Despite the “evidence” that those fantasy-based
stories found in movies and video games instigate violence, life does not
reflect art. Art reflects life. Cause and effect are often confused in this
regard.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland reflected (among other things) a
young girl’s identity crisis as she grows from a child to a young adult. Alice
changes sizes, experiences indecision, pushes back against those who push her,
and repeatedly says that she doesn’t know who she is. She even faces a
cross-examination by a caterpillar, who demands that Alice identify herself.
Yet she cannot. Older girls experiencing puberty often share these moments of
crisis (as do boys), but not because they read Alice. The book reflected how its readers felt. They didn’t feel
this way because of the book.
By mentioning Alice’s identity crisis, I’ve
arrived at another often-unsounded consequence of power fantasies (those
experienced vicariously via movies, video games, and the like) having run amok.
The most important question any person faces in their lifetime is “Who am I?”
We spend our lives answering it, especially during the light-speed-years
between puberty and . . . let’s say mid-twenties.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a time when we
(males especially) spend a great deal of time wrapped up in the fantasy worlds
of online gaming and other mediums that allow us what should only be a
temporary escape from reality. Years that ought to be experienced in chrysalis
are spent instead in stasis.
Because of this, we have many adults nowadays
who never carved out their own, real-world identity. They’re accomplishments,
weaknesses, allegiances, and so forth have all been created vicariously in a
world that does not exist, with rules far removed from reality.
I’m not saying that these escapes are
unproductive. In MODERATION, they are healthy. However, when a person spends
more time upgrading make-believe skills for make-believe missions set in a
make-believe world, then real skills for a real world, something has gone darkly
astray.
It seems that my generation and those behind it
have suffered an identity crisis so severe that its members are turning towards
any manufactured reality with rules that they can understand. Is this because
the world is changing at such a break-neck pace, politically and
scientifically, that we can no longer cling to rules we recognize? Have we
drowned in a world so curiously cramped by the Internet, socially retarded by
the Internet, that we cannot with greater ease discover a place for ourselves?
Perhaps online games such as World of Warcraft offer more than mere
escape. More than an identity, even, or a world with rules that don’t change at
the drop of a hat. You can log onto an online game and discover a “clan”
waiting to accept you, computer generated missions that generate purpose for
its players. Such games answer more than “Who am I?” They answer “Why am I
here?” and “Where do I fit in?”
So where does personal responsibility for the
individual end and national responsibility for gaming and movie producers
begin? In The Guardian, film maker, Harvey Weinstein told reporter Ben Child,
“I think as
film-makers we should sit down – the Marty Scorseses, the Quentin Tarantinos
and hopefully all of us who deal in violence in movies – and discuss our role.”
Does the entertainment industry
hold a responsibility to shield audiences from too much violence? How much is
too much? Or have we again confused cause and effect? If art reflects life,
taking the violence out of movies and games wouldn’t subtract it from real life
. . . but it will turn a blind eye to the problem, pretending it’s not there
and thus failing to study and correct it.
By reducing the violence in the
entertainment industry, we might
reduce the violence in real life. A person might argue that such an experiment,
even if it preserved only a single life, is well worth the cost. However, I
propose that violence in movies and games may actually prevent real-life violence. Those who have violent tendencies, or
those with temporary frustrations fast approaching a critical, boiling point,
are provided by these mediums a safe, victimless outlet.
Furthermore, since art reflects
life, these games and movies give us something to explore, a mirror into our
minds, through which we might better understand our darker desires. Such
information might prove invaluable in violence-prevention.
In an article for BostonGlobe.com, Ty Burr wrote in regards to the
latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises and the Colorado
shooting that took place in one of the theaters showing it:
“The
idea of the mask matters quite a bit . . . The superhero movies that dominate
our box offices are all about mild-mannered secret identities and the power
that comes with donning a facial covering. We live each day through digital
masks: screen names, online personas, Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and on and
on, each an attempt to show the world the face we want to be, rather than the
face we fear we have. The gunman in Aurora wore a mask, too, to protect himself
from his own tear gas, or to avoid being seen, or to play to the pathetic
fantasy in his head that he was Doom personified instead of an angry
24-year-old.”
I don’t think our gunman wore a
mask because Batman does. I think Batman wears a mask because people, as Burr
points out, want to become something else, to conceal their humanity and all
its limiting flaws. Like Bruce Wayne and online critics hiding behind screen
names, we want to act and speak as someone else might.
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