Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA19880 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 17 Apr 2002 14:19:17 +0100 Message-ID: <570E2BEE7BC5A34684EE5914FCFC368C10FC3E@fillan.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: media violence Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 14:12:47 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" X-Filter-Info: UoS MailScan 0.1 [D 1] X-MailScanner: Found to be clean Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
<The Star Trek example was a case of something forming such an
impression on
> some people, they took the idea and expanded it. If it can happen with
> something harmless it can happen with something nasty. Don't you agree?>
>
Yep- but then where's the cause (and thus implicitly the blame)?
Will taking away media violence take away social violence?
<The claim that a people go out and murder etc after watching
videos etc for
> long periods is difficult to sustain and prove. I concede that quite
> readily. To deny that what our senses take in doesn't affect us to greater
> or lesser degrees, and then subdivide into "induce laughter is true,
> induce
> violence false is hogwash".>
>
True, but inducing laughter and inducing violence are different
things. One is a behavioural/emotional response to a particular kind of
stimuli, e.g. see/hear joke=laugh; the other is also a behavioural/emotional
response, but one which involves some kind of recognitition of an
instruction (implicit or explicit) or compulsion to copy, so see dirty harry
blow someone away=blow someone away. (hence the reason why this might be of
memetic interest to some I guess).
Yet these two things don't routinely occur to the same extent-
people laugh at jokes all the time, people do not copy dirty harry all the
time. Yet, pro-violece researchers are arguing exactly that see violence on
TV=commit violence. Martin Barker used the example of a horror film, where
the violence researcher logic, if applied literally, would mean see horror
film= become horrifying. (I think that's from his 1984 book on the 'video
nasty' era of the UK, but he has written loads on this topic).
<Violence in the media is part of the whole thing not the simple
cause.
> I thought the idea was that if we view an action it has some effect on us,
> even if for many that is indifference.>
>
Yeah, but they're arguing for simple behavioural effects, not
complex ones like psychological responses like caring or indifference.
Vincent
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