Fear, Inside and Out

A long time ago, I had to do a paper on whether or not violence in video games influences perpetrators of violence in the real world. At the time, I thought that was ridiculous. How could anyone be so immersed in a video game that they carry that mentality into the real world?

Now, I see things differently. Media has so much more power than we give it credit for. From a very young age, it controls the way we think and how we interpret the world around us. So, in a way, Gerbner's argument makes a lot of sense. We like to feel involved in any TV show we watch. If someone sees a world created by TV writers with a lot of violence and crime, they are inclined to feel involved in that action, carrying it into the real world.

But I also think that we influence the media more than we give ourselves credit for. If said TV show doesn't appeal to a lot of people, it'll get cut. We are the ones who are attracted to violence on television. That's why TV shows are violent. So, I think that television isn't the only thing to blame. We have a natural inclination to believe we aren't safe. We're always trying to attain the ultimate level of safety. Television feeds that fear more than creates it.

That's what "Once Upon a Time" is about. Nadine Gordimer doesn't ever mention the woman and her husband watching violent television. It could have been a detail that she didn't find important, but I don't think so. I think that it was their own fear of the world around them that prompted them to put up so much security that they didn't need. What the author is trying to say is that we place so much emphasis on being as safe as we can that, in the end, we hurt ourselves trying to protect ourselves from imaginary threats. Those threats don't necessarily have to present themselves in television. Most of the time, we come up with them all on our own.