| Author | Message | ||
     Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
Front page headlines today - nearly every paper is concentrating on the "devil children" and that horrific attack in Yorkshire last year. The Daily Star has Katie Price is upset with Peter Andre again. Why the f*** is that rag even called a newspaper? | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
Hey, priorities, man!  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Those devil kids should have been aborted. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
And on our local news last night, one of the relatives was saying that those kids had been watching horror videos from age six. I reckon we're going to get another media frenzy about horror films causing kids to be violent again - like the Jamie Bulger case. No consideration for the fact that these kids had a terrible upbringing, and that might be what caused them to be the way they are. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.90.161 |
Yeah, I know what you're saying about The Daily Star, but the fact that it's shenanigans led to Jeffrey Archer going to prison will justify its existence forever more, in my eyes.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.90.161 |
its Oh, for the will to use the edit button I have access to. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
We need to guard against both the infection theory of psychotic violence ("They saw a film") and the 'evil nature' theory. However unwelcome and unreassuring it might be, we have to recognise that abused people are very likely to become worse abusers, and those brought up in an environment of callous violence will try to prove themselves by exceeding it. To say that people kill and torture because they are 'evil' is like saying that people die because they are corpses: it's just an alternative wording, not an explanation. A realistic approach to juvenile violence cannot be discounted just because it might be 'politically correct'. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.72 |
I've done a bad thing. I bought a Jeffrey Archer collection for 50p from a hospice charity store. Presumably the previous owner bought it so that death would come as a blessed relief... The book's called A Twist in the Tale, and is basically a collection of drawn out urban legends and anecdotes that Archer's claimed for his own. I shan't do it again. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
A more interesting question is, how did the Daily Star miss the year's best opportunity to sell copies? The Sun front page about the two boys is stacked up high on every shop counter today, while the Star pile has tumbleweed on it. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>We need to guard against both the infection theory of psychotic violence ("They saw a film") and the 'evil nature' theory. However unwelcome and unreassuring it might be, we have to recognise that abused people are very likely to become worse abusers, and those brought up in an environment of callous violence will try to prove themselves by exceeding it. To say that people kill and torture because they are 'evil' is like saying that people die because they are corpses: it's just an alternative wording, not an explanation. A realistic approach to juvenile violence cannot be discounted just because it might be 'politically correct'.<< I know what you're saying, Joel, and I agree with most of it. But there is the nature/nurture debate in psychology (Mr Fry will know about this). Basically, it's about how much of our personality is inborn, and how much is shaped by our upbringing. There's much debate amongst psychologists (or, there used to be - my knowledge in that area is somewhat dated nowadays) about how much of our personality is attributed to each cause, but the general concensus is that there is some element of BOTH. So, it's not solely upbringing (exposure to abuse, violence, etc), but there is some element of possibly having been born "bad" too. Or that's the theory anyway - but what do psychologists know of the real world? But it did make me think, I must admit. I think my first horror film was around the age of 6 or 7 - The Masque of the Red Death (there was no 9pm watershed in those days). It gave me nightmares for years, but it hasn't turned me into a torturer or a serial killer (honest! ). So I started thinking, do some people who are exposed to real or imaginary voilence as children turn one way (ie. identify with the victims and end up like me), and do some identify with the perpetrators and end up like these kids? I don't know the answer to that, I'm just speculating, but maybe some kids turn one way and others the other way - due to their inborn personalities? (heck, I hope I haven't opened up a can of worms here) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.90.161 |
Albie, do you want to go first or shall I? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
I thought Albie had gone, Gary? You go first. Come on, rip me to shreds. I love it ... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.90.161 |
It was this very issue that resulted in Albie voluntarily dismissing himself. | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
The same debate rages on kinky forums about why one has a fetish. Was it triggered by a single event? Is it genetic? A result of childhood abuse? The reasons why people develop fetishes are as varied as the reasons why some people become victims or abusers and some don't. (Hmmm... probably not the best analogy, but hey.) Each person is unique, as are the circumstances surrounding each one's upbringing. I think certain people are, for whatever reason, born with a predisposition towards violence and sure, the right movie or book or rock song might influence them in some way. But the person with that predisposition is just as likely to be triggered by the voice of God or something completely innocuous. And just because a person may have a predisposition doesn't mean it's the seed that will spawn the next Jeffrey Dahmer. Some people find healthy outlets for things and some don't. Some are better "survivors" than others; plenty of people who grew up in horrible and abusive circumstances DO manage to avoid becoming abusers themselves. It's human nature to want black and white reasons for Why Things Happen and it's so much easier when some psycho is a Dario Argento fan or has Dean Koontz books in his library. Obviously it's the influence of undesirable art that "made" him that way. When I was in high school, rock music was the reason kids were committing suicide and joining death cults and eating babies. I listened to the same music; hundreds of us did. Why does the one (clearly already damaged) teenager define the rest of us? The vast majority of songs are about love - why weren't we all out falling madly in love with each other? Oh dear, don't get me started... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.103 |
