Wayne LaPierre of the N.R.A. made some embarrassingly stupid comments after the school massacre in Newtown, and I will address some of those tomorrow night. One of his statements, however, resonates with me. He criticized violent video games.
Gamers reacted in the same way that the N.R.A. does when liberals push for regulating gun show purchases. They got all defensive and denied that video games have any effect on behavior. Here’s Chris Suellentrop, who writes about games for the New York Times: “There’s no evidence that video games cause--or even correlate with--violence, and that can’t be stated often enough.”
Really? That sounds a lot like: “There’s no evidence that stronger gun regulations will reduce violent crime.”
When Hitler’s favorite director, Leni Riefenstahl, made films with fleeing Jews interspersed with running rats, you think that didn’t have an effect? Look at “Birth of a Nation” and the resurgence of the Klan. Look at the way gangsters tried to emulate the characters in the Godfather movies. And those were films. In video games, you do the shooting, and you create the blood and flying body parts.
I’ve read that the average American boy plays video games--many of them incredibly bloody and violent--an average of 10,000 hours by the time he is 18. That has to have an effect.
Finally, if what we watch doesn’t affect us, somebody better explain to the ad agencies why those Superbowl commercials and those political ads by the Obama campaign were such a waste of money.
Your point on the ads is well taken.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. If advertising didn't work, companies would not pay millions of dollars for them.
ReplyDelete