Misconceptions of Media Violence

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Recommended: The influence of advertising

The sense of what is right and wrong comes from within and is not influenced by what

is showed on television, or any other source of media for that matter. Advertising a product

such as a George Forman grill is one thing... I myself have fallen for countless ads and sales

pitches, but to use the media as a scapegoat for drug addiction, rape, and even murder is

unfair and quite ridiculous. One might be influenced to buy a cologne, or a grill, but to be

influenced to kill someone because of a violent show or song is non-sense. Violence is in our

genealogy right along with our other primitive instincts we are now trying overcome with our

logic and higher thinking. People killed, sexually assaulted, enslaved, tortured, and even

cannibalized one another long before mass media was conceived, and might I add that the

violence then was far worse than it is today. Even capital punishment lost its luster from the

days of the guillotine and the gruesome iron maiden. Media and pop-culture violence are not

to blame for the decline of our society's respect for right and wrong, because it is no one and

nothing else but ourselves to blame.

A misinformed Bill O'Reilly slams rap music for glorifying violence and drugs. As a

rap fan, I know that the genre has far more artistic values than killing and selling drugs.

There are positive songs, empowering songs that teaches us that from however low slum you

come from, you can strive hard and make it in life. Does O'Reilly know about these songs?

Does he care? No. As a talk show host that has to keep his ratings high, he creates

contraversy. Many people have grown up in a harsh reality of the ghetto and finding it hard to

move up in ...

... middle of paper ...

...for argument's sake, violent media was abolished. Will murder and drug

trafficking cease? Life will continue on with crimes still at a premium. We would blame it on

the rain or even the wind. We must reevaluate what we think about media and pop culture

violence. Violence will be a part of us wether or not we are exposed to violent media. We

should consider it as entertainment, as what the producers, writers, and artists intended it as.

The human race's history is full of violence, which will be a part of us for as long as we are

around. There has never been a perfect society in any human civilization, and especially not in

a free society like ours. Let us think clearly and accept that we are not perfect and once we

accept that fact, we can begin to understand violence better and supress it correctly without

laying the blame on something else.

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