Violence in Media

A TV movie on wife beating, called The Burning Bed, apparently triggered related violence in three separate cities. In Milwaukee, a man, fearing for his own life, doused his estranged wife with gasoline and threw a match at her. In Quincy, Massachusetts, a husband was so enraged by the show that he beat his wife to death, later saying that he wanted to get her before she got him. And in Chicago, a battered wife shot her husband right after watching The Burning Bed. (Block 4). Several incidents like this have occurred after the display of violent forms of media. There is much controversy about violence in the media. Violence has inspired many crimes and act, yet the demand for violence keeps the public entertained and the profits keep the economy up and running.

Violence is forceful human destruction of property or injury to persons, usually intentional, and forceful verbal and emotional abuse that harms others. Violence comes in many forms, usually illegal, such as assault, property damage, homicide, and rape. Assault is the basic form of violence against another human being, while property damage is violence against someone's property. Homicide, a more serious form of violence, is the act of one human killing another human being. A main function of the law is to regulate violence through legal systems and government groups, allowing the government officials to use violence to stop violence.

How could the media not impact our lives to a degree when the average American has seen 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence by the end of elementary school (Sherrow 1). Children especially, watch twenty hours of TV a week; some forty hours or more. Many children have grown up to mimic and follow what they see on television as hardworking, busy parents often have less time to spend with their children and use the mass media as a "baby-sitter". Saturday morning cartoons are a ritual for many American children. What parents don't know is that cartoons are the most violent of programs on television (Newton 34). Popular characters such as the Coyote and Road Runner have been entertaining children for decades. The premise of the show is the Coyote's relentless hunt of the Road Runner, which usually ends with the Coyote being crushed or mutilated. Taking cartoons to another extreme was the show Beavis and Butthead.

In 1993, a two-year-old died in a fire set by her five-year-old brother. Their mother said that her son had imitated a scene from the MTV program Beavis and Butthead in which the two characters used matches (Berger 7). Over the past years, worried parents have wanted to find a way to block the shows their children watch without having to monitor over them all the time. The V-Chip, which is a computer chip, has been proposed as a way of allowing each individual parent to set the shows appropriate for their child (Sherrow 76). A television ratings system, like the one in the movies, has also come about ...