Just few thoughts
I do think he means it is pretty vague…
Dear ss3,
Before trying to write about violence, violent people, children and their correlation with violent T.V. programs, I would like to ask you some basic questions: for who are you writing this paper? Is it an academic paper or just leisure writing? Why are you writing it? How long does this paper has to be? What is the subject you are studying? And from what point of view (discipline) do you want to tackle this paper? If you will be able to answer thoroughly to these questions, then you will have given yourself the answers to your own questions.
In your hypothesis you are saying that: ‘I strongly believe that TV violence does affect people in committing violence in the outside world.’ And then you assert that children being “naïve” they cannot understand the differences between fiction and real life, and as your conclusion you just say that the visual effects of violence increases excitation and ergo this is the main reason of violence in society. Now my question, again, are: what makes you believe so strongly that television is one of the main causes of violence? though reading your hypothesis, one could even think that is the only reason of violence. What research have you carried out before hypothesising this? How can you back up your argument?
For the history of violence and the origins of violent and aggressive behaviour have been studied for many years now; and of curse many great scholars of different disciplines have devoted their efforts to come up with some accurate reasons to explain this particular behaviour; and yet none of them have managed to come up with a single answer and no absolute conclusion have been reached. From a psychological, medical, sociological and anthropological point of view It is generally accepted that it results from a complex interaction of variables, by this it is meant that one has to take into consideration the space and power factor, which can include the origins, the culture, the background, the status, the level of education, the class one belongs to, any medical history, family abuses, on what values one has grown up, what kind of friends does this person has, is it a he or a she, and so on.
While all these above mentioned disciplines interest me greatly, I am, however, more prone towards Philosophy, literature and history, and my very first question to your argument is how and why does mass media influence people? In particular, how and why does television violence cause aggression (if indeed it does)? Looking back in time (not too far back, just a couple of thousand years) one can see that your same problem troubled Aristotle, and the same essential questions were asked about drama acted by live actors in theatrical presentations. For he suggested that drama was effective and desirable because of "catharsis." This meant that the audience becomes psychologically involved with the story on stage, even though they know it is only fiction, and that when aggression climaxes among the actors, there is a "catharsis" or release of pressure in the audience, which is pleasurable to experience and leaves them cleansed, uplifted, and less likely to act violently themselves. Whereas, Sigmund Freud, who having modified this theory, says that: ‘Unless people were allowed to express themselves aggressively, the aggressive energy would be dammed up, pressure would build, and the aggressive energy would seek an outlet, either exploding into acts of extreme violence or manifesting itself as symptoms of mental illness But there is no direct evidence for this conclusion’ (
Aronson, 1995, p.258).
Moreover, in both classical and contemporary literature acts of violence are describe, time after time, as almost great action, or at least have been described with such a flowery prose that one can enjoy them without being aroused to commit any of these acts. Ovid’s poems, for example, makes us even like violence, Virgil’s works narrates about great fights and bloodsheds, Proust and his oeuvre, the work of the Russian writers: Gogol, Tolstoy or Salamov just to mention a few.
And although, I have not given a proper answer to my very first question, another question has come up in my little head, which is: besides the ambiguities in linking violence on television with actual violent acts in real life, it is not clear what we really mean by violence, or a violent behaviour? Arson in this regards tells us that: ‘the same term is used regarding the Boston Strangler, a football tackle, a "go-getter" insurance salesperson, a little girl who "clobbers" her brother, a passive aggressive husband sulking in the corner of a party, a child who wets the bed, a jilted boyfriend who threatens suicide or a student persistently struggling with a math problem’ (
Aronson, 1995, p.249).
Not answering properly to my second question as well, I am indeed rushing towards some very brief conclusions, conclusions which are not about television and real-life violence, but conclusion which I have come up while looking at your question and at your hypothesis, and while I cannot give you the reasons of the interaction between television programs and street violence or how children are affected by tv programs, I can surely tell you that your hypothesis needs a lot more work, a lot more analysis, and you can, indeed, better it much more than what it is now, dear ss3 there are a lot of “stuff” that you could add, which would make it a lot more clearer, for example: doing a cross search and looking into both scientific and humanity disciplines and finding out all the arguments in favour or against your hypothesis, looking for quotes to back up your theory would be another sensible thing to do and so on and so on…
