Are the entertainment industries the unofficial advertising department of the illegal drug industry?

[Bogan]

USR

We do not see youths go to school with guns and shoot their fellow students. That sort of demented activity is only noteworthy in the news for places like the USA. We do not see this happen in other countries, due to strict gun laws.

Bullshit.

When the movie BASKETBALL DIARIES was released it starred teenage hearth throb Leonardo di Caprio acting as a disturbed teenager. This on screen hero takes out his life's frustrations by walking into class in a long black leather coat and starts gunning down his fellow students and teachers. Surprise, surprise, young male teenage schoolboys started emulating this behaviour and it started a fad which is still current today. When people pointed out the obvious connection to what was happening and the BASKETBALL DIARIES storyline, the Motion Pictures Association called an emergency meeting of all studio heads. This meeting was held in camera but I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting. Anyhoo, surprise, surprise, Hollywood does not make any more movies where teenage role models walk into class and gun down the students and teachers. I have already explained this at length before.

As for your premise that guns cause massacres, that's funny. I lived through a time when Australia's gun laws were almost non existent and behaviour like this was never seen at all.

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The basic problem with your argument is that you are saying that the perpetrators would not have committed any crime had they not been watching media violence. That is a difficult premise to make. And I would compare that argument to the twinkie defence. The issue is why would it be only these people and not the rest of society who also watch tv and are subjected to objectionable content on tv? Is it because there is something wrong with the perpetrator whereas the rest of society are completely mature and stable enough to endure conflicts found in life?

You obviously have not been reading my previous posts, as I have already explained at length how most people may see violent movies as entertainment, because the movie upends normal social norms, and replaces them with a fantasy where such norms do not exist. I have already explained how young men who have low IQ, low self esteem, who may be fatherless and almost parentless (due to the needs of a working mother), who lack the life experiences that create developmental skills, and who may even be suffering from psychological problems, may see fantasy in a different way to a mature person. I feel like I am talking to a brick wall.

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What we are seeing is about 20 channels of free to air television playing and replaying news footage that shows someone having committed a heinous crime. The viewer is then given the impression that multiple crimes have happened in a short space of time because of the repeated playback of the news item or the video footage of the crime that had been committed. If anyone recalls staying up to watch the news reports of the September 11 attack in New York, the news coverage showed the plane hitting the second tower over and over again. When the towers fell, the news showed footage of the collapses over and over again. The viewer is given a false impression (although obvious that it is a repeat) that there have been multiple attacks (other than what was depicted on the news). And what was the effect from watching these terror events? Millions of Americans rolled up their sleaves to donate blood. They also donated food, water and other supplies to help in this emergency situation. And although there were elevated reports of attacks and threats against Muslim Americans, it was not as though other crime rates rose in the aftermath of the terror attacks.

At the time of the September 11 attacks, it was speculated whether Osama bin Laden was a fan of Arnold Swartzenegger, because Arnie committing suicide by flying a commercial airliner and then crashing it into a high rise building full of bad guys, was the ending of the movie "RUNNING MAN."

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In a scaled back transition to another topic, you brought up the topic of glamourisating cigarettes. Smoking has been glamourised in movies for many decades. However, as of recent decades, cigarette smoking has taken a tumble in popularity. Why? It is chiefly to do with the cost of cigarettes. People cannot afford to smoke these days because of the high taxation on the product. The solution is to quit smoking. The other main reason for the people quitting smoking is due to the health concerns. No amount of Kate Winslet or Leonardo di Caprio smoking will glamourise smoking enough to arrest the decline in smoking rates.

Cigarette advertising is banned in most western countries because such advertising, aimed primarily at kids, encourages kids to smoke cigarettes. It is so effective at doing that, that the advertising campaign which targeted kids To Smoke "Camel" brand cigarettes is considered the most successful and the most studied advertising campaign in history. How it is that you are unable to grasp the self evidently simple fact that if you glamourise anything, it will cause people to want to emulate the behaviour, is beyond me?

Cigarette manufacturers are managing to get around smoking advertisement bans by using the movie industry. Hollywood today seems to have too many "incidental" smoking scenes where role model stars suck on fags. The Hollywood producers claim that this is necessary for character development. But there is a suspicion that tobacco companies pay Hollywood producers kickbacks to include these "incidental" scenes. And while you may not be affected by these blatant advertisements for cigarettes, the tobacco industry executives know that you are wrong if you think it does not affect young people, who are desperate to emulate the behaviour of their role model on screen heroes.

