Those Gentle Romans

Jack Feuer has a really amusing commentary on recent commentary (on recent commentary) about the impact of television on young people. You can access it here.

With all the hue and cry about the impact of television on today's youth, it's refreshing to read a counter-perspective. Television isn't killing people, people are doing that on their own -- and have been for millenia. As he points out (tongue firmly in cheek):

"Without television, life was a golden age where nobody ever hurt anybody and everybody loved flowers, even the boys. I particularly miss the life-affirming Spartans, the gentle Romans, and the forgiving Puritans . . . Then TV came and screwed it all up. Our poor, innocent youth, done in by that malevolent box--without which they would undoubtedly all gather on a mountaintop, hold hands and sing about carbonated sugar water. "

OK, granted -- he's expressing the "anti-TV" position from an extreme point of view. But the underlying point here is sound. It's quite possible that TV (and video games and movies and [fill in the your favorite entertainment device here] actually REFLECT our existing violent tendencies as opposed to merely driving them.

I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between. That said, it's hard to expect video game manufacturers and the like to eschew violence when there's so much in real to draw from. Contrary to what Oscar Wilde might have said, art does often imitate life.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not a fan of violence on television. That's why I rarely watch the news. That's worse than anything a television producer or video game manufacturer could come up with.