Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

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AnotherFairportfan
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Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

All i'll say right now about my evening's entertainment is that anyone who brings a four/five/six year old kid to see Logan should be chargeable with abuse, in my opinion.

Hell - one kid, apparently too young to walk in, was CARRIED in by her mother (i assume). That was the one who was carried out in near hysterics during the final fight sequence.

Another kid behind me was sobbing loudly enough to be heard five or six rows away over the soundtrack, and HIS mother just kept saying it was all right, it was just a movie.

{I have no idea of the gender of the kids in question, so i just assigned pronouns.}

======================

{I remember thinking and discussing much the same when our gang were waiting to see ALIEN on opening night.}
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by TazManiac »

I've been reading up a bit on this film; it's the first Marvel 'comic book' film thats rated a hard 'R'. It's less action and special effects and more character development and a few all out mayhem sections.

Lets review- There's one guy with claws coming out of his arms (Wolverine) and there's a young gal who shows up at his door; and she aint no light-weight either. It's not exactly hilarity that ensues...

It's being said that Hugh Jackman, in what may end up being his swan song, at least as far as playing Wolverine in a lead role, made it a point of pushing for the 'R' rating up front; (that way it'd be what they set out to do, less likely to be able to cut it down to a PG-13...).

As a young child, my Father took me to many R rated films, but they where usually rated that due to Adult Themes, not out-right violent depictions.

It's my opinion that most tweens and below shouldn't be in this here film audience.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

TazManiac wrote:I've been reading up a bit on this film; it's the first Marvel 'comic book' film thats rated a hard 'R'. It's less action and special effects and more character development and a few all out mayhem sections.
Actually, the second, after Deadpool.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by TazManiac »

Oops. I think I don't mentally connect Deadpool w/ the MCU... (And it took a min to recall [at least] two XMen making cameo-ish appearances in it...)
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

TazManiac wrote:Oops. I think I don't mentally connect Deadpool w/ the MCU... (And it took a min to recall [at least] two XMen making cameo-ish appearances in it...)
The opening sequence in this film is Deadpool.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by Alkarii »

Really? I watched movies like Predator and Alien when I was a kid. And the first couple Child's Play movies, and a couple Nightmare on Elm Street films, now that I think of it. Didn't have a problem at all.

Children these days are too soft.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by Dave »

When I was a kid (probably about 14, at a guess), my father took me and my two younger brothers to see The Sand Pebbles, a critically-acclaimed film which includes some rather disturbing scenes of a violent nature (e.g. a man being tortured, and then shot to death by a friend to put him out of his misery.) Not gratuitous violence by any means, not bloody by today's standards of gore, but the film did portray realistic characters in realistic pain (both physical and emotional).

My youngest brother (about ten at the time) had nightmares about it afterwards. My mother was rather angry at my father for subjecting him (us) to such graphic violence at such a young age.

I think there's no question that kids these days are exposed to more violent imagery than those of my generation were... it's been socialized in movies and games (and I'd say "books", but how many kids read these days?). Time will tell as to whether this has "desensitized" a whole generation to the actual human costs of real violence... whether we've become a society which lives by the credo of Grand Theft Auto.

If so, we may ask end up asking (as did the dying protagonist of The Sand Pebbles) "What happened... what the hell happened?"
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by Catawampus »

Dave wrote:Time will tell as to whether this has "desensitized" a whole generation to the actual human costs of real violence...
I suppose it depends in part on how many can differentiate between fiction and reality. Or on how many of those who can differentiate actually care enough to do so.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by GlytchMeister »

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 51613.html

From the above article: "Ferguson writes: "This research may help society focus on issues that really matter and avoid devoting unnecessary resources to the pursuit of moral agendas with little practical value.""

From the study: "Results suggest that societal consumption of media violence is not predictive of increased societal violence rates."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 ... -violence/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -explainer
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by GlytchMeister »

I'm gonna have to stop you riiiiiight there. Media violence, including game violence, does not cause real violence, and time has already told. There is no causation. The correlation is actually a product of a non-representative sample (number of shooters is small and is characterized by a very narrow demographic, which happens to be right in the middle of the target demographic of video games) and is therefore invalid by logical fallacy.

