You bring up interesting points, and the question becomes who should the media cater to? Should they cater to children or the adults? Adults pay the bills but the children seem to be the ones most effected. Who weighs more in the population distribution of the US?
I have always been of the opinion that the focus needs to be on parent education, not on censorship of the media or anything else. Mothers are coming younger and younger it seems, so young that they do not have yet their own fully developed sense of right and wrong, of morality, religious or otherwise. This is something that is so obtainable. I talk to students, some of whom are mothers every week, I get their opinions on things, I (as a music teacher) study the lyrics of popular music with them to find their true meanings. I have had kids literally come up and tell me that they never questioned that something was wrong until I brought it up. This is real, easy to do, and provides demonstrated improvement. Compare this with taking down the entire media industry, which is essentially represented by every American at some point in the process, hardly a feat that can be accomplished. Why one, and not the other? I’ll tackle your imagery and desensitization in a later paragraph.
On one hand I can say yes, if you are significantly worried about the content of public schooling you could homeschool your child or send them to private school. On the other hand I am a public high school teacher and there is absolutely 0% contraceptive or gay propaganda here in my opinion, so that may depend on a case by case basis.
As far as desensitization goes, I do agree that it happens, but I do not think that it is really that relevant. It goes with the right and wrong argument. So there is a bad or immoral image somewhere in your head, there are also thousands of times more good images, images of your family, would you rather have seen something, been able to make the decision on your own will that you do not like it, and then keep that decision with you, or not see it at all, and never know for yourself. Frankly if someone tells me “you don’t want to see this, it’s immoral” that makes me want to see it even more, why should someone else get to decide what is immoral or crude or vulgar for me. This might be an unfair statement, and I might be a little embattled because if you’ve read my earlier posts you will see that I had a very limited childhood as far as…anything goes. And as quetsionable or as bad at it has gotten it did give me a very strict idea of what was right and what was wrong. To the violent effect, I’m fairly sure without doing any research that anyone who watches a violent program and then goes on a shooting spree has a lot more going on upstairs and at home than simple video indoctrination. Second I think that it is very healthy and important that we, especially younger adults, and possibly even older children, are introduced to the horrors of war and violence. War is something we are constantly surrounded by, and pervades our history, we cannot simply ignore that it or wholesale violence exists in the real world. So we keep seeing images of Homosexuals, do we not keep acknowledging that we think its wrong, scoff in disgust, etc. every time it comes up?
The first thing I did after high school was join the military, and and I celebrated my 20th in Afghanistan. I’m 22 now and I have both shot at people and been shot at. I’ve seen horrible things done to dead bodies, I’ve seen horrible things done to live bodies. That being said there is absolutely nothing, the most grotesque, illicit movie or film you will find by today’s media, will do nothing to prepare you for that kind of imagery, the smell, the heat. That is true desensitization, nothing I see now even phases me, even depictions of horrible criminals, torturists, etc. While I agree that my introduction to violent material such as movies and video games plays a part in my reaction to those events, it in no way “desensitized” me to them in a harmful manner. Nothing can keep you from hesitating the first time you point a weapon at someone with the intent to do harm or to defend yourself. As soon as the stock hits your shoulder you pray and pray and pray that you don’t have to pull the trigger. To this day I have never ever engaged in violence without reluctance (for that matter neither has anyone in my unit, or anyone I’ve talked to about it after the fact), and I’ve watched just as many violent TV shows and movies as the next person.
I think we are descending now into child psychology, whats right for children, what they see. and hear. And you are absolutely right, no parental control is foolproof, we cannot protect children from seeing and hearing evil in the world. We also cannot protect them completely from physical evil either. You might step into the other room and they might cut themself, you might send them off to school and the bus driver might get in an accident. So my opinion stays thus; there are way more evils in this world that are more readily and easily combatted than the “main stream media”. There’s plenty of christian programming, good childrens programming. As an adult, it comes down to your sense of right and wrong, as a child, it comes down to your parents. As far as the topic of the discussion, I can prove, and so can others, that 41 years ago, 60 years ago, 150 years ago, people were just as messed up, people still had these same problems in permutation, these same arguments about immorality, about children, about what’s right and wrong, about what should be printed, what shouldn’t be printed.
Why do I discuss this so hard? Usually when someone discusses modern media etc, it usually devolves into blaming the current generation for this, that and the other the blame goes to the media, to artists our age etc. This is a repeating pattern that has and will continue to repeat itself, the only fault the media, the present generation, etc. has is being different than the previous ones that are still around. What have most of the complaints been? “There used to be two beds in a married couples room!” “We used to have Leave it to Beaver!” There are just as many merits and demerits about the media then as there is now. People find great ways to minister using current media tools. Youtube allows you to pull up whatever you want or need whenever you need it, and accompanying devices make it easier. So much focus is on the bad things, on violence, etc. but these things are a constant, people have been being shot for thousands of years!
I wish I had more anecdotes, or a more eloquent way of explaining whats in my mind.
I realize you may not have meant this literally Seeker1961, so I don’t mean this as an attack. But do you realize that in essence the suggestion to just “turn off the TV” means we have to either sacrifice the enjoyment of every good, wholesome, informative show or simply accept anything and everything that comes through the cable wires? If we can restrict soft-core porn to a paid subscription to Playboy, why can’t we impose other restrictions on cable programming?
