Desensitized or Oversensitive Americans?

Email Print posted by chrisandyasemin 06/18/2008 10:53:18 PM EST

Google Technorati del.icio.us digg reddit
If you like this story, digg it!
I've been meaning to write a post about this topic for the past few weeks but since I watched the snippets from the Daily Show - Lara Logan interview I've been inspired to do so...

I am incredibly amazed at how little of what goes on in the world—and hey, even in day to day life— is actually shown on TV in the United States.


Obviously I find it appalling that the caskets of our fallen soldiers are not allowed to be shown on TV, allow us please to thank and pay homage to them even if it is from the comfort of our cozy little homes away from any wars, allow us please to see, reflect upon, and ponder their deaths and the reasons for it.


But that is a side issue reminded to me by Lara. Instead I would like to talk about the reality of life and violence in the media.

 

So here is my experience:

I first moved to Turkey when I was 8 and lived there for 9 years, and for the first year or so our television consumption was closely monitored by my parents as it was considered too explicit. I don’t know the exact broadcasting rules and regulations there, but it seemed like a nipple was fair game on network television after 8pm (incidentally, they were also rampant in regular newspapers any given day as well). Anyway, aside from human anatomical parts though, violence and blood were (and still are) common place in Turkish television, which is why I realized I was being sheltered from news programs. After a while obviously it became OK for me to watch the news with my parents, as probably they became used to it as well.


So but this is where I would like to draw the comparison: it was common for us to see limp arms sagging from a stretcher as a dead man was being hauled off to an ambulance; fathers holding their dead children, crying, after a bombing, bloodied bodies, crying mothers, funerals, permanently altered people, etc, just some real messed up stuff. But we got used to it.


I moved back to the US eight years ago and didn’t notice these types of things missing from our news and the public sphere, until I was one day watching a program where they showed a dead woman laying on a sidewalk: no blood, no action. If the narrator hadn’t said she was dead, I would have assumed she was asleep or something. But I cringed and turned away. Then I caught myself and thought “why did I feel that way?”


This is where I want to bring the discussion. Are we too over-sensitive or de-sensitized to this kind of thing in the US? Many (not all but many) don’t blink when they hear of a car bomb on the other side of the world, or a 5-year-old accidentally being killed in a battle. While the media doesn’t show any of the realities of life on TV, perhaps assuming that the public is too sensitive to the images (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt, but then how does one explain record breaking ticket sales to violent movies, or video games)… I’m not saying that I necessarily appreciated the amount of blood-shed shown on Turkish TV, but I also feel the American TV is too fluffy and soft. If we saw everyday what has been happening in Iraq or Afghanistan would we as a nation have protested this war (more?) vigorously would people have gone thru with re-electing (or electing) Bush in 2004? Is it fair or smart to exclude the realities of the world in all of its pain and suffering from the public eye?


I would probably settle on this issue somewhere down the middle, but I’m open to other people’s opinions and observations. I think this is something that needs to be discussed in its entirety from all perspectives.

< Going Viral on McCain | Larry Sinclair Arrested >

Poll

Are most Americans...
visually over-sensitive to violence 0%
de-sensitized to violence in general 0%
don't care unless it effects themselves 50%
its about the children 0%
feel that too much graphic violence on TV is distasteful 0%
the media doesn't care 50%
the media cares too much 0%

Votes: 4
Results | Other Polls
 Display:
Desensitized or Oversensitive Americans? | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)
To your point (none / 0)
My wife (who is an American) lived in Sweden for 7-8 years.  She has on more than one occasion commented on how different TV is here compared to Sweden (bear in mind, she moved back 15 or so years ago, so this may be dated).  She says it is really no big deal to see full frontal nudity in a movie or TV show there but violence is usually edited out.  Here, of course, the country comes to a halt if someone sees a nipple in a half-time show but no one seems to blink an eye in a movie like the Matrix (which we both liked).  So in the end, I think Americans are conflicted -- death is OK so long as it is not real and happens to the bad people.  With that in mind, it is pretty easy to understand why people were so eager for the extravaganza "Iraq II – the Sequel."  I mean, after the sanitized coverage of Iraq I – with all the exciting aerial footage and all – who could blame them, right?   As Greg Graffin put it (in a song): "here we go again to stage the greatest show on heaven and earth."

by randall on 06/19/2008 12:35:58 AM EST

exactly (none / 0)
This is what happens when you market a war like a video-game.

by funkyspoon on 06/19/2008 01:16:04 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Yep (none / 0)
A friend of mine saw the Patrick Swayze movie Roadhouse while in Canada many years ago.

The fight scenes were heavily edited, but the sex scenes weren't (not very explicit but still, butts and boobs were visible).

IMO, that's much more logical if you're going to edit anything.

by ihavenobias on 06/19/2008 09:51:54 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Really Good Post (none / 0)

This question has always really interested me because it could very easily go both ways.  Many people hold the belief that the levels of violence we allow in mass media today is far greater than ever before.  But if you look at literature from the 18th century and back, the graphic details are startling.  Grimm's fairy-tales are perfect example of this.  In the original versions collected from european peasants, sleeping beauty was a rape victim, goldilocks got ate, and cinderella had her stepmother and sisters executed.  These tales were used as bloody examples of what could happen to those who did not follow the rules.  Shakespeare employed gore and t&a in exactly the same way that a Stephen King novel or a Paul Verhoeven (think thats how you spell his name) film would.

 Many also argue that an overexposure to violence leads to desensitization and acceptance.  The military historian John Keegan has a theory that the one of the reasons that pastoralists (people who rely on animal herds for their sustenence) have always held a significant military advantage over farmers and city dwellers (think huns, mongols, turks, and cossacks) was that having to butcher their livestock daily made them much more psychologically prepared to do the same to humans.  I really don't know enough about the psychology of this to get too far into it, other than to say that I liked bloody horror movies and violent video games when I was a kid, and I have not been in a fight with anyone since about 4th grade.  But then again,  I was lucky enough to have parents who made sure I understood the implications of my actions in real life.

 What I do know is that we do have a massive desensitization to real violence, and it is directly caused by the way we are shielded from the horrors of our actions in the world.  Starting with Crimea (one of the first wars to be subject to photo-journalism), there has been a battle between journalists and the military leadership in almost every western country about how war should be reported.  Everybody knows that one of the main reasons this country collectively rose up against the war in Vietnam was because they became disgusted at the nightly carnage on their TV screens.  The coverage that Americans receive of this war is sanitized to a ridiculous degree.  It's not even all just visual.  Look at the orwellian use of words like collateral damage (which is MSMese for manslaughter perpetrated by the military)  or the justification of torture as "enhanced interrogation".  I'm not sure yet as to what the line should be here, but we are definitely on the wrong side of it at present.

by funkyspoon on 06/19/2008 01:12:54 AM EST

Vietnam is the key precedent (none / 0)
After what happend with the media coverage of the Vietnam war and the civil protest that ocurred, the US administration wasn't going to let populatiuon see any of the bad consecuences of war (blood, guts nor flag draped coffins). What really astounds me is the media. What was going on in their minds when they agreed to not broadcast any image of wounded and dead. They said it was for the benefit of moral. They did the US people a great diservice.

JaimeH

by JaimeH on 06/19/2008 05:07:16 AM EST

Desensitized or Oversensitive Americans? | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)
 Display: