Hollywood is responsible for mass murders.

reply to post by jimmiec


Work at a slaughterhouse and you'll stop eating beef.

Physically doing something is not the same as staring at the blinky box.

Otherwise you are correct. Monkey See, Monkey do.

reply to post by zroth


Same thing. It just takes more time to effect you. We live in a Universe of cause and effect. That will not change just because we want it to.

reply to post by jimmiec

Hollywood has been putting out movies containing more and more violence every year. The more people that are gunned down in a movie the more money it makes. This has been desensitizing our youth to violence for decades. They portray murderers and assassins as heroes. The more people they murder the more romanticized they are deemed. The violent society we now have was created by Hollywood for huge profits. The unintended consequences are being seen more and more every day. The culture of caring and community has given way to violence for chuckles and grins. This is but one reason for increased violence. There are plenty more and it can mostly be blamed on media and Hollywood which it can be argued are one and the same.

This is a leap in logic. How do you explain all the violence throughout history…pre-Hollywood?? The most violent places in the world today (and historically) are places largely free from Hollywood’s influence.

I don’t think most people in the ME have seen Rambo or the A Team.

reply to post by jimmiec


Actually it is not the same thing. Watching something and participating in an activity have totally different impacts on people.

People who shoot guns their whole life understand what bullets are capable of. People who watch guns being fired, their whole life do not understand the impact until after they shoot something. Then they shoot themselves when they realize what they have done.

I get where you are coming from but there is clearly a difference between doing and seeing over extended periods of time.

reply to post by zroth


You say that from an adult perspective. A 7 year old, even though they should not be watching such gory things will be effected differently. That is exactly why movies are rated. Just because we rate them to keep them from watching them does not mean they can not get ahold of them. The things we tell them they can not do are the very things that they crave to do. A sleep over might contain a movie borrowed from dads movie stash without him knowing it.

reply to post by k21968


There are elements of real life in those movies (mostly emotional and social aspects of life), otherwise they would say nothing to most American's. American's buy it and Hollywood keeps making it. If it didn't say anything to them they wouldn't buy it.

Again, blaming the wrong set of people. People get what they want.

reply to post by antonia

Oh i agree wholeheartedly. We buy the garbage without a thought to the long term effects. Of course Hollywood convinces us we need to buy it. I doubt Hollywood is actively trying to create a desensitized society but unintended consequences can still be horrific.

reply to post by jimmiec


There is a big distinction between you and me. I don't see the violent urges within people as unnatural. They are there, they are perfectly human. All we see is Hollywood using the archetypes humans have idolized long before the invention of film. The Gilgamesh existed long before Hollywood. Man has always identified with certain violent aspects of our nature. I don't think there is anything wrong with that when it is harnessed in productive ways (such as sport or protecting others). Hollywood doesn't need to convince anyone to buy it. It's only natural for people to gravitate toward it.

reply to post by antonia


I agree to a point. We fight those urges and generally win. Watching violence every day gives us a little less to fight with.

reply to post by jimmiec


Well, I don't tend to think watching violence causes any violence or makes anyone more prone to it. Desensitization is another matter. You can watch no TV, listen to no music and watch no news and you will eventually become less reactive to certain things as a matter of experience. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just part of living. It's not going to make anyone a psycho killer if they urge isn't already there. Heck, the Romans used to watch people actually killing each other and get eaten by lions. What we do is a lot more civilized than that.

reply to post by antonia


So you agree that our mental thought process can be manipulated. Simply by doing nothing they can be manipulated. The Post headline was more to get the discussion going. While the headline is true i do not think it is all that is wrong. It is a host of things. They have been experimenting and manipulating our kids thought processes for generations and simply best guessing the outcome. Social engineering and drugging our youth based on some proffessors best guess research is a bad idea. They can not know the long term effects until it is too late.

Originally posted by jimmiec
reply to post by antonia

 

So you agree that our mental thought process can be manipulated.

Sure, anyone's thought process can be manipulated.

. They have been experimenting and manipulating our kids thought processes for generations and simply best guessing the outcome.

