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HULK_JONES
October 8, 2008
Gerard Jones rhapsodises about the
educational effect of violent heroes.
Gerard Jones,
"Violent Media is Good for Kids"
Mother Jones, June 2000
[ref]
Gerard Jones says that at age 13:
"The character who caught me, and
freed me, was the Hulk: overgendered The Hulk? Why the
and undersocialized, half-naked and Hulk? Out of all the
half-witted, raging against a many and various tales
frightened world that misunderstood of sanitized violence
and persecuted him. Suddenly I had a out there... why
fantasy self to carry my stifled rage choose The Hulk as
and buried desire for power. [...] your a personal totem?
Eventually, I left him behind,
followed more sophisticated heroes, "The Hulk" has never
and finally my own lead along a even been the most
twisting path to a career and an popular of the many
identity." variations on these
themes.
TWISTED_PATHS
Maybe most of us like
our monstrous-role
As a kid, I liked models to be a little
The Hulk well enough more tempered /
but I was definitely disguised / ambiguous.
touched more deeply
by things like Though to some extent:
Spider-Man, and that's a result of the
Iron Man has always legal climate...
grabbed me (and
interests me still). SUPERHERO
IRON-MAN
And the monster movie
remains popular, of
course.
It's imagery has
enthralled the
wannabe vampires,
and to a lesser
extent, the goths.
"Across generations, genders,
and ethnicities I kept seeing
the same story: people pulling
themselves out of emotional Gerard Jones *thinks*
traps by immersing themselves in he's describing
violent stories." universal reactions,
but I'm not so sure.
"I have watched my son living the same
story-- transforming himself into a
bloodthirsty dinosaur to embolden himself This is similar
for the plunge into preschool, a Power (uncomfortably so?)
Ranger to muscle through a social to Hans Resier on
competition in kindergarten. In the first the benefits of
grade, his friends started climbing a tree video games.
at school. But he was afraid: of falling, of
the centipedes crawling on the trunk, of VIOLENT_DREAMS
sharp branches, of his friends' derision. I
took my cue from his own fantasies and read But then, at least
him old Tarzan comics, rich in combat and Jones is talking
bright with flashing knives. For two weeks about actually
he lived in them. Then he put them doing something
aside. And he climbed the tree." physical out in the
world.
(Does tree climbing
sound like a trivial
achievement? These
days it seems like
kids barely step
outside...)
There's a paragraph of psycho-babble
that makes it sound like there's some
scientific studies to support this:
I tend to complain a
"We've found that every aspect of lot about wikipedia
even the trashiest pop-culture story these days, but this
can have its own developmental sort of thing makes me
function. Pretending to have miss being able to slap
superhuman powers helps children a "{citation needed}"
conquer the feelings of powerlessness tag on it.
that inevitably come with being so
young and small. The dual-identity
concept at the heart of many
superhero stories helps kids
negotiate the conflicts between the
inner self and the public self as
they work through the early stages of
socialization. Identification with a
rebellious, even destructive, hero
helps children learn to push back
against a modern culture that
cultivates fear and teaches
dependency."
"I'm not going to argue that violent
entertainment is harmless. I think it
has helped inspire some people to
real-life violence. I am going to
argue that it's helped hundreds of
people for every one it's hurt, and
that it can help far more if we learn
to use it well. [...] We act as
though our highest priority is to
prevent our children from growing up
into murderous thugs-- but modern
kids are far more likely to grow up I might be inclined to
too passive, too distrustful of agree... but there's an
themselves, too easily manipulated." "on the other hand"
lurking around here.
I'm going to have to
work on this one, but
I think Gerard Jones is:
(1) editing out of his
memory the constant,
ominous threat of
violence that fills
the lives of children
in grade school and
junior high.
SCHOOL_OF_PAIN
(2) envisioning the lives
of "nice kids in the
burbs", and ignoring the
lives of the many
children for whom violent
death is not something
buried away in stories.
RACE_DOWN
"Even in the most progressive households, where we
make such a point of letting children feel what they
feel, we rush to substitute an enlightened discussion
for the raw material of rageful fantasy. In the
process, we risk confusing them about their natural
aggression in the same way the Victorians confused
their children about their sexuality."
I think the point would be
that heavy-handed fixes
like complete prohibition But does it really
of violent media is make sense to shrug
unlikely to be the solution off any concerns
to anything. about violence, and
just regard it as
the "natural"
province of boys?
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