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For someone like me, I happen to be a drinker. Scotch mainly. But, I was a bourbon drinker back in the day. When a character in a movie said "Hey buddy... make mine a bourbon", I was not more inclined to drink a bourbon, given that I was already a bourbon drinker. But, when a (relatively) famous actor I met in person asked me to try a scotch (one from one of his, then, $150 bottles of scotch), I gave it a whirl. I switched over from bourbon to scotch drinking that week. The only thing that got me to cut down. Weight gain. The weight gain lead me to diabetes and other related health concerns. And having read up on details about what alcoholism could do to you, I went from drinking at least once a week to about once a fortnight. And then long periods of sobriety. Now, no amount of glamourisation of alcohol will get me to drink when I do not want to drink.

Once again, you are using the "it doesn't affect me, then it doesn't affect anybody" excuse. As already explained, (you don't read what I write, do you?) Advertisers today realise how important the movie industry is to promoting products. This is because products associated with on screen heroes have steep sales increases when shown in movies. On screen heroes are role models for children, adolescents, teenagers, and even emotionally immature "adults" who so desperately want to model themselves on their on screen heroes behaviour, that they will purchase any product associated by that role model.

Which is why it is so dangerous for movies, computer games, and pop songs, to glamourise drug taking behaviour, vengeance behaviour, or the criminal misuse of firearms.

[UnSubRocky]

We do not see youths go to school with guns and shoot their fellow students. That sort of demented activity is only noteworthy in the news for places like the USA. We do not see this happen in other countries, due to strict gun laws.

Bullshit.

When the movie BASKETBALL DIARIES was released it starred teenage hearth throb Leonardo di Caprio acting as a disturbed teenager. This on screen hero takes out his life's frustrations by walking into class in a long black leather coat and starts gunning down his fellow students and teachers. Surprise, surprise, young male teenage schoolboys started emulating this behaviour and it started a fad which is still current today. When people pointed out the obvious connection to what was happening and the BASKETBALL DIARIES storyline, the Motion Pictures Association called an emergency meeting of all studio heads.[/quote]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... fore_2000)

I was going to look up Basketball Diaries to see which year the movie was released. But I got caught up with this *wikipedia* page that I had not fully explored -- giving I did not read through their references at the bottom of the page. But I did notice a shooting by Charles Whitman was the first mass murder (unless I missed some earlier references of 4 or more deaths) in a shooting at an educational institution in August 1966. 18 deaths and 31 injuries (mostly at the University of Texas). There were references to one more mass shooting. And then there was a mass injury of 74 people in 1986 when a middle age couple took children hostage at an elementary school. Add Oakland Elementary and Cleveland Elementary to the list of mass injuries. School shootings have gone back as far as the 1840s in the USA. And even if you eliminate all antisocial depictions in movie and have movies no worse than PG rated, school shootings are still going to continue until you resolve allowing gun access for mentally disturbed people.

Before I go on, I have not seen the movie "The Basketball Diaries" (based on a 1978 book of the same name) in years. What I do remember about the movie was that the main character was a drug addicted teenager whose life went on a downward spiral due to his addction. I recall a scene in the movie where he was pleading with his mother to let him back into the home. His mother, aware of his son's addiction, breaks down crying about her tough love. But, she ultimately sticks with her plan to keep him out of her home. I youtubed the school shooting scene of the movie. I recall the scene was a dream sequence where he went to gun down the bullies of his school. I would suggest that the context of this movie is very much an anti-drug, anti-violence type movie.

The problem I find with your argument is that we are not finding students around the world gunning down other students. This is primarily the domain of American regions (and a few cases elsewhere in the world) where gun laws are lax or gun availability has been widespread. In town here, the only places that I can find firearms are at the police station, gun shops, and army depots. But, none of these places have people that would willingly sell, give or loan me a weapon like that. The only way I can obtain a firearm would be off-the-record. And speaking as a victim of being shot, I know that the perpetrator got *her* handgun through certain arrangements. And I know that her motivation for shooting me was personal.

You obviously have not been reading my previous posts, as I have already explained at length how most people may see violent movies as entertainment, because the movie upends normal social norms, and replaces them with a fantasy where such norms do not exist. I have already explained how young men who have low IQ, low self esteem, who may be fatherless and almost parentless (due to the needs of a working mother), who lack the life experiences that create developmental skills, and who may even be suffering from psychological problems, may see fantasy in a different way to a mature person. I feel like I am talking to a brick wall.