This is possibly a topic which we could debate until the early hours of the next century, and still consensus won't be reached. That's not to say it shouldn't be debated, argued and fought over. The easiest route would to be to dismiss the events with the usual, 'hang the bloody lot of them' or in the case of the boys who did this, 'lock them up for life and throw away the key'. Failure to scrutinize would only lay the way for the next tabloid headlines and knee-jerk reactions. In some cases, such as in Zed's case, as he is a father, I utterly recognize the immediate response, it is understandable as an instinctive defense mechanism. Or one could argue, common sense, albeit a dreadful one. I am not a father and can only imagine what it must be like for those parents of the victims. BUT, that still doesn't excuse tabloid headlines inciting and provoking those who read it. If tabloids are to whip up yet one more media storm with the cause and causality of horror movies etc, perhaps they ought to point their finely tuned social compasses at themselves...remember when News of the World published photographs of known registered sex offenders. This led to one housing estate of men and women, not to mention young boys, hospitalizing one of their neighbors in the mistaken assumption he was one of the offenders in the photographs. This is a subject with no visible boundaries of cut-off. Mind you, whenever I watched any Bruce Lee film I always wanted to go out and round house the neighbor's cat. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>It was this very issue that resulted in Albie voluntarily dismissing himself.<< Oooops! Sorry. I didn't know that. I wasn't here then. * skulks off, sits in corner, starts to cry *  | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.204.132 |
On the commentary for SLACKER, Richard Linklater says we're willing to accept complex layers in ourselves to but tend to think in black-and-white terms about other people's actions. The exhausting truth is that we're all complicated. We turn right-wing as we age from exhaustion, I think. We don't have the energy to tease it all apart and realise we're going to die before we do anyway. Clearly, youthful idealism is more correct, we just don't have the energy to sustain it. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.90.161 |
Caroline, er, what are you apologising for? I don't get it. I was just saying, like. Here you go, lass, a nice cup of tea. That'll make you feel loads better, aye. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.173.102 |
I don't think enough people are willing to view experience in developmental terms, and recognise that some early experiences have profound effects on the personality. The glibness of postmodern cultural theory, where everything is seen as being on the surface and analysed in a facile way, has left the ground open for a revival of Victorian biologistic fallacies that serve a conservative agenda. And so the discussion over juvenile violence oscillates between two stupid perspectives: either violent children were 'born evil' and should have been drowned at birth or they watched a horror film. A developmental history in which their socialisation was tainted by abuse and neglect, and the fundamental effects of that on their psychic development, is rarely taken seriously because its implications are too worrying. If we believed that growing up with domestic abuse, or violent bullying, or drug-induced madness, or rape, as the basis of children's socialisation was likely to result in their becoming violently disturbed it would just make life too difficult. So: they must have got it from a film. Or: they were just born evil. As kd lang said: the memories of children are written in stone. We're a long way from facing the implications of that. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.108.231 |
Joel, we're not talking about Jordan and Peter anymore. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.90.161 |
People seek reductionist explanations - the average mind appears to be able to handle little more. Complex descriptions don't allow folk to attribute blame so easily, either. And capacity-for-blame coupled with ease-of-disgestion makes any account of such matters attractive. EVIL KILLER SAW SLASHER FILM is a punchier headline than EXTROVERTED KILLER WHO EXPERIENCED PATERNAL VIOLENCE AND MATERNAL NEGLECT DURING HIS INFANCY RESULTING IN AN INABILITY TO STORY ONGOING EXPERIENCE IN A MORALLY RESPONSIBLE WAY AND A TENDENCY TO REACT TO LATER CONFRONTATIONS WITH A SIMPLISTIC BLACK-AND-WHITE ANGER-DRIVEN INTERPRETATIVE FRAMEWORK LAST NIGHT WATCHED A HORROR FILM WHICH SERVED AS AN ACCELERANT AND A DISCURSIVE VEHICLE INFORMING HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH ANOTHER YOUNG MAN IN HIS NATIVE TOWN WHO WAS WEARING THE GARMENTS THAT THE KILLER ASCRIBED TO A MORE FORTUNATE AND PRIVLEGED SOCIAL STRATA FROM WHICH AT A SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL THE KILLER FELT EXCLUDED AND THIS LED TO HIM SLASHING A KNIFE ACROSS HIS THROAT IN AN ACT OF HITHERTO UNSEDIMENTED MASCULINITY AND LEGAL DISDAIN. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Psychopaths aren't born; they are made. | ||
| Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.77.233 |
It strikes me that while the print media are only too happy to blame everything from Marilyn Manson's music to Chucky's misdemeanours for all of society's ills, they never take a good, hard look at themselves... Just look at the voyeuristic, gratuitous headlines we get every day from our so-called journalists: 'Mother sees Son killed by Drunk Driver' 'Toddler stabbed to death by Father as Sister Watches' etc. Not to mention irresponsible rubbish like: 'Here's young Sophie topless - she's only just turned 16!'...and this kind of salacious idiocy is often placed right next to a rape report; must just be a coincidence... In view of the above, why should anyone take the media's opinions on culture and morality seriously? They willingly act as agents provocateurs in society's ongoing civil war. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>>Caroline, er, what are you apologising for? I don't get it. I was just saying, like. Here you go, lass, a nice cup of tea. That'll make you feel loads better, aye. :-)<<< Aw, thanks, I'm OK now. I thought you were telling me off for starting up this discussion again. Don't worry, I wasn't upset really - just joking about it. No time to read through other people's posts at the moment. But I'll be back ... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Steve - I haven't read a newspaper in over three years. I refuse to. I rarely evens ee the news, either. Still manage to keep abreast of current affairs, though - which means that, as I suspected all along, we don't actuallu need the media. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.226.243 |
It's the billion theory: once you hit a billion of anything, every potentiality is therein contained. What's the chances of finding someone who gets a woody over skinning people alive? Oh, very small - 1/1,000,000,000. And there you go. (What is that horror short-story?... Something about the girl who's doing research on how when populations get large enough, "nature" finds ways to diminish the numbers, something like that... it ends with her "unwittingly" poisoning all the food in a school cafeteria... I think... fragments of memories, alas....) |