I watched the film ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ yesterday, which is a thriller and horror film. In this film, there are many brutal scenes: eating human flesh, killing by excoriating men’s skin and torso murder. I think this kind of films cause people to imitate the crimes.
For example, a few years ago, one middle-school student put his classmate to the edge of the knife. After the accident, he said he had been much affected by the Korean film “Friend.” In the film like ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, there are many cruel acts: the most brutal scene is killing ‘Dong Su’, one of four best friends, in the end of the movie. Also, according to a research, after ‘The Godfather’ showed in the 70s, many felonies such as murder, arson and rape drastically increased in America. It means a movie affects a lot of audience whether it is good or bad.
What I most worry about is that common children who are pure and innocent imitate the crimes in the films without any doubt. It is said that the most important thing in one’s life is childhood’s experience because the more people are young, the easier they are affected by environment around them. Of course, I know every movie is rated by many association related to the movie industry. So, it is impossible for children to enter the theater in order to watch the movie which is rated restricted. Nevertheless, if they want to watch the sensational movie, they can do it through the internet, secretly avoiding their parents.
However, because of these things, we also cannot remove every brutal scene in the movie. Brutal scenes which are brilliantly described offer the audience chance to think about violence of people: how vicious people are sometimes. For example, Buffalo Bill, brutal murderer in the movie ‘The Silence of the Lambs,’ kills many women continually to satisfy his greed. Through his unusual behavior, reasonable people can think about the importance of childhood and human abominable cruelty, not imitating them.
In my opinion, in order to get out of the dilemma, we have to consider about children’s accessibility to the restricted. That is, adults must prevent children from access to restricted media such as porno. Also, at once, we have to establish efficient education system which helps children learn how to accept mass media.
When I was a kid, my mother panicked because I started playing an RPG game called “Dungeons & Dragons.” Some people on TV claimed that the game was Satanic, that it made children kill or hurt one another, and that it was an evil thing. They “warned” parents on TV about this.
All of that was stupid. It was a simple game, and when I played it, I developed storytelling skills, math skills, a better vocabulary, an interest in history and in books, and a love of story-writing.
Other things have been blamed for misbehaving children, too: rock music, comic books, the wrong foods, not enough praying in church, too much praying in church, reading the wrong novel, reading anything besides the Bible, folk music, video games, the internet, TV shows, and so on. There’s always “evidence” but I always stop and ask myself:
Did Dungeons & Dragons make me kill anyone? Did TV ever make me feel like killing someone? Did rock music ever cause me to become violent? (And so on.) Certainly, seeing The Silence of the Lambs didn’t make me kill anyone; neither did any of the movies I saw as a kid. (And I think you haven’t done that either.)
Maybe the kid stabbed the other kid because he was crazy, or mentally unstable, or because the other kid had been beating him up for months and the teacher did nothing to stop it. The possible explanations for the boy’s behaviour, besides his (unbelievable) claim that the movie “Friend” made him do it, are various! Similarly, maybe crime went up after The Godfather came out for economic, social, or political reasons; maybe there were reductions of police patrolling, or maybe a new drug hit the streets that summer. Was it a heat wave? Electricity blackouts? All kinds of possible explanations exist!
One thing I know is that nobody I know ever hurt another person because of a movie, a song, or a book. And that some people love to pretend otherwise, in order to get control of what media you can watch.
Which reminds me: you should try to see This Film Is Not Yet Rated a documentary from 2006. It explains how the movie ratings system in the USA got started, and how it spread around the world, and why you should worry about it. One reason? Such a small group of people influence where all the money and power is in the film industry.
Movie ratings systems will die out eventually, of course: the internet will assure that. But until it happens, we should be careful to question whether they’re just a method of protecting children, or treating everyone like children while controlling the media.
And you know how I feel about controls on the media. (Trust me, Canada has TERRIBLE problems with media controls!)
Thank you for your commentary. I know how you feel. And after reading your commentary, I want to seriously think about this topic over and over.
Ok, apart from gangster movies, what do you think about pornography?
For example, thesedays, Times in Korea are troublous because students in a elementary school in Deagu rape their juniors. The harmers are 13 years old and the victims are 10 years old to 11 years old. In the process of the investigation, they say that they have been affected by the pornographics and they accept the types of sex such as gang bang naturally.
As you mentioned about stuffs such as gangster movies and rock music, pornographics also will not affect children’s thinking about sex? Is what they raped other young girls also that they are crazy?
I think pornos will affect them very much as they said. As you know, sex is related to be pregrant. So, sex is very important for young children. If children who are even 10 years old ask you whether they can have sex with girls like pornographics, what will you say about them?
Porno is one of media. So, I want to listen to you about how pornos can affect children. It is very easy for them to access to pornos, using the Internet and P2P. Do we have to allow childen to watch porno or prohibit them to watch pornos?
(The objects I mean are elementary school students, not middle or high school students)