Speaking as a person who has suffered multiple victimisations, has had a poor upbringing, has used drugs (very short term) in his late teens, and has had death threats made against me, I would wonder why I have not gone on a mass shooting. And I wonder why it is that people who have had it worse than me are not out there creating chaos. I have to admit that I had a pretty rough time growing up. But, adulthood really dealt me a severe blow that kept up for about 10 years. These last 15 have not been too bad, though. And even if I could get back at my perpetrators, it would be motivated by revenge. I find it a joke that people say that entertainment industries are conditioning people to become violent or use drugs. Statistics of falling crime rates back my argument.

At the time of the September 11 attacks, it was speculated whether Osama bin Laden was a fan of Arnold Swartzenegger, because Arnie committing suicide by flying a commercial airliner and then crashing it into a high rise building full of bad guys, was the ending of the movie "RUNNING MAN."

There was no commercial airliner in this movie "Running Man". I figure you are referencing the ending scene where Arnie's character puts "Killian" in a pod with a rollcage and set him whizzing through some tunnel until Killian flew out of the tunnel and crashed into a billboard (featuring Killian posing for a cola commercial). The 1982 novel by Stephen King was made into that 1987 movie. And yet, in that time period, Osama bin Laden was working for the Americans killing as many Soviets as he could. I very much doubt Osama was interested in American movies. To my knowledge, from some very generalised heightened interest in the September 11 attacks, Osama was not involved in the 9/11 terror attacks. He might well have approved (eventually) of the attacks after they happened. But, seeing that the Americans have admitted multiple times of having prior knowledge of the attacks and allowed them to go ahead, there is not much point trying to blame one of their employees living in a cave/house/valley in Afghanistan/Pakistan regions.

Cigarette advertising is banned in most western countries because such advertising, aimed primarily at kids, encourages kids to smoke cigarettes. It is so effective at doing that, that the advertising campaign which targeted kids To Smoke "Camel" brand cigarettes is considered the most successful and the most studied advertising campaign in history. How it is that you are unable to grasp the self evidently simple fact that if you glamourise anything, it will cause people to want to emulate the behaviour, is beyond me?

Because smoking has been glamourised in media for decades. And it only has become recent that cigarette usage has declined. Some estimates say that the smoker population has dropped by half in the last 30 years -- from 24% in the year 1991, to about 12% in the year 2021. The main reason why people are either quitting smoking or not taking up the habit in the first place is due mainly to the high taxation. Dad took up smoking as a child because his siblings were smokers. Twenty five years later, he caught me mimicking his behaviour and decided to quit smoking that week. Thirty something years later, I have maintained an anti-smoking stance because I have seen the financial and health rewards that have come to my father because he quit smoking. And smoking rates coming down have given other people reason to agree that the glamourisation of smoking in media would not get an elevated number of people to start smoking.

Cigarette manufacturers are managing to get around smoking advertisement bans by using the movie industry. Hollywood today seems to have too many "incidental" smoking scenes where role model stars suck on fags.

No, that is just the way Hollywood actors like to display their wokeness. Because they want to show their tolerance for the homosexual agenda. Oh, wait... You were still talking about cigarettes.

The Hollywood producers claim that this is necessary for character development. But there is a suspicion that tobacco companies pay Hollywood producers kickbacks to include these "incidental" scenes. And while you may not be affected by these blatant advertisements for cigarettes, the tobacco industry executives know that you are wrong if you think it does not affect young people, who are desperate to emulate the behaviour of their role model on screen heroes.[/quote]

I will take a guess that the reason why children take up smoking is to show a form of rebellion. With declining smoking rates, we can see that your theorum is not holding credibility that Hollywood is taking kick backs from tobacco industries.

I will give you a personal example. My weight. By the time I was 19 years old, I thought that I had figured out how to control weight gain with the slowing of my metabolism as I was getting into my adulthood. It took me until I was about 25 before I figured out that sugar was the worst mass consumable item of food that lead to weight gain -- not fat. Fat you could metabolise more easily than sugar. Sugar wrecks your insides if you consume too much of it for too long. Given that I am a drinker, you could imagine that alcohol did a double whammy on my health decline to the point that I am now a diabetic. It took some deeper research into the topic before I found out what other health problems I was causing myself. Now, whenever I see a commercial for alcohol or sugary drinks/food, I am more likely to be dissuaded from the product. Feeling bad about myself is something I like to avoid.

Imagine that feeling bad about my health, both mentally and physically, is what I like to avoid. So, no amount of advertising drugs, cigarettes, violence, etc., would encourage me to elevate my level of partaking in any of those activities. In fact, I reassess my disposition to the point that I would likely try to mitigate these problems. And I would theorise that other people have that similar kind of thought process. Entertainment industries are inadvertently creating a world where people are prompted by confronting images and go about resolving them at their own pace.

