Violence In the Media I: Babies Kicking Talcum-Powdered Butt

I’ve finally realized that the real threat embodied in a show like The Family Guy is how it might affect the preschoolers. After all, their main model on the show is Stewie, a toddler who has grand plans to kill his mother. And, of course, Freud would probably have something to say about the murderous impulses of all those compulsive rubber-nubbin-suckers with the oh-so-wide eyes. Pacifier aggressives, he called them… I’m almost sure of it. But the short of it is that we can’t let our toddlers watch a show like this because they might become desensitized and come to accept the ‘mommie-killing’ model.

Even if you don’t see the threat, some of the writers that weaned me could see this diaper rash of murders coming for decades. Just look at a couple of stories from Ray Bradbury, for instance. “The Small Assassin” deals with a mother who begins to fear that her baby is trying to kill her. By the end of the story the baby has put the hit on both parents and as the family doctor brandishes a scalpel and advances on the baby, even Las Vegas bookmakers wouldn’t want to put money on the outcome.

Another of his stories, “The Playground,” centres on a father who fears for his son in a world of bullies. Are these bullies urged to violence by too many late nights watching violent 1950’s TV? Doesn’t come up. All the father can think about is his own tormented childhood and how the time of bullies for him was the most traumatic of his life. But his love for his son is so great that he finds a way to take his place and throw himself into that world as he becomes a child again.

Even in an adult-centered futuristic film like Logan’s Run the adults fear the place called Cathedral where all the young kids and teens hang out and wait to jump the next lost passerby who comes too close… It seems some writers just assume that kids will be violent from the get-go.

So Stewie starts to seem like not so much of an anomaly, despite his post-grad vocabulary. With just a little close observation, you can see the Stewie effect in action. Watch a child play with a toy or a pet (even grown up pets fear the pudgy junior Frankenstein lurching toward them) or reach for your finger. Sure, you don’t even feel much of a tug, but imagine if that child were adult-sized. If we all behaved like babies (I can hear you already saying it, but park it for now), the jails would not be big enough. Come on – do you think the design of the playpen is an accident?

Studies (I’m foggy on the names – sorry) have shown that babies commit more aggressive acts in an hour than a teen might commit in a week. And teens, of course, commit more aggressive acts than adults, etc. What this seems to indicate is that we’re born with a little bit of violence in us and most of us grow out of it. Unless we have kids who play hockey or we read too many Danish cartoons.