And the real reason behind the push against violence in media is due to people in power trying to force their moral agendas on others when they have no real right to do so. It is an attempt to censor and control, which is protected against by the First Amendment.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by Dave »

I think I'm asking a question that's a bit bigger, GlytchMeister.

I'm not just asking if game or movie violence is likely to cause people to become more violent themselves. I'll accept that the studies to date indicate that any such effect is not significant.

I'm asking, in part, whether being exposed to constant fictional violence may be making some people less sensitive to real violence: that is, less likely to act themselves to stop it when they see it or hear of it, or less concerned about those affected by the violence.

We know that there are situations that can cause people to become less sensitive to the pain of others... the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, Abu Ghraib... it's easy for us to lose our sense of compassion and treat Others as objects or as less than human.

I guess I'm worried that exposure to lots of representations of gratuitous violence might have a similar effect.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by Sgt. Howard »

Dave wrote:I think I'm asking a question that's a bit bigger, GlytchMeister.

I'm not just asking if game or movie violence is likely to cause people to become more violent themselves. I'll accept that the studies to date indicate that any such effect is not significant.

I'm asking, in part, whether being exposed to constant fictional violence may be making some people less sensitive to real violence: that is, less likely to act themselves to stop it when they see it or hear of it, or less concerned about those affected by the violence.

We know that there are situations that can cause people to become less sensitive to the pain of others... the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, Abu Ghraib... it's easy for us to lose our sense of compassion and treat Others as objects or as less than human.

I guess I'm worried that exposure to lots of representations of gratuitous violence might have a similar effect.
There's a great deal of debate (and I'm not REALLY convinced, but I will concede the possibility) that a goodly number of school shootings can trace their beginnings to the 'dehumanization factor' of violent video games and movies. If a child runs out of a theater screaming, THAT ought to tell you that the child being there was not appropriate.
Children deserve to have a childhood- I freaked out several times during 'Sleeping Beauty' when I saw it for the first time. Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'. No shit. I finished Army Ranger School back in the 70's, so I doubt I would qualify as a 'sissy'.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

Sgt. Howard wrote:Children deserve to have a childhood- I freaked out several times during 'Sleeping Beauty' when I saw it for the first time. Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'. No shit. I finished Army Ranger School back in the 70's, so I doubt I would qualify as a 'sissy'.
Heh.

Nightmares.

For days.

About the Queen.

==============

Factoid: Helen Gahagan (later Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas) starred in one film - an adaptation of She (1935).

Her performance and costume inspired the Queen in Snow White.

==============

Second factoid: A sequence of Snow White dancing (which was later recycled for Maid Marian in Disney's animated Robin Hood) was traced over footage of a young woman dancing. (She also provided reference footage for the Blue Fairy and one of the hippos in Fantasia - and choreographed the hippo ballet, as well.)

Her name was Marjorie Belcher, though she later married a Disney animator, whom she eventually divorced and married Gower Champion.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by jwhouk »

Jaws.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by GlytchMeister »

Dave wrote:I think I'm asking a question that's a bit bigger, GlytchMeister.

I'm not just asking if game or movie violence is likely to cause people to become more violent themselves. I'll accept that the studies to date indicate that any such effect is not significant.

I'm asking, in part, whether being exposed to constant fictional violence may be making some people less sensitive to real violence: that is, less likely to act themselves to stop it when they see it or hear of it, or less concerned about those affected by the violence.

We know that there are situations that can cause people to become less sensitive to the pain of others... the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, Abu Ghraib... it's easy for us to lose our sense of compassion and treat Others as objects or as less than human.

I guess I'm worried that exposure to lots of representations of gratuitous violence might have a similar effect.
As someone who has engaged in both:

Media violence doesn't even come close. Not even VR can do it. Yes, they can get your heart pounding, and they can make you angry and frustrated.

