Reasons for climate of violence

Title

Creator

Schlesinger, Arthur Jr.

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XX (No. 10) October 1968

Year

1968

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

■ This portion of a long article by Professor Schle singer on The Dark Heart of American History explains the prevalence of violence in America today. Philippine conditions of violence arise from similar causes. REASONS FOR CLIMATE OF VIOLENCE One reason surely for the enormous tolerance of vio lence in contemporary Ameri ca is the fact that our coun try has now been more or less continuously at war for a generation. The experience of war over a long period de values human life and ha bituates people to killing. And the war in which we are presently engaged is far more brutalizing than was the Se cond World War or the Ko rean War. It is more brutaliz ing because the destruction we have wrought in Vietnam is so wildly out of proportion to any demonstrated involve ment of our national security or any rational assessment of our national interest. In the other wars we killed for need. In this war we are killing be yond need, and, as we do so, we corrupt our national life. When violence is legally sanctioned for a cause in which people see no moral purpose, this is an obvious stimulus to individuals to use violence for what they may maniacally consider moral purposes of their own. A second reason for the climate of violence in the United States is surely the zest with which the mass me dia, and especially television and films, dwell on violence. One must be clear about this. The mass media do not create violence. But they reinforce aggressive and destructive impulses, and they may well teach the morality as well as the methods of violence. In recent years the movies and television have develop ed a pornography of violence far more demoralizing than the pornography of sex, which still seizes the primary attention of the guardians of civic virtue. Popular films of our day like Rosemary's 12 Panorama Baby and Bonnie and Clyde imply a whole culture of hu man violation, psychological in one case, physical in the other. Bonnie and Clyde, in deed, was greatly admired for its blithe acceptance of the world of violence — an acceptance which almost be came a celebration. Television is the most per vasive influence of all. The children of the electronic age sit hypnotized by the parade of killings, beatings, gun fights, knifings, maimings, brawls which flash incessant ly across the tiny screen, and now in, “living” color. For a time, the television industry comforted itself with the theory that children listened to children’s pro grams and that, if by any chance they saw programs for adults, violence would serve as a safety valve, offer ing a harmless outlet for pent-up aggressions: the more violence on the screen, the less in life. Alas, this turns out not to be necessa rily so. As Dr. Wilbur Schramm, director of the In stitute of Communication Re search at Stanford has report ed, children, even in the early elementary school years, view more programs designed for adults than for themselves; “above all, they prefer the more violent type of adult program including the West ern, the adventure program, and the crime drama.” Ex periments show that such programs, far from serving as safety valves for aggression, attract children with high levels of aggression and sti mulate them to seek overt means of acting out their ag gressions. Evidence suggests that these programs work the same incitement on adults. And televiolence does more than condition emotion and behavior. It also may at tenuate people’s sense of reality. Men murdered on the television screen ordinari ly spring to life after the epi sode is over: all death is therefore diminished. — By Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in the Saturday Review, October 19, 1968. October 1968 13

pages

12+

Media