Once again, you are using the "it doesn't affect me, then it doesn't affect anybody" excuse. As already explained, (you don't read what I write, do you?) Advertisers today realise how important the movie industry is to promoting products. This is because products associated with on screen heroes have steep sales increases when shown in movies. On screen heroes are role models for children, adolescents, teenagers, and even emotionally immature "adults" who so desperately want to model themselves on their on screen heroes behaviour, that they will purchase any product associated by that role model.

That is not true. Fans of a tv show might go out and buy a $100 Grogu doll because of their loyalty to the show. They do not go out and kill, take drugs, be antisocial simply because they want to show off to movie stars. Society condemns this kind of behaviour. And I would bet that any movie/tv celebrity would disassociate themselves from the idiocy you claim that the public does yet won't take responsibility for such. No celebrity is out soliciting violence, drugs, cigarettes or antisocial behaviour. And when the media catches out those celebrities engaging in such behaviour, it is not an endorsement that their fans do the same. In fact, there is an incredible amount of social media postings that condemn such activity.

Which is why it is so dangerous for movies, computer games, and pop songs, to glamourise drug taking behaviour, vengeance behaviour, or the criminal misuse of firearms.

No society is going to stop legal freedom of expression in depicting acts of conflict (whether it is the news or entertainment media) simply because you want your firearm back in your possession. If anything, you getting your way with heavy censorship will mean an increase in gun restrictions. That being, no more rabbit or pig shooting for you.

Given that I have a few weeks off for holidays soon, I can probably be able to put together a straight essay detailing (with citing resources from psychology books) why the entertainment industries are not advertising antisocial behaviour. In fact, even at nearly 2 in the morning, I might grab a few books around the house to refer to when I next post on this topic.

[Bogan]

USR quote

I was going to look up Basketball Diaries to see which year the movie was released. But I got caught up with this *wikipedia* page that I had not fully explored -- giving I did not read through their references at the bottom of the page. But I did notice a shooting by Charles Whitman was the first mass murder (unless I missed some earlier references of 4 or more deaths) in a shooting at an educational institution in August 1966. 18 deaths and 31 injuries (mostly at the University of Texas).

Whitman used a bolt action rifle. Do you think we should ban them too?

USR quote

There were references to one more mass shooting. And then there was a mass injury of 74 people in 1986 when a middle age couple took children hostage at an elementary school. Add Oakland Elementary and Cleveland Elementary to the list of mass injuries. School shootings have gone back as far as the 1840s in the USA. And even if you eliminate all antisocial depictions in movie and have movies no worse than PG rated, school shootings are still going to continue until you resolve allowing gun access for mentally disturbed people.

The factor you are ignoring is that in many western countries, firearm laws were practically non existent, and behaviour of this sort was extremely rare. You are also forgetting that juvenile homicide is the USA's fastest growing crime statistic. Fifty years ago, juvenile delinquents were usually involved exclusively in property crimes. Today, juveniles are being arrested and convicted of much more serious crimes, including assault, rape, drug trafficking, and murder. If people in a society are exhibiting behaviors never, or very rarely, seen previously, then smart people look at those factors in society which have changed, not keep blaming a factor which was always present previously. You are blaming a factor which was always present previously.

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Before I go on, I have not seen the movie "The Basketball Diaries" (based on a 1978 book of the same name) in years. What I do remember about the movie was that the main character was a drug addicted teenager whose life went on a downward spiral due to his addction. I recall a scene in the movie where he was pleading with his mother to let him back into the home. His mother, aware of his son's addiction, breaks down crying about her tough love. But, she ultimately sticks with her plan to keep him out of her home. I youtubed the school shooting scene of the movie. I recall the scene was a dream sequence where he went to gun down the bullies of his school. I would suggest that the context of this movie is very much an anti-drug, anti-violence type movie.

The character portrayed by Leonardo di caprio walks into his high school class wearing sunglasses, in a long black leather coat, pulls out a shotgun and starts shooting teachers and pupils. Within months, high school boys in sunglasses and wearing long black leather coats, walk into their high school classrooms, pull out guns, and start shooting their teachers and other pupils. And you can't see any connection? Ama-a-a-a-azing.

