Dethb0y responded to Hugo’s posting, continuing their existing conversation. I have a comment or two about it, continuing my side commentary.
“The problem with this stance is that the media normalizes. The example i prefer to use is theft, because it’s something many people can relate to; a shared experience, so to speak.” – Dethb0y
I don’t know that I necessarily agree with the concept that media normalizes in a unique way. While humans are of course wired to accept input and add it to our response set (it is, in a real way, what story telling and experience sharing are for) it doesn’t really work on things far outside our normal ethical set.
For instance despite the fact that they have seen innumerable shootings on TV and dead bodies by the score many people are still stunned into near immobility the first time they see someone shot or the first time they see someone dead in real life. In a literal way TV is not reality. It simply isn’t real enough to imprint us the way actual experiences do.
In addition you have to take into account that we are dealing now with humans who have grown up with television. Unlike those who did not have television during their formative years we grew up knowing that the TV wasn’t real. We have formed in our neural nets a whole slew of defenses and filters, tests we apply to the input from media before accepting it as a reality. One has only to look at the research advertisers have done on the efficacy of commercials to see this. In a sense while we can download information from media sources we have mental spam and virus filters in place.
Further the problem is not any more real or all pervasive than ever before. Previous to TV was radio. Before that print. Before that there was storytelling and sermons. For almost all of human history we have been cross saturating each others with tales of adventure, murder, politics and sex. Almost none of those tales were firmly grounded in reality, and almost none of them could be said to model ideal behavior. We are built for this. It is who and what we are. The endless sifting, sorting and judgement needed to integrate stories and fables into our mental worldview is the critical driving force of growing the most adaptive brain on the planet.
Dethb0y I think makes this point but he in fact misses the importance of his own experience.
“Violence is the same way. I’ve been in fights, some fair, some not. And the first few times, i was so hopped up on nerves and fear and panic that i must have looked insane. But after that? It was like going to the grocers; a little nervous about the particulars, but the generalities were easy enough to master. Violence had become normalized to me; part of the landscape of life. And part of that is because i endlessly saw it in the media – from books to television shows to movies to songs.” – Dethb0y
I disagree with the last part of that. As a Sensei of 14 years I have instructed many people from children to adults int he martial arts. They are all nervous when they begin sparring. No matter how much media they have seen, no matter how many movies of violence and ass kicking. Those of them who have been in street altercations were always nervous the first time. Any who have had the experience repeat know that it gets less stressful fast. Dethb0y became less stressed during confrontation because he had had previous confrontations. It had nothing to do with his media exposure. In fact anyone who has had real altercations often simply chuckle and shake their head at media depicted ones. Their real experience has enhanced their filters, not weakened them.
This may change someday when we have immersive virtual reality style experiences, but I doubt it. I believe they may be confusing to the minds of the old timers who never developed the proper filters but that those who do adapt will not be fooled any more than we are about television.
I suspect that those in the highly reactionary radical feminist community who get so upset about the depictions they see are those who never managed to adapt media filters. They are that small percentage that could not, in a real sense, learn how to function. This goes way beyond television and into many other styles of depiction. I suggest that if a picture of a trim, toned torso on the cover of Sports Illustrated makes you feel bad about yourself and you react as if you are under assault then it is you who have trouble separating reality from depiction, not the rest of us. If you could stop projecting your internal mental issues onto all of society, you might have a lot less mornings when you wake up spitting teeth at the injustice of it all.
To be concise I think the fundamental thesis is not only flawed but those who advance it most strenuously in the activist communities (fundamentalist Christian, communistic eco-freaks or radical feminists) are those least capable of understanding how the vast majority of us react to the media. We can separate reality from fantasy, they can’t.
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