But the violence in media doesn't have nearly the same effect. The act of beating the shit out of someone or taking them to the brink of death, holding them over the edge of the cliff... That is not something media, in my opinion, can desensitize someone to. If someone can do it and not question their own humanity later, or take it lightly, then they were already that way to begin with. The feel of the pulping of the muscle, the tearing of fibers, the snapping and crunching of bones, the separation of flesh beneath a blade, and the sharp report of a gun firing death on swift wings down a barrel... as a direct result of the force being applied by your own hands, or your own trigger finger... No media can desensitize someone to that.

They can make someone think they are ready. The media can make a kid be all gung-ho about it and think they've got the balls to take a life. But they aren't prepared. They aren't desensitized. They're simply fooling themselves if they think so.

You know what can desensitize someone to violence against another human being without actually being violence against another human being in the first place?

Killing animals. Slaughtering them. Grabbing a chicken, putting its head on the block, and beheading it. Wrestling a pig or a goat into the ground and slitting its throat. Shooting a cow or a deer.

And the warning sign is when it's not done humanely. Instead of a quick chop or a sudden twist, they slowly remove the chicken's head... Or they don't cut the throat of the pig or goat very deep, letting it bleed out slowly, so they can revel in the act, watch the light leave the animal's eyes. Or shooting the cow or deer in the gut or something on purpose to make it die slowly, and not following it and catching it and putting it out of its misery.

That's why animal abuse is such a strong red flag for other problems. If a kid is setting cats on fire, and is aware of the concept of pain (some kids are stupid, I get it), you need to keep a close goddamn eye on that kid, because something is up with that child.

Simulated violence in media is still far too tame, too far removed from the reality of true violence for it to actually desensitize someone against real, in-person violence.
Sgt. Howard wrote:There's a great deal of debate (and I'm not REALLY convinced, but I will concede the possibility) that a goodly number of school shootings can trace their beginnings to the 'dehumanization factor' of violent video games and movies. If a child runs out of a theater screaming, THAT ought to tell you that the child being there was not appropriate.
Children deserve to have a childhood- I freaked out several times during 'Sleeping Beauty' when I saw it for the first time. Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'. No shit. I finished Army Ranger School back in the 70's, so I doubt I would qualify as a 'sissy'.
Please consider my earlier post. The idea that school shootings trace their beginnings to dehumanization via violent video games is a non-representative sample logical fallacy. Most school shootings are done by people who are the target audience of violent video games. "Correlation, not causation" at best. Very frequently, there are many other things that contributed far more to the shootings than the games - bullying and inaction by teachers, parental abuse, a proclivity toward animal abuse that was not curbed. These factors don't get the same media attention because they aren't a hot controversial topic for the news agencies to start useless arguments over, and there's no money in the debate. Everyone agrees if a kid is getting bullied, they get beat like a dog by their dad, and they take out their anger on animals by kicking and setting them on fire, that kid's probably pretty fucked up.

Not everyone agrees kids who play violent games end up fucked up, and there's all kinds of money at stake in that debate.

I agree kids deserve a childhood, but perhaps we should focus more on things like child abuse, fixing the foster care system, figuring out a way to stop bullying, and provide resources to parents so they can learn and know how to raise a child right instead of simply raising their children like they were raised... Because if I raised my kid like how I was raised, in absence of other influences, my kid would end up a monster far, far worse than my father or even my grandfather.
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ShneekeyTheLost
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

I don't believe movie violence will have any correlation to children becoming violent. However, traumatizing kids with their comic book hero's wading through blood and gore? Uncool.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:I don't believe movie violence will have any correlation to children becoming violent. However, traumatizing kids with their comic book hero's wading through blood and gore? Uncool.
My point.

Except i'm pretty sure these kids were way too young to read the comics.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by Warrl »

One common factor of mass shootings is that - with very rare exceptions - they occur in places where it isn't legal for people other than law-enforcement officers to carry firearms.

Oddly enough, people who are planning mass murder seem to be willing to also break firearms laws. Who would have imagined that?
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

Post by jwhouk »

Glytch: I can confirm about the animal killing. We had one of those up by us a few years ago. Burned down an entire barn of animals. He was... yeah.
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Re: Idiots who should be charged with child abuse

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(I had a really good n' lengthy reply all typed up, but the Site went pear-shaped SQL error right after I hit 'submit'.) Maybe I'll try again....
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