USR

The problem I find with your argument is that we are not finding students around the world gunning down other students. This is primarily the domain of American regions (and a few cases elsewhere in the world) where gun laws are lax or gun availability has been widespread. In town here, the only places that I can find firearms are at the police station, gun shops, and army depots. But, none of these places have people that would willingly sell, give or loan me a weapon like that. The only way I can obtain a firearm would be off-the-record. And speaking as a victim of being shot, I know that the perpetrator got *her handgun through certain arrangements. And I know that her motivation for shooting me was personal.

The phenomenon of very serious juvenile crime is one which is manifesting itself worldwide, although it is worse in the USA because of the very lax firearm ownership laws. In London, once the safest city in the world, it is juvenile gang stabbings attributed to African youth gangs. In Australia, Australian Institute of Criminology's Adam Graycar, at a public meeting named as "Violence, Crime, and the Media. As one of Australia's most senior bureaucrats his speech was eagerly anticipated. But he did not even speak about any link between the entertainment industries and crime, even though it was the topic of the conference. Instead, the AIC issued a statement saying it was "puzzled" at the rise in serious violent crime, especially murder, being perpetrated by children in Australia.

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There was no commercial airliner in this movie "Running Man". I figure you are referencing the ending scene where Arnie's character puts "Killian" in a pod with a rollcage and set him whizzing through some tunnel until Killian flew out of the tunnel and crashed into a billboard (featuring Killian posing for a cola commercial). The 1982 novel by Stephen King was made into that 1987 movie. And yet, in that time period, Osama bin Laden was working for the Americans killing as many Soviets as he could. I very much doubt Osama was interested in American movies. To my knowledge, from some very generalised heightened interest in the September 11 attacks, Osama was not involved in the 9/11 terror attacks. He might well have approved (eventually) of the attacks after they happened. But, seeing that the Americans have admitted multiple times of having prior knowledge of the attacks and allowed them to go ahead, there is not much point trying to blame one of their employees living in a cave/house/valley in Afghanistan/Pakistan regions.

I saw the movie, and it ended with Arnold Swatzeneger piloting a commercial airliner into a skyscraper which was the headquarters of the corporation which sponsored a TV show, the object of which, was to hunt down escaped criminals like Swartzeneger and have the police kill them on live TV. The last scene was the executives looking horrified out of the window with Arnie in the cockpit, giving them the finger in the moment before impact. If you are saying that the scene is no longer in the movie, then I am not surprised. I would say that the movie executives realised just how dangerous an idea that was to put in some idiots mind.

A similar situation developed after the release of the movie DOOMESDAY FLIGHT. On December 3, 1966, NBC ran this made-for-television movie that had been written by 6 time Emmy Award winner and TWILIGHT ZONE creator, Rod Serling. The movie was a well written thriller about a disgruntled airline employee who (as usual) seeks revenge on his employers, by placing an altitude sensitive bomb on board a passenger airliner, then demanding a hefty ransom.

The show was a huge hit and one of the highest rating shows of the season. But within a week of the screening, airline companies all over the world began receiving ransom/extortion demands. Threats were made against Pan Am, Northwest, Eastern Airlines, TWA, National and Qantas. The Qantas extortionist, Peter Macari, (Mr Brown) was eventually arrested after he had successfully picked up the ransom money and escaped. He was only apprehended when people who knew him for the complete idiot he was, suddenly realised that he was conspicuously spending large amounts of cash.

Rod Serling, who had had serious reservations about writing the story, was personally devastated. He told reporters who interviewed him that "I wish to Christ that I had written a stagecoach drama with John Wayne instead." The causal link between art and criminal inspiration was confirmed 5 years later, when the movie was re-screened, and once again a wave of extortion demands followed. And you want to write horror movies, USB? My advice is, to write a stagecoach movie instead.

USB wrote

Because smoking has been glamourised in media for decades. And it only has become recent that cigarette usage has declined. Some estimates say that the smoker population has dropped by half in the last 30 years -- from 24% in the year 1991, to about 12% in the year 2021. The main reason why people are either quitting smoking or not taking up the habit in the first place is due mainly to the high taxation. Dad took up smoking as a child because his siblings were smokers. Twenty five years later, he caught me mimicking his behaviour and decided to quit smoking that week. Thirty something years later, I have maintained an anti-smoking stance because I have seen the financial and health rewards that have come to my father because he quit smoking. And smoking rates coming down have given other people reason to agree that the glamourisation of smoking in media would not get an elevated number of people to start smoking.

