Violence and Crime: What’s to Blame?
The American culture is surrounded by violence in the media, in our neighborhoods, and in the privacy of our own homes. Just one thing or person never causes violence either; it is always created by a group of people who have issues they have yet to deal with and too much time on their hands. Is violence ever the fault of someone or do we just point the finger at someone so we don’t have to think about the fact that it might be because of us? Maybe we create violence so we have something to complain about, for if society were perfect, then there would be no need for the five o’clock news. Maybe we create gangs to replace our existing families because our existing ones are not giving us what we need. Crime arises every day and we report about it. Gangs get made every day and we accept them as part of society. The products of violence are more a result of our own doing combined with a general acceptance for these actions. Any other reasons are more stereotyped excuses to pass specific blame onto more generic causes.
There are many examples to be found which can defend the unresponsible parties being subject to ridicule for the current violence problems today. However, equally representing the points that blame such establishments are as follows; “We live today in a culture steeped in violence. From movies and television to music and video games, violent images so pervade American popular culture that many of us feel immune to their effects. But recent studies show we are anything but immune.” (Electronic Media) For no ligament credit should the movies or media take responsibility for violence? Gangsters, for example, more times than not, look to their homes for such knowledge concerning bank robberies, not the television or media. “But recent studies show we are not immune to violence.” Does are becoming desensitized to violence have that much of an effect on it? For no movie can be considered worse than that of everyday life. For example, violence occurs in the news every day, which is more than in any television show or movie, it occurs in the streets of our neighborhoods, in our schools, and even in our own homes where abuse takes shape in every way. So that statement proves what, that America watches too much television. This just helps proves that we spend too much time absorbed in violence and paying attention to what actors are trying portraying. “Extensive viewing of television violence by children causes greater aggressiveness.” (Klite, p32) Extensive viewing of home violence tends to make depressed and very violent children as well, but we hear more about media censorship than we do about abuse in the home censorship. America watches too much television and not enough time attempting to make peace with each other on a daily basis. America then turns around and blames such television for their aggressive attitudes toward life.
Socio-economic factors are listed as some of the reasons for the rise in gang activity in the past years. The American society emphasizes on material goods and status. For those who come from a poor background crime and violence are the only ways they see they can gain that higher, more desirable status society says we should all have. “Children who are brought up in broken homes and unhealthy environments where the parents sit at home watching television collecting their welfare checks end up having no value structure instilled in them at all.” (www.onetime.simplenet.com) After all of that, we still blame the television and the media for our societies violence problem. For there’s no way to tell which came first; violence on television or violence in the media caused by people of today.
As every day goes past the rate of crime in major cities is increased for no apparent reason. Take Los Angeles as one such example, criminal and gang activity in this area has reached an all-time high. There are around 700 active gangs in the Los Angeles area and the numbers keep going. In most active gangs, ninety percent of the members are arrested by the age of eighteen, while ninety-five percent of them do not finish high school, and sixty-five percent of them are dead or in prison by the time they hit their 20th birthday. (Braidhill, p5) Should we let ‘gang banging’ be considered any different than any other equal opportunity event in society? Let’s make that equal opportunity too. In today’s society, we now have female pioneers shattering the ceiling of the gang culture creating their own equally separate union for crimes. Gangster girls may still be uncommon but they are nonetheless just as dangerous as men. Gangsters usually join a gang to become a part of that gang family. Doing this mostly due to lack of affection or attention at home or sometimes due to more violent reasons such as abuse or neglect. Lack of those things can, therefore, create a void that becomes something so needed that they will take attention from whoever will give attention to them. This unfortunately results in spending little time caring about the consequences that may arise from their “trying to fit in to get attention’ misconception. So when all is taken into perspective, girl gangsters are just as bad if not worse than male gangsters are. This can be attributed to the fact that most females go through adolescents deprived of being able to feel and express themselves the way that they need to in order to grow and develop in a mature fashion. When deprived of certain psychological needs, the mind usually tends to react by rebelling against what is holding it from what it needs. Being deprived of those needs most commonly leads to depression, addiction, eating disorders, and unplanned teenage pregnancies. The single determining factor of violence among youth is not income or race but family structure. (www.onetime.simplenet.com) If a child is depressed and is not getting the love and attention it needs from its family, the child will attempt to look elsewhere for it. Gang members are just looking to find the answer to their adolescent identity crisis when they commit whatever crime they commit.
Violence gives people not only gang members a sense of power, and power is the one thing that all people are trying to grasp in order to feel in control of what is occurring around them. Personally, I feel that gang members just have a lot less pride and feel that to get love and attention as well as fit into society they need to perform acts of violence. Many times the parental figures that care enough to make excuses to do it to cover up their own neglect. “So when violence among youth does erupt, as in the recent school shootings, parents look for a cause and blame the pale imitations of violence that their children watch on television. In contrast, anyone who has ever experienced real violence knows that the only two or three minimal scenes spread throughout the course of a story could hardly impact the thought process to the degree in which it rationally decides to bomb a school.” (Rhodes, p2)
Perhaps a possible solution would be to spend more time away from the television and actually paying attention to our families then maybe we could breathe a little easier about gang's forming, crimes occurring, or violence arising. Violence is something that we create and accept every time we watch the news or commit a crime ourselves. Giving enough space for violence to occur just proves that without violence our society could not survive. Society would then be perfect and a perfect society would never last. Even gangs give our society another dimension that we accept and live with every day. I stress this question, which came first violence in the media or violence?
Works Cited:
- Braidhill, Kathy. “Where the boys are” Los Angeles Magazine, Jan. 1998: p45-55
- “ Girl Gangsters” The Electronic Text Center. Apr. 1999 <http://www.onetime.simplenet.com/girlies.html>.
- Klite, Paul. “ Media can be antibiotic for violence” Quill 88 Apr. 2000: p32-35
- Rhodes, Richard. “The Media- Violence Myth” Rolling Stone 854 Nov. 2000: p55-59
- “ We already have the solution to violence on tv.” Electronic Media 19 Oct. 2000: p8