I disagree, I do not think they have been doing anything other than trying to make a dollar. Our society is pretty evolved considering what human beings used to do for kicks. You can go read about the Mayan and Aztec sports if you want to read about how sick people can get. We aren't approaching that. The problem isn't Hollywood, it's a poor mental health system. When you dare mention it people scream "Socialism" thus we have many mentally ill people who need help that will never get it.

You act like this is some new thing. Even Shakespeare plays are full of sex and violence. There is nothing new or unusual about it. Now we just get great visuals to go with the violent sex filled stories. They have always been that way. Heck, we've got nothing on Norse stuff.

reply to post by antonia


Well i am old so i disagree that my youth was boring. I played all sports. Had tons of friends. I climbed what to me were mountains. I hiked and biked and drove tractors and hauled hay. I went hunting with my bb gun. I egged houses on Halloween ( i know, not good) I courted pretty girls. I went swimming a lot. I could go on all day about the exciting times i had as a youth that you see as boring. The only TV i watched was special disney shows and Mr Ed etc. Dinner time was fast. I scarfed my food down and ran out to have more fun. I even explored local caves. nature is very exciting. Technology is boring.

I do believe parents should stop letting their kids play violent video games all day long.... kids should be playing sports, playing games, drawing or SOMETHING, not sitting in front of a tv.

I noticed on facebook at least two male "freinds" of mine from high school.... both were violent, always in trouble getting into fights, bullied kids, stole from others, played video games.... I find it interesting that they both have a fascination with the joker from Batman.... Sure it's just a movie to most of us but to some, it seems the Joker made it "cool" to be destructive and to not care about anything, anyone not even themselves...both of these "friends" seems to be struggling with drugs and one actually robbed banks a few years ago =/ Maybe they see themselves in the character. The shooter of the movie theater was also facsinated w/ that character

Most of these killers are loners... they have no friends, no life...all they have is their video games, movies and guns. I don't think Hollywood is responsible though.. people are responsible for their own actions.

reply to post by jimmiec


Yeah, I hate how Lizzie Borden killed her parents because of watching too many gore movies. Jack the Ripper probably watched too much 'Dexter'. Oh wait, I don't think Hollywood was around back then.

reply to post by juicebox


Ouch. unfortunately that is a recurring theme. I left my hometown for 25 years for the big city life. I finally came back to find most dead/imprisoned or drug addicts. Not all of course. Some people just never grow up. Some people have addictive personalities. I still don't understand why people destroy themselves. As a youth i experimented just like everybody did. Of course we did not have all the crap kids have access to today but generally if i liked something i knew was bad for me i left it alone. Self preservation i guess. Apparently a lot of people do not have that mechanism and it destroys them.

reply to post by k21968


Well said. I too feel the same way. I was speaking with a co-worker Friday after the tragedy. I was telling her my opinion is that this "social experiment" the country has been sold in regards to children has created this mess. When everyone gets a trophy, nobody can fail, then you grow up thinking that you can slide by and just showing up will get you that trophy (which it doesn't in REAL life).

If we prevent our children from learning to deal with the small disappointments and challenges they face when they are young, then when the BIG disappointments and challenges arrive as adults, they will never know how to handle them, and snap. Is that doing them any good in the long run? If you fix every problem for them as they grown and do not allow them to fail and/or think and develop a strategy to overcome that challenge, then when you are gone, they will be totally lost.

To me, that in itself is a form of child abuse and our future should not be sold as an EXPERIMENT.

Whilst it's partially true here's a point

Who visits the movies? Who reads the news? The simple fact your here on ATS (Media) complaining about media proves you feed the media by reading it.

Blame Hollywood? How about mass media and especially cable news for glorifying these killers?

The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?"

"No," I said, "I wouldnt say that."

"But what about Basketball Diaries?" she asked. "Doesnt that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory.

"Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of explaining them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy."

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert On Mass Killings & The Media

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Hollywood and Media have become synonyms unfortunately. Like cops have a code to protect each other no matter what,so do Hollywood and the Media