After the massacre in Connecticut, the search for answers came around — as it always does — to looking at the culture of desensitized people and horrific tales of violence that make up our everyday lives.
Stories like this:
JEALOUS WIFE SLAYS CHILDREN TO AVENGE CHEATING HUSBAND
SEX-CRAZED TEENS IN DRUG-INDUCED SUICIDE PACT
ROMAN CARNAGE: RAPE AND CANNIBALISM IN HIGH PLACES
Not to mention this:
DANISH ROYAL FAMILY WIPED OUT IN ADULTEROUS FEUD
They are all tragic stories, and, of course, they are all classics of theatre, going back to the ancient Greeks. They’ve been entertaining humanity for thousands of years, and each one bloodier than the next. And if they are supposed to teach us a lesson, such as violence and revenge is bad and right wins out in the end, then we surely need to be taught this lesson over and over again, or theatre is a poor instructor.
When one of these massacres occurs, Hollywood and video games are always the first scapegoat, and usually by the people who have a vested interest in both tearing down art and building up the arms industry. And yes, we make a lot of violent movies. But they are seen all over the world, but we don’t see a rise in violence in places like Japan or Europe or India where American cinematic blood is very popular. As Marc McDonald notes at The Reaction, the Japanese film industry’s propensity for violent films makes our worst slasher flick look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. And yet the number of gun deaths in Japan each year wouldn’t amount to a night in a major metropolitan city in America. Other countries such as Germany, Great Britain and Canada all see our films, all watch our TV, all read the same stories, but it would take the combined total of all the gun deaths in those countries plus a few more to even get close to the number we have here.
It’s not that they’re any less violent or do not have the propensity towards it than us. Certainly the last century proved that other nations such as Japan and Germany are capable of incalculable murder and genocide. The one thing they all have in common is gun control. Some countries are stricter than others, but none of them have the lax and laughable laws that pass for gun control here. In America, it’s harder to get Tylenol with codeine than it is to get an AR-15. (At least legally.)
We have always been a culture prone to violence, and not just in the modern Western era. All of the stories cited above are based in Greek or European legend and history, and the Chinese and Japanese cultures have revenge and slaughter spattered through theirs as well. We have just come up with more efficient ways of doing it: instead of swords, we have a semi-automatic rifle.
I don’t have an answer that doesn’t involve a course in constitutional law or a thorough examination of the reason for man’s inhumanity. But if other people have found ways to do it and still enjoy the fundamental freedoms that we are entitled to, then there has to be a way to end the slaughter of children without infringing the Constitution, emasculating the issue-prone of the species, or banning Call of Duty: Black Ops.