Violence In the Media IV: This Time, It’s Personal

The odd thing about the people interested in the effects of media violence is that the discussion always descends into statistics and whose are bigger… I mean better than the rest. Sure, there are news stories about just how many violent video games and movies the Columbine duo enjoyed, or to what extent racing games might induce kids to drive recklessly. (When I was young, we didn’t need video games to teach us reckless driving - we taught ourselves to be indifferent to our own lives and those of others. But I guess kids these days need help with every little thing.) Why is it that the effects of media violence always seem to happen to someone on the news? It’s always somebody else’s kid. What about the effects on you? Or on me? How can I write about this unless I know my own history with the beast?

When I was a kid I used to get in fights. Luckily, I didn’t stay in any fight long enough to rack up a lot of cuts and bruises. I was a one-shot-to-the head kinda guy. I usually got more cuts from falling limply to the ground than from someone hitting me. There were no video games, I couldn’t get into truly violent movies, and the violence on TV went no further than Mannix and Cannon, and later on, The NBC Mystery Movie. Despite the appalling lack of media violence in my life, I was an uppity kid and my face was a knuckle magnet. If I wasn’t insulting a guy who was bigger than me and getting beaten up, I was insulting a guy and then running like hell. Luckily, this was in elementary school and most of the school’s bullies by then had a two-pack-a-day habit and I could easily outrun them if I didn’t make a wrong turn down a dead-end alley.

My bullies – funny how possessive and sentimental I’ve become about them after all these years. I’m not sure about their TV habits, but I can tell you that you have to put in long hours waiting by the corner store to fill your quota as a bully each night. They would fish for geeks with insults and reel them in with threats, occasionally tossing one back if he was too small. There was little time for TV and they often couldn’t afford movies – cigarettes weren’t cheap even back then, especially for a bully who had to keep his hangers-on happy.

How did this constant threat and occasional violence affect me? Well, it was often terrifying. But the avoiding getting beaten up was the most frightening part. When a bully would catch me I would feel something like a sense of relief. The running was over. A few quick hits – the location of which depended on the style of the bully (these guys weren’t craftsmen yet and were still learning their trade) – and it was done. The beating was never as bad as the fear of being beaten. But don’t get me wrong, it hurt. And then the tension over until my turn in the bully queue came up again.

There is no comparison at all between the comic book violence so many people complain about and the actual thing itself. Watching Arnie outmuscle or out-shoot a bad guy is not traumatizing at all compared to what it was like just having to go to school some days. The over-the-top violent stories are often of mythic proportions, and the violence is symbolic of the conflict between good and evil. The hero often faces an opponent who he or she shares characteristics with and must defeat them. This, according to Joseph Campbell in his many works, including The Hero With A Thousand Faces, is about the hero subduing the darker part of himself. and when we watch a story like this, we are the hero. The stories are an impersonal way of recreating our everyday personal struggles.

That kind of stuff doesn’t phase me. If you want to make me uneasy, force me to watch boxing or hockey on TV. Or some graphic news stories. It amazes me that when people discuss violence in the media they almost never mention these things. The imaginary violence frightens them much more. Maybe it’s because they simply see the real violence as happening to ‘other people.’ Geysers of blood spurting from a teenaged slasher victim in a movie on the TV bother them more than a story about real Iraqi civilian casualties (with close-ups of the bodies).

It’s not everybody’s fault. As we grow older, we all become desensitized to everything, whether it’s street people looking for money, the ever fainter tug of love on the heartstrings, and the fate of the dying. We lose touch with ourselves and with others. (And we wouldn’t want to not be desensitized because a life where everything is just as intense as the last time would be very difficult to bear.)

So it occurs to me that it’s time to reconnect with my old bullies. I’ve got a big job for them if they’re up for it. Maybe I’ll tell them it’s a kind of redemption. I’m going to assign them each a long list of names and they are going to have to find the people on their lists and pound the daylights into them. They will be using that old evil power of theirs for a greater good. Because violence can’t be understood until you make it personal.