Many people think that some of the things that are shown on T. V, the radio, newspapers, or even the theatre encourage violence today. Personally I think this isn’t generally accurate but may be true in a small number of incidents. In my view, people today and the media itself has to balance on a very thin line of what people want, and what is socially and politically correct. Let’s take for example ‘rocky’ a boxing film. Many children and parents enjoy watching this but there always going to be a certain number of parents who will protest because of the occasional swear word or fighting scene.
There is always the option of sending smaller children to bed, and there’s even a guideline watershed time to observe. On the whole, I don’t think there’s any real danger of watching these kinds of programmes, as long as the children are taught not to use these (in this case, boxing) moves on others. If the violence needs to be portrayed to show the story or sequence in a film it should not be discouraged but showed why it is showed.
On the other hand, acts of needless violence on television like W. W. F wrestling should be either discouraged altogether, or children should be taught that the moves are done under very controlled ircumstances and are not really acts of anger. Otherwise you may get a child that thinks doing a move on someone else wont hurt them, but in reality may cause them great pain. Any film or programme show after nine o clock, could show violence, and parents need to be taught this. I don’t think that newspaper can encourage violence at all.
They have the often difficult job of relating the news to people. How can the news encourage violence? People will always want to know what’s happening around them and there is always a war or a clash of two sides somewhere in the world at any one time in the world. Children cannot be kept inside a ‘utopia’ all there lives. I feel the real world is much nastier than even the media can portray so reading the news people are going to see what’s happening in other parts of the world.
The radio and theatre, in my view, can’t have a lot of violence on it, or what violence it does have cannot encourage violence as much as television because in radio the visual element is not there. Some plays on the radio may portray anger, but the rest is entirely up to the person’s imagination. Is encouraging a child’s imagination a bad thing? I think the ‘human being’ eeds to see, hear, or feel anger once in a while. In my view anger and violence plays a big part in our society today.
I’m not encouraging this, but I can’t imagine a world without violence. Today I think children are exposed to much more violence than they where 150 years ago, but this doesn’t necessarily prove that it encourages violence. Children are going to come into contact with violence in one way or another and I don’t think they should be over protected. On the other hand parents should be the judge of what there children should be viewing, reading, or listening to.