Cigarette smoking is banned in every civilised western country, for good reason. Tobacco manufacturers have got around that ban by introducing "incidental" smoking scenes using role model on screen heroes. The fact that smoking is declining in the west does not negate the fact that young people are still taking up this dangerous and unhealthy habit. If you glamourise anything, it will cause people to emulate that behaviour. That is why it is so dangerous when the entertainment industries glamourise the taking of illegal drugs. It is odd that we as a society recognise that glamourising cigarette smoking will cause young people to take up smoking, and then we have people like yourself who claim that glamourising illegal drug use does nothing.

USR quote

I will take a guess that the reason why children take up smoking is to show a form of rebellion. With declining smoking rates, we can see that your theorum is not holding credibility that Hollywood is taking kick backs from tobacco industries.

No, it just means that the US Justice Department's threat to prosecute media executives if the practice did not stop, worked. I did not find this fact in any book linking the media to violence, USB. I got that gem out of a book detailing the fight against the tobacco companies.

USR quote

I will give you a personal example. My weight. By the time I was 19 years old, I thought that I had figured out how to control weight gain with the slowing of my metabolism as I was getting into my adulthood. It took me until I was about 25 before I figured out that sugar was the worst mass consumable item of food that lead to weight gain -- not fat. Fat you could metabolise more easily than sugar. Sugar wrecks your insides if you consume too much of it for too long. Given that I am a drinker, you could imagine that alcohol did a double whammy on my health decline to the point that I am now a diabetic. It took some deeper research into the topic before I found out what other health problems I was causing myself. Now, whenever I see a commercial for alcohol or sugary drinks/food, I am more likely to be dissuaded from the product. Feeling bad about myself is something I like to avoid.

Imagine that feeling bad about my health, both mentally and physically, is what I like to avoid. So, no amount of advertising drugs, cigarettes, violence, etc., would encourage me to elevate my level of partaking in any of those activities. In fact, I reassess my disposition to the point that I would likely try to mitigate these problems. And I would theorise that other people have that similar kind of thought process. Entertainment industries are inadvertently creating a world where people are prompted by confronting images and go about resolving them at their own pace.

You are making the argument that because you think that advertising does not affect you, it can not affect anybody else? I do not know what the value of the worldwide advertising industry is, but it is probably in the trillions of dollars. Advertising, in the form of media images and messages, works extremely well in shaping people's attitudes, values, and behaviour. Which is okay if it promotes pro social messages and images. The problem is, when it glamourises violence, criminal behaviour, illegal drug consumption, violence against women, and especially, vengeance type behaviour using firearms or aero planes. Then it becomes insidious and it needs to be controlled.

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That is not true. Fans of a tv show might go out and buy a $100 Grogu doll because of their loyalty to the show. They do not go out and kill, take drugs, be antisocial simply because they want to show off to movie stars.

Most people do not directly emulate on screen behaviour of role model heroes, because they are mature people who recognise that the antics of an screen heroes is an entertaining fantasy, because the hero is usually ignoring the social norms of society. He or she is just doing whatever he or she wants to do. We would all like to do whatever we want to do. The problem is, that not everybody is a mature adult. What is entertainment to you is not the same thing to children, people suffering from mental disorders, or low IQ, poorly socialised young men with very low self esteem levels who harbour resentments against a society that they feel is hostile to them.

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Society condemns this kind of behaviour.

Wrong. Society condemns this behaviour on one level, then applauds it in the media on another. In the movie Death Wish 3, on screen hero Charles Bronson guns down 35 bad guys, the same number murdered by Martin Bryant (IQ 65) at Port Arthur. But in the movie Bronson is considered a hero. There were even instances of audiences bursting into applause after each time Bronson killed someone. By glamourising vengeance type behaviour using firearms, we are sending a mixed message about vengeance type behaviour using firearms to half wits like Bryant who have a compulsive neeed to think of themselves as strong men to be admired, not oddballs to be avoided and shunned.

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And I would bet that any movie/tv celebrity would disassociate themselves from the idiocy you claim that the public does yet won't take responsibility for such. No celebrity is out soliciting violence, drugs, cigarettes or antisocial behaviour. And when the media catches out those celebrities engaging in such behaviour, it is not an endorsement that their fans do the same. In fact, there is an incredible amount of social media postings that condemn such activity.

Leonardo di Caprio used a private jet to fly to Europe to get an award for his support of reducing CO2 emmisions. He then leased a private yacht from a Saudi oil billionaire. If you think that movie stars are paragons of virtue, you must be living in a cave.

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No society is going to stop legal freedom of expression in depicting acts of conflict (whether it is the news or entertainment media) simply because you want your firearm back in your possession. If anything, you getting your way with heavy censorship will mean an increase in gun restrictions. That being, no more rabbit or pig shooting for you.

