Is it possible that the recent Colorado cinema massacre was a warning to us?
Is the movie industry successfully destroying our nation's moral foundation?
Why are we tolerating, and feasting on, violence for our daily bread?
We don't go to movies much anymore. Neither of us can stand violence. It violates everything we stand for. If we did go to the movies, I'd be that kooky old broad in the back row, with her head down and hands over her ears, trying to close out the insanely loud hell-fire shooting, killing, and splattering of blood and guts. I'm better off at home, watching The Barefoot Contessa entertain her friends in the Hamptons.
American parents today are up against one heck of a challenge. How do they, in good conscience, allow their kids to go with their friends to a movie that's going to show them how to blast some one's brains out? It has to be frustrating for a parent to watch their child be entertained and mesmerized by a gadget that's teaching them to annihilate others.
It's just hard to understand why comedy and romance are considered cheesy. Why is violence such a fascinating draw? Most claim to oppose war in the Mid-East, yet the American family can't wait to get to the war zone showing at the movie theater down the street.
Oh, yah, I know the Westerns of our day were a gun-slingers' heaven, and we couldn't wait to get home from school to watch the main street shoot-outs. But, the westerns didn't show blood or bodies blown to pieces. We heard the shot, saw the guy fall to the ground, no blood, no nothing. The movie industry assumed we were smart enough to get the message that the guy was dead. This was in the 50s, following the war, and Americans wanted good old-fashioned meat-and-potatoes movies. The good guys won, and the bad guys lost. Elvis sang on the beach, and Ali and Ryan's love for each other still brings me tears.
Robert E. McAfee, MD, so eloquently said.....
"The impact of violent video games upon children is not as clearly established as the impact of violent television programming. Young children possess an instinctive desire to imitate actions they observe, without always possessing the intellect or maturity to determine if such actions are appropriate. Due to their role-modeling capacity to promote real world violence, there is a deep concern that playing violent video games, with their fully digitalized human images, will cause children to become more aggressive toward other children and become more tolerant of, and more likely to engage in real-life violence."
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P.S. Are assault-style BB guns guiding our kids in the right direction? on the right path? |
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