It’s been with some bemusement but greater disappointment, that I’ve seen friends on the left, who passionately argued against censorship and ridiculed the idea that there was a link between violence on the cinema and in video games, and it’s perpetration in the real world, today demand anything that they deem unpalatable be banned on the grounds that it will incite violence.
A villain in a film who is female, an ethnic minority or foreign will cause the audience to become misogynistic, racist, xenophobes and thus should only be portrayed in a positive or at least sympathetic light. Of course, they are immune to such malign effects, been enlighten social justice warriors but those who don’t posses such acumen are just one cinema trip away from causing a massacre.
This hypocrisy is rooted in the fact that censorship is about power, not just the obvious, been able to refuse the right for someone to be free to view whatever they should please within the law. It denies agency to those they believe are incapable of rationality and therefore susceptible to being corrupted.
The danger is, if a certain subset of the population cannot be trusted to control their baser instincts after consuming media content; what other rights will be deemed too dangerous to be allowed to the populace next?
Michael Coleman
2 years ago
Excellent piece by Ritchie as usual. However, even though the evidence may indeed show short term reductions in violence after GTA releases as potentially violent, young, mostly male shooters occupy their time and satiate their desires virtually, what is much more difficult to measure is long term effects as players become, to some degree, desensitized to killings and death. Recent killings in the US where bystanders filmed the killing while neglecting to call police may be evidence to this kind of desensitization – it’s just hard to prove what % of the moral decay is due to video games and mass media – it’s likely > 0!
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
A older teenager who knows how to check a car’s tyre pressure or, at home, change the fuse in a plug; who isn’t going to look upon a potato peeler and recoil in horror at the sight of it in the way an elderly pensioner lady would at the sight of a group of thugs just behind her on the bus; who can change a light bulb, in my mind is someone who has not spent a short childhood playing violent video games as if it were some kind of part-time daily job.
It’s been with some bemusement but greater disappointment, that I’ve seen friends on the left, who passionately argued against censorship and ridiculed the idea that there was a link between violence on the cinema and in video games, and it’s perpetration in the real world, today demand anything that they deem unpalatable be banned on the grounds that it will incite violence.
A villain in a film who is female, an ethnic minority or foreign will cause the audience to become misogynistic, racist, xenophobes and thus should only be portrayed in a positive or at least sympathetic light. Of course, they are immune to such malign effects, been enlighten social justice warriors but those who don’t posses such acumen are just one cinema trip away from causing a massacre.
This hypocrisy is rooted in the fact that censorship is about power, not just the obvious, been able to refuse the right for someone to be free to view whatever they should please within the law. It denies agency to those they believe are incapable of rationality and therefore susceptible to being corrupted.
The danger is, if a certain subset of the population cannot be trusted to control their baser instincts after consuming media content; what other rights will be deemed too dangerous to be allowed to the populace next?
Excellent piece by Ritchie as usual. However, even though the evidence may indeed show short term reductions in violence after GTA releases as potentially violent, young, mostly male shooters occupy their time and satiate their desires virtually, what is much more difficult to measure is long term effects as players become, to some degree, desensitized to killings and death. Recent killings in the US where bystanders filmed the killing while neglecting to call police may be evidence to this kind of desensitization – it’s just hard to prove what % of the moral decay is due to video games and mass media – it’s likely > 0!
A older teenager who knows how to check a car’s tyre pressure or, at home, change the fuse in a plug; who isn’t going to look upon a potato peeler and recoil in horror at the sight of it in the way an elderly pensioner lady would at the sight of a group of thugs just behind her on the bus; who can change a light bulb, in my mind is someone who has not spent a short childhood playing violent video games as if it were some kind of part-time daily job.
I may have read the article too quickly, but what you are referring to with your comment?