Society is not going to restrict the freedom of artistic expression until things get so bad that they have to think straight. That, (if you claim to study psychology) just happens to be the way people think. People can always be relied upon to think logically and rationally, when the emotional responses which have long guided their behaviour no longer work, and the world turns to shit. Crime in western siociety will continue to get worse even after all firearm's are banned, because we are blaming the tools used in anti social behaviour, and not the causes which inspire people to use the tools in anti social behaviour. The UK is an instructive example of that. No guns? Just use knives then.

USR quote

Given that I have a few weeks off for holidays soon, I can probably be able to put together a straight essay detailing (with citing resources from psychology books) why the entertainment industries are not advertising antisocial behaviour. In fact, even at nearly 2 in the morning, I might grab a few books around the house to refer to when I next post on this topic.

I look forward to you doing just that. Keyboards at thirty paces?

[UnSubRocky]

Whitman used a bolt action rifle. Do you think we should ban them too?

That is not up to me, as I am not a gun owner. My point was that Whitman shot and killed a lot of people with his marksman-skilled shooting. Had he not had access to a firearm, he would not have killed so many people. But, it is a long time since I have read up on Whitman and the circumstances, that I will have to find the books to recall what tv shows and movies he watched to set him off. Oh wait, it was in 1966. Chances are, he probably did not have a television to distract him from considering a mass shooting.

The factor you are ignoring is that in many western countries, firearm laws were practically non existent, and behaviour of this sort was extremely rare. You are also forgetting that juvenile homicide is the USA's fastest growing crime statistic. Fifty years ago, juvenile delinquents were usually involved exclusively in property crimes. Today, juveniles are being arrested and convicted of much more serious crimes, including assault, rape, drug trafficking, and murder. If people in a society are exhibiting behaviors never, or very rarely, seen previously, then smart people look at those factors in society which have changed, not keep blaming a factor which was always present previously. You are blaming a factor which was always present previously.

The factor I have stated in previous posts is that television is a distraction. When confronted by imagery in a news bulletin of a conflict, we do not rush out to escalate the situation. Our first reactions are to assess the situation with whether what they see will affect their personal lives. I do not know what statistics you are referencing. But, in Australia, our crime rates are falling. With facebook and other social media outlets, reporting of crime in the region where I live has gone up. But, crime statistics have fallen. Given that fifty years ago, you did not have 20 tv channels with several channels having regular news report updates, access to the internet, or other ways to access news, you might have the feeling that society was safe back then. It was not.

The character portrayed by Leonardo di caprio walks into his high school class wearing sunglasses, in a long black leather coat, pulls out a shotgun and starts shooting teachers and pupils. Within months, high school boys in sunglasses and wearing long black leather coats, walk into their high school classrooms, pull out guns, and start shooting their teachers and other pupils. And you can't see any connection? Ama-a-a-a-azing.

The shooting scene that I watched on youtube showed di Caprio's character, Jim, walk through the doors in a trenchcoat (and no sunglasses) and take down a few students with some shotgun work. Meanwhile, his friends watched, cheered and celebrated watching Jim shoot down the (supposed) bullies of the classroom. I would have to dust off the dvd copy of the movie I have in my cupboard and rewatch this movie for the first time in 10 years. But I recall that scene was part of a dream sequence of the movie. The distinct impression I had of this movie was that it was anti-drug themed.

The phenomenon of very serious juvenile crime is one which is manifesting itself worldwide, although it is worse in the USA because of the very lax firearm ownership laws. In London, once the safest city in the world, it is juvenile gang stabbings attributed to African youth gangs. In Australia, Australian Institute of Criminology's Adam Graycar, at a public meeting named as "Violence, Crime, and the Media. As one of Australia's most senior bureaucrats his speech was eagerly anticipated. But he did not even speak about any link between the entertainment industries and crime, even though it was the topic of the conference. Instead, the AIC issued a statement saying it was "puzzled" at the rise in serious violent crime, especially murder, being perpetrated by children in Australia.

One consideration that we have towards explaining juvenile crime is that courts are so lenient for any child aged between 10 and 15 years, it is not really worth the $300/hr that the sitting magistrate gets paid to sit and lecture juvenile criminals. I have even been invited to watch 12-year-olds get a mention in court -- I forget the terminology. I was witness to watching the pre-teens just mouth off to the magistrate and not let the magistrate get a word in, except for a few "excuse me... excuse me" pleas for calm. Obviously, the children in question were out of control and about as rebellious as they can be. For what reason? The courts allow the children's age and racial background to work in their favour as excuses. And given the hyperactive nature of the children, I could probably surmise an abusive upbringing and drug abuse as possible reason behind their out of control behaviour. I do recall trying to sneak out of the courtroom so that I did not end up telling the kids to "shut the **** up".

In general, juvenile behaviour is dictated by applying responsibility to a person. I recall high school students that had behaviour problems in their early teens were the type of people that grew up and acted right by the time their senior year came around. They realised that they would have to look after themselves after high school. And then they knuckled down and studied to a point that their behaviour and grades were commendable. When you have little shits front court and mouth off to a magistrate, you know full well that the child has had a free ride on the back of the taxpayer. That is why they do not care about remediating their behaviour.

I saw the movie, and it ended with Arnold Swatzeneger piloting a commercial airliner into a skyscraper which was the headquarters of the corporation which sponsored a TV show, the object of which, was to hunt down escaped criminals like Swartzeneger and have the police kill them on live TV. The last scene was the executives looking horrified out of the window with Arnie in the cockpit, giving them the finger in the moment before impact. If you are saying that the scene is no longer in the movie, then I am not surprised. I would say that the movie executives realised just how dangerous an idea that was to put in some idiots mind.

That is a whole lot of crap. I know for certain that I have not watched any more than 50% of that movie. However, given that the 9/11 attacks happened nearly 21 years ago, a scene like the one you described would have been all over the news and debated in media about the appropriateness of the scene. The fact is that the movie was so ridiculous (even for a 1987 movie release) that we would have seen this alternate ending by now. The way you describe this ending, it is like you are making things up.

HOWEVER, it is seemingly that you have been given a lifeline. The Stephen King book "The Running Man" shows that this is the ending of the book.

The book ends with the plane crashing directly into Killian's office. Killian is present in his office, sees the plane coming and Richards grinning and giving him the finger. The final line describes the scene: "...and it rained fire twenty blocks away."

So, it was not in the movie. But, it was in the 1982 book of the same name. Perhaps that is where you got the information mixed up.

A similar situation developed after the release of the movie DOOMESDAY FLIGHT.

Let us get right to the point here. You are basically stating that if people are not shown how to do stuff, they would not do it. We should not take chemistry, in case we learn how to make drugs to sell. We should not learn information technology in case we decide to take down a network. We should not learn fighting techniques, just in case we decide to go and beat people up. And we should not learn marksman skills, just in case we decide to climb a tower near a university and shoot down a lot of students. You are arguing that people who are psychotic should not be shown how to do things just in case they use it against others.

Rod Serling, who had had serious reservations about writing the story, was personally devastated. He told reporters who interviewed him that "I wish to Christ that I had written a stagecoach drama with John Wayne instead."

Why the hell would he do that? Seven years later, Marlon Brando was set to receive an Oscar award for his part in "The Godfather". He refused the award and did not attend the ceremony. In his place, a Native American came on stage to apologise for Brando's absence. She then refused the award on Brando's behalf, citing that this was a protest for the depiction of Native Americans being the villains of most American movies. John Wayne was witnessed trying to come on stage to attack Sacheen Cruz Littlefeather, but was stopped by security.

You are stating that Serling would swap one antisocial drama for one about killing Native Americans.

Cigarette smoking is banned in every civilised western country, for good reason. Tobacco manufacturers have got around that ban by introducing "incidental" smoking scenes using role model on screen heroes. The fact that smoking is declining in the west does not negate the fact that young people are still taking up this dangerous and unhealthy habit. If you glamourise anything, it will cause people to emulate that behaviour. That is why it is so dangerous when the entertainment industries glamourise the taking of illegal drugs. It is odd that we as a society recognise that glamourising cigarette smoking will cause young people to take up smoking, and then we have people like yourself who claim that glamourising illegal drug use does nothing.

Fewer and fewer people are taking up the habit because cigarettes are getting more and more expensive. Dad quit smoking when I was about 10 years old. We saved so much money that we could afford quite a bit more. All the chain-smoking characters on tv would not get any of us to take up smoking. And we seem to see a rebellion against your surmised theorum.

You are making the argument that because you think that advertising does not affect you, it can not affect anybody else? I do not know what the value of the worldwide advertising industry is, but it is probably in the trillions of dollars. Advertising, in the form of media images and messages, works extremely well in shaping people's attitudes, values, and behaviour. Which is okay if it promotes pro social messages and images. The problem is, