Tv And Violence :: essays research papers

Violence on Television We hear a great deal about violence on television these days. Nearly everywhere you turn there is something being written about it, or a program dealing with the issue of it, or a news story about a child somewhere who was influenced by it to do something harmful. The subject permeates our collective consciousness. Maybe this is due to the ever-increasing number of gangs in our urban centers. Maybe it's due to the ever-increasing crime rate that we hear about almost nightly on the news. Whatever the reasons behind its being such a concern, the fact remains that violence on television is a very real problem that is quite definitely a contributing factor to increasing violence among children and, yes, even among adults. Cartoon violence has been around as long as cartoons have - and that's a long time. The first animated Disney cartoons featured a rabbit named Oswald back in 1928 and the cartoon industry grew from there. So for seventy years now we've been treated to the antics of various characters, either through the opening Looney Tunes at the movies or the five hours of Saturday morning cartoons that were a ritual with us all growing up. There was Tweety Bird always getting the best of Sylvester the Cat, Bugs Bunny always outsmarting Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn constantly getting bruised by the awkward antics of his little chicks, Yosemite Sam getting his head blown off at least once a week and of course, the memorable Wyle E. Coyote who never, in all his forty-odd years of pursuing the Roadrunner ever bought anything from the Acme Co. that ever worked right (Siano, 20). They were truly funny and, in some respects, cathartic for us and it is this writer's opinion that cartoon violence is quite probably the least of our worries as far as what is corrupting the minds of our children today. We grew up on it and there is not one single documented case of a violent criminal who ever claimed that he ended up the way he did because he ingested a steady diet of Roadrunner episodes. Let's get serious. Most of these violent criminal types weren't home with the family watching Saturday morning cartoons when they grew up. They were out tying cats' tails together and throwing them over somebody's clothesline so they could watch them kill each other. Or they were torturing the neighbor's new puppy while Mom was at work, Dad was non-existent, and all 3 or 4 or 5 kids were left to raise themselves. Or they were busy learning violence first-hand from their alcoholic father whose chief mission in life seemed to be