Media Under Fire
...e children are stuck in front of a television set or listening to music instead of sharing real time with parents. Namely, Winn believes that while Television has kept the family from dispersing, TV has not served to bring them together (284). If left alone with these sometimes negative forms of entertainment, the children will almost certainly perceive them as reality. The job of the parent is to balance the child and help them to see the movies and games and music for what they really are: fictional entertainment. Besides the breakup of families, the entertainment industry is often blamed for blatant acts of violence. Much as the slaying of twelve students and one teacher in Littleton, Colorado (Bauman, 587). The suspects, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were said to have been influenced by videogames and music, and had it not been for the media’s influence, the two boys would never had committed the murders (587). Critics charge that games like DOOM and Quake, as well as the music of Marilyn Manson, were the main driving factors in distorting the minds of the two young boys. However, little was said about the children’s home lives. Nor was much thought given to the fact that they were alienated at school. With no one to turn to, media became a parental figure. Would the boys have acted the same way without Manson’s “The Dope Show?” I think so. Although games and music might have reinforced their thoughts of murder, the intentions were there to begin with. Oliver Stone’s movie “Natural Born Killers” is another good example of controversial media under fire. The movie was about Mickey and Mallory who travel across the Southwest leaving fifty-two people dead in their wake. After watching the film, two teenagers, Ben Darras and Sarah Edmondson, killed one person and paralyzed another in similar fashion. In their trials they both stated that the movie was the ultimate cause of their wrongdoings, and that despite their recent murders; they were really not violent people (Grisham 567). But did the film alone actually motivate the duo to such extreme measures? I don’t think so. Oliver Stone states, “Ben and Sarah are deeply disturbed youths with histories of drug and/or alcohol abuse and psychiatri...