Violence in the Media

Given that Quentin Tarantino has been writing movies that are both very well-known and extremely violent since the early 90s, it's unsurprising that he's been asked to weigh in on how violence in movies affects violence in real life more than once or twice. It's equally unsurprising that he wouldn't want every interview he does about every movie to center around the idea that by creating violent movies, he's somehow responsible for some of society's violence. I think he makes a good point in talking about how every generation has something that people want to hang responsibility for everyone's sins on. In the 20s it was Jazz, in the 50s it was Rock, then it was rap, and video games, and violent movies. While the media people are exposed to has always influenced society, I agree that it's pretty unreasonable to blame people's real life actions on things that happen in movies. Tarantino mentions in the final article that they pulled quotes from that he feels it's disrespectful to victims of things like this when people start talking about violence in the media instead of addressing what he considers to be the real issues: gun control and mental health.

Of the three articles "Columbine: Whose Fault is It?" is the one I enjoyed most. I'm not a fan of Marilyn Manson as a musician, but I found his article extremely insightful, and it's clear that this is an issue that he's thought about a lot. He starts the article by talking about how violence is far from new, and people were murdering one another for a variety of reasons long before there was any sort of media to show them violence. Before widespread media, no one really knew how violent the world was either. It's easy to blame video games and music and movies for the world becoming "more violent" but as he points out, we might hear more about violence, but that's just because we're hearing more about everything. Killing people has been made easier with the invention of automatic weapons and all sorts of explosives, but in the end the intent is still the same. He also makes a point that I think a lot of people overlook about the media's tendency to turn murderers into celebrities. By making names like Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza household names, they give people who feel like they have nothing to live for, something to kill for and die for. We see all the time through reality television how far people will go for notoriety, and yet news outlets continue to give notoriety to people who commit these horrible, violent acts. I like to think that the world isn't going to hell like he claims it is, but sometimes when I turn on the news, it's easy to believe that he's right.

The third article was different from the first two in that it didn't discuss the effect violence in the media had on society as much as it discussed a reviewer's responsibility when they encounter violence in the media. I found it really interesting that he felt that he couldn't criticize a movie for being too violent. I wouldn't have expected a reviewer to sugar-coat their reviews out of fear of being considered old fashioned or out of touch. I agree with him though that that isn't something reviewers should worry about, and that giving honest reviews should be their main concern. I also agree that movies with a lot of violence deserve an R rating. He mentions how sexual acts are automatically given an R rating, where movies with a lot of violence often manages to avoid an R rating. I agree with him that that's something that needs to change. The fact that society feels the need to protect teenagers from sexual images but feels it's okay to show them extreme violence shows some pretty unfortunate things about our society. One thing in this article that really bothered me, was that he claims that the new violent norm in movies "targets disenfranchised young men and boys who are unformed and weak personally". I think that's a pretty unfair claim considering that most of these attacks are committed by people with mental illnesses and by calling them "unformed and weak personally" he's contributing to the stigma surrounding mental illness that keeps people from seeking treatment.