Tv And Violence :: essays research papers

Violence on TelevisionWe hear a great deal about effect on television thesedays. Nearly everywhere you turn there is something beingwritten about it, or a program dealing with the issue of it, or anews story about a child somewhere who was influenced by it to dosomething harmful. The subject permeates our collectiveconsciousness. Maybe this is due to the ever-increasing numberof gangs in our urban centers. Maybe its due to theever-increasing crime rate that we hear about almost nightly onthe news. Whatever the reasons behind its being such a c at one timern,the point remains that violence on television is a very realproblem that is quite definitely a contributing factor toincreasing violence among children and, yes, even among adults.Cartoon violence has been around as long as cartoons have -and thats a long time. The first animated Disney cartoonsfeatured a rabbit named Oswald back in 1928 and the cartoonindustry grew from there. So for seventy years now weve beentreated to the antics of various characters, either through theopening Looney Tunes at the movies or the five hours of Saturdaymorning cartoons that were a ritual with us all growing up.There was Tweety Bird constantly getting the best of Sylvester theCat, Bugs Bunny al trends outsmarting Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck,Foghorn Leghorn constantly getting bruised by the awkward anticsof his little chicks, Yosemite Sam getting his head blown off atleast once a week and of course, the memorable Wyle E. Coyotewho never, in all his forty-odd years of pursuing the Roadrunnerever bought anything from the Acme Co. that ever worked right(Siano, 20).They were truly merry and, in some respects, cathartic forus and it is this writers opinion that cartoon violence is quiteprobably the least of our worries as far as what is corruptingthe minds of our children today. We grew up on it and there isnot one single documented case of a violent criminal who everclaimed that he ended up the way he did because he ingested a steady diet of Roadrunner episodes. Lets get serious. Most ofthese violent criminal types werent home with the familywatching Saturday morning cartoons when they grew up. They wereout fasten cats tails together and throwing them over somebodysclothesline so they could watch them kill each other. Or theywere torturing the neighbors new puppy while Mom was at work, public address system was non-existent, and all 3 or 4 or 5 kids were left to raisethemselves. Or they were busy learning violence first-hand fromtheir alcoholic father whose mind mission in life seemed to be