"Media Violence Debates"

I really enjoyed reading this article. Basically it is the debate over whether or not media violence is entirely bad, or whether or not there are some positive aspects that can come out of violent entertainment. This article was similar to “Why kids need violent entertainment”. I really enjoyed the following quote; “Children need violent entertainment in order to explore the inescapable feelings that they’ve been taught to deny, and to reintegrate those feelings into a more whole, more complex , more resilient selfhood.” I can’t say that I ENTIRELY agree with the fact that there is little harm or foul that comes from extremely grotesque and violent media; however, I do still believe that there are certain aspects of violent entertainment that allows children to get in touch with these elements of violence that, let’s face it, are much more safely experimented with in a video game and other media than they are in real life. The author also touches on the racial connotations of certain media; portraying the “bad guy” as poor, young, male members of visible minorities. I think that if anything needs to be looked into, this would be something that should be considered as harmful as violence in the media. I believe that these images strengthen racism and inequality. Perhaps we are not focusing on the right issue; although violent entertainment does have its downfalls, there are other issues in the media that we should be considering to be more frightening. It ended by saying that it really is upto what we do with the media that we consume. "rather than focusing on what media do to people, we should focus on what people do with media". I thought this was an excellent way to wrap up the article, as we truly do need to focus on how we deal with media. Is it the medias fault for making money off of us because we refuse to be critical about this media? I would argue no.