy doing something else may very well be 
>an effective way to keep them out of trouble, but just having free 
>time never MADE someone want to knife a stranger.  There's something 
>else wrong here, and I don't think it can be fixed by a cathartic 
>Saturday morning in front of the tube.

	By its very nature TV does explain things in detail, so people
must interpret what they are watching. If the viewer is brought up in
reasonable home, where he/she is shown love, caring, responsibility,
logic and all the other things one would expect in a good family,
then I think this viewer will be able to distinguish between reality
and TV and that the latter is no substitute for the first.
	Otherwise people are products of their environments (mostly)
and so if the environment they live in is governed by suspect values,
so will be their actions. 
	What I am saying is that people learn from many sources, and if
they are not learning from family, school, work, books, newspapers that
leaves TV. And like all of the above both good and bad info is spread by
it. It often is difficult to percieve which is which and so care must be
taken to filter/screen out what children can see. They must see enough
to be aware of the world they live in ofcourse, but I see no need to be
overly explicit about it.
	Besiades my experience says that children are shocked by life like
situations much more than any fiction, so the 'news' and 'documentaries' or
'dramas' which look real are more influencing that cartoons could ever be.
At least as far as the traditional 'tom&jerry', 'sylvester&twitty', 'daffyduck'
stuff are concerned or even 'superman', 'spiderman' 'X-men' etc which are
what I remember from my childhood 15-20 years ago.
								jd
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies