This comment is by Dan on the post Act of Valor and Acts of Violence.
I think the bigger issue here is not what young men watch for entertainments sake, but they way they are taught to resolve conflict and express pain.
If male video game players were shooting up schools and then saying things like “Well the games got boring, and I had to get my kicks somehow…” then there might be an argument that violent entertainment (and video games in particular) were somehow related to real life violence.
The facts are however, that most school shootings perpetrators have been systematically hurt–socially, emotionally, or physically–and have found no protection from the systems/institutions that are suppose to (school, mentors, parents, etc.).
Simultaneously, we teach them “Big boys don’t cry”, “Don’t get mad, get even”, “Be a man and solve the problem yourself”. We teach that men solve problems with violence, that men protect themselves and their friends with violence, that men Right the Worlds Wrongs with violence.
The only link I could imagine between Act of Valor and this incident presents itself in this final category. Boys and young men watch the news, watch movies, and read newspapers; they see our countries leaders proclaiming things like “Osama attacked our country, he committed a wrong against us, for that we will kill him.” They see op-eds explaining “Saddam Hussein is a terrible dictator. He oppresses his people. And for that he will die.” They observe the death penalty and observe they same “final punishment”.
Our society reinforces the notion that transgression shall be met with punishment, and that ultimate transgression is met with death, the ultimate punishment. We glorify Seal Team 6, laude all our men and women in uniform, and then wonder why kids get the message that killing is ok sometimes, and that Bad People deserve to die.
As with every school shooting, instead of asking “what prompted this absurd act of violence?” and then externalizing it and blaming faceless constructs like Movies and Video Games I think we should ask harder questions like, “where was this child’s support structures?” or “who was there to talk with him?” or “Why does our society praise violence?”
An apt exerpt from Bowling for Columbine:
Michael Moore: “If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine…what would you say to them if they were here right now?
Marylin Manson: “I wouldn’t say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say, and that’s what no one did.”
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photo: AP, tv image from Bowling for Columbine
About the Editors
Thing is, sometimes it’s okay to kill certain people. See, for example, the Just War Doctrine, regularized by two guys who, by some unimaginable coincidence, have the same first name; “Saint”. That’s Augustine and Aquinas. See justifiable homicide. See self-defense.
Problem is discerning the difference between the guys it’s okay to kill and those whom it is not okay to kill.
When I was a kid, a long time ago, one feature of Hollywood, both on tv and in movies, was the western. Used to drive my dad nuts. Slam some guy over the head with the barrel or butt of a large pistol, he goes down. Seconds later, he gets up, shakes his head, and goes about his biz without even a crease in his cowboy hat. Shoot a guy in the shoulder with a fat, soft lead slug and, instead of his shoulder joint being blown half a block down the street, he clutches the shoulder with his other hand and a little ketchup leaks out.
Some of us remember Gunsmoke where James Arness was characterized as a “large, armed scoutmaster”, and Wyatt Earp who was always gunning bad guys down with his long-barreled “Buntline Special”. But those were the bigs. The silver screen was awash in the stuff for at least two generations.
Nobody linked whatever bad stuff there was in society to that crap.
In this case, we have a really ruined kid with an indescribale home life. There are over three hundred million people in this country. That’s enough to have a certain number of nutcases without needing cosmic explanations which require us to rend our lapels and wonder about our culture.
But if I had to relate any of this to culture, it would be the generalized idea that feelings matter more than anything and excuse anything, beyond whatever superego we may, or may not, have been taught. Which, I should say, was not my idea.