BEYOND GOOD & EVIL
Film Screening & Discussion
May 1, 2005
Summary by Phoebe Hoss
On Sunday, May 1, at 1:00, Adult Education and the Peace Task Force sponsored a viewing of the documentary film "Beyond Good and Evil: Children, Media and Violent Times," produced by Chyung Sun and Miguel Picker and presided over by Dr. Holly Atkinson.
Violence in the media and its effect on children has long been a concern of parents and educators. In this film, a variety of experts on childhood development tell us how extremely dangerous to the minds of young and teenage boys are TV war programs and video war games. These games are largely based on the simple dichotomy of good and evil, where the chief aim of the principal characters is to rape, mutilate, and kill, and players are encouraged to dehumanize and hate the other. Watched repeatedly, these games can shape boys' political ideology from an early age and make them more capable of killing. This effect is enhanced by the fact that boys watch these programs in relative isolation - and even more if they act them out. These games also blur reality: in them, there is no diplomacy, no negotiation, no surrender. There are only massive virtual killings justified by patriotism.
Such war games are advocated by the U.S. military, with the Army having even designed a free one for teenagers. This game teaches them how to be snipers and to accept militarism as a way of life, as fun. Thus children are socialized into two destructive views of life: that it's the good guys - us - versus the bad guys - them; and that it is through violence that you deal with conflict, with anyone who disagrees with you.
In addition, our government has promoted the good/evil dichotomy to justify our actions and to pump up patriotism. The 2001 film Black Hawk Down - in which violence is presented as vital to the United States' role as benevolent peacekeeper -- is a result of the government's attempt to enlist Hollywood in this effort. "There will always be killing," one character says.
The following are other examples of the government's blurring of reality, through misinformation and simplification of history:
In going into Afghanistan and pitting us against the Taliban, Bush was asking us to see the enemy as inherently vile, as one who has to be killed. Of the children asked about this in the film, one said, "We live lives that are nice." Thus, they - and we - are comforted by the notion that we, the good guys, have a life that deserves to be protected.
- Now in the Iraq war, we are told the names of our own dead soldiers, but not those of the enemy. Nor are we shown either in the press or on television - nor is it reported in the international press - the immense harm we have inflicted on civilians, especially on children. All this is antiseptically called "collateral damage."
- Blame for the attacks on 9/11 was shifted to Saddam Hussein - with no mention of the critical support we gave this tyrant in the 1980s while he was gassing Iran's people.
- Seldom is any official mention made of our use of weapons of mass destruction - as on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in the Gulf War and now Iraq. The cluster bombs we use today spread and proliferate horribly.
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At the conclusion of the film, Dr. Atkinson distributed and discussed copies of an article from that Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "Play Stations of the Cross," about "Christian" video games, which have no problem with violence as long as it's righteous. The difference between these games and ordinary commercial ones is that the former allow no "moral relativism": where in a commercial game, you may fight as anyone involved, whether good or bad, in the "Christian" ones, you may not fight as the devil. In these, the "bad" is allowed no quarter - or understanding.
In the discussion afterward, these important points were made:
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Where once it was thought that by age five the brain was locked in, neurological studies have shown that repeated activity can change the brain's wiring. Thus, violence, watched steadily by young children and teenagers, can become entrenched in the brain. Kids don't understand the difference between fantasy and reality owing to the way technology instantaneously integrates them; the pleasure kids get from playing these war games only reinforces their destructive message. As for the teenage brain, new findings re the frontal lobe, which is responsible for impulse control and doesn't fully develop until the age of 20 or 21, was responsible for the recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling against the death penalty for people under 18. Whether fantasy or real, it's clear in the literature, said Dr. Atkinson, that the more violence kids consume in the media, the more they're desensitized. And some kids are more vulnerable than others.
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The U.S. government's use of the games to recruit young people into the Armed Forces reinforces violent behavior.
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Parents should, Dr. Atkinson said, keep track of what their children are watching, discuss it with them, and be willing to limit their watching. In this connection, the film's producer Chyung Sun, who was in the audience and is a professor of media studies at NYU, asked for more awareness. She noted that schools in Cambridge, Mass., recognizing how difficult it is to prohibit kids from taking part in their peer culture, have instituted, starting from kindergarten, courses on media issues, involving parents and teachers. She, too, emphasized that parents and others who are with children need to educate themselves about what's out there.
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Re the age a child should be allowed to start watching TV: It depends on the child, but as late as possible. It's most important for an adult to watch with the child, to help him or her understand conflict and think how to work it out without violence.
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Re what we can do when so many of us feel powerless, Dr. Atkinson said that her own experience working in the media showed her that letters of complaint matter and are paid attention to. If we each wrote a letter a month about any violence we witnessed in the media, it would help.
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