Jon+Ashcraft

=Media Violence Validates Aggressive Behavior=

My mother and father had the task of raising two boys separated by three years, a bit daunting, but mostly a joy, or so mother says. Typical boys from our age and era, we played a lot outside, spent most summers in the woods down the street from our house, riding bikes and playing a lot of sports. Due to our parental socio-economic status, a good environment and a lot of other kids in the neighborhood made our childhood great growing up, but that is not without some troubles.

When I mentioned television violence to my mother when we were kids she initially said “hockey!,” since we both played during middle school and high school, but early in our childhood Saturday morning cartoons and Sunday morning wrestling dominated the television. She remembers how my brother and I would wrestle along with the television, using my parents’ bed or the den as the wrestling ring. **Our boyhood instincts and senses were absolutely aroused and the violence we saw on the screen was certainly imitated**. We wore our ultimate warrior and hulk Hogan pajamas and were very involved in the shows. “//Typical boys//” is how my mother describes it. **We were totally immersed in television cartoons and sports and it took up much of our childhood, even being very active as well.** My mother said that these things were certainly concerns and there were a number of times she would stop us from watching wrestling re-runs over and over but for the most part she wanted my brother and I to be happy and have fun without hurting each other and did not see much harm in it. When I asked her about desensitization, she was not concerned because we would actually wrestle and hurt each other, we knew we both could get hurt and that was part of the thrill for us, we were young boys after all. My brother and I grew out of our wrestling faze and moved on to hockey, a sometimes violent, hard-hitting face paced sport. We would mimic the hockey fights we saw on television and took them even further from time to time. My mother and I attribute this mostly to sibling rivalry and competition rather than what we saw on TV, but I don’t think I would have pulled my brothers jersey over his head and bashed his head in without seeing it from the professional athletes first. Hockey continued to be a passion of mine mostly and an interest of my brother. It is one of the few video games I played as a kid and still play. My brother, on the other hand, was much more involved in video games and violent video games like Metal Gear, a game he has played since a youngster and still plays to this day.

When asking my mother about video-game habits, she said she never really had restrictions for us, our father would do most of that by putting us to work and encouraging us get outside regularly. Video games certainly were not as prevalent back then as they are today so my mother did not feel as though they would have a huge impact on us. I still do not play many games but my brother does, as he would play the majority of the time and I would watch. My brother plays mostly violent games, first person shooter games, he listens to violent rap music and enjoys some violent films. I enjoy some of the same things but not to the extent he does. My mother and I do not feel like this lead him to be a violent person, because he isn’t, but it serves as more of an outlet for him rather than something to mimic. Her thoughts about self-esteem and confidence in a child making them into who they are rather than media is something I can agree with, because I can see it. In many cases violent media can certainly cultivate certain attitudes and actions, there need to be outlets in place were kids can really get rid of energy and be active rather than be engulfed in media, which can lead to desensitization.