what would we do about violent films like Saving Private Ryan or equally gory classics like Homer’s Iliad?
We Worry Too Much About Fictional Violence
In the wake of a mass shooting we feel a desperate need to know “why?” so we can get to “how”—how can we keep this from happening again? When someone shoots up a school, a mall, or an office, people on the left usually blame lax gun laws, and recommend a fix of stricter gun laws. On the right, people are apt to blame it on cultural factors—violent video games and films have sickened the culture, glorifying wanton violence and desensitizing young people to its effects. Loose gun regulation is not a cause of the massacres, but our best defense against them.
But this idea of blaming the media is an oldie and a baddy. First, practically, where would we draw the line? If we managed to ban trigger happy games like Doom, Call of Duty, and Halo, what would we do about violent films like Saving Private Ryan or equally gory classics like Homer’s Iliad? Should we edit the kills out of Shakespeare’s plays?
Second, the evidence that violent media promotes violent behavior is actually pretty shaky. Violence is a great—perhaps the great—staple of the entertainment economy. As a society we guzzle down huge amounts of fake violence in television shows, novels, films, and video games. And yet, a determined fifty year search for real-world consequences of fictive violence hasn’t found conclusive evidence of a causal linkage. Some researchers argue that the more violent media we consume, generally speaking, the more likely we are to behave aggressively in the real world. But other researchers disagree, picking studies apart on methodological grounds and pointing out that many hundreds of millions of people watch violent television and play violent games without developing the slightest urge to kill. As scientists like Steven Pinker point out: we consume more violent entertainment than we ever have before and yet we’ve never been at lower risk of a bloody demise. The more violent entertainment we’ve consumed, the more peaceable and law-abiding we’ve become.
Has violent media consumption actually helped reduce criminal violence? The notion isn’t as perverse as it may at first seem. Critics of media violence seem to envision scenarios that allow us to vicariously revel in wanton savagery. But the messages found in most video games are strongly pro-social. Adventure-style video games almost always insert players into imaginative scenarios where they play the role of a hero bravely confronting the forces of chaos and destruction. When you play a video game you aren’t training to be a spree shooter; you are training to be the good guy who races to place himself between evil and its victims.
