It’s a Perfect Narrative

I found lecture 5 very intellectually stimulating. Especially the debate between whether or not violent video games have an impact on social behaviour. And honestly I can see it from both sides of the argument. I understand why it is so easy for elders to believe that young kids are passive and have a ‘sponge’ for a brain, okay well maybe not. But we like to think that kids are vulnerable and naïve which equals to ‘we need to protect them’ to a massive out cry and resulting to moral panics.

Got me thinking about the Columbine shooting in America in 1999 were too young boys Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went out on a shooting spree at their school. Quite quickly news journalists made assumptions that the boys were influenced by violent video games and Marilyn Mason music, regarding the fact there was no hard evidence to prove this. I suppose the two young boys are like a missing piece to an already written. A story where everyone’s familiar with. Its like the majority of the adults refuse to people that maybe the adolescents were distressed or does violent video games sound more appealing to the overall assumed plot. Guess the ‘narrative’ is just a quick fix it explanation for everything. From then on America went crazier: this incident provoked law reinforcements, surveillance cameras across schools, metal detectors, provoked gun control law.

Oh! I forgot to mention these boys were male* (kind of silly mentioning it), white, adolescents. Fits into the perfect stereotyped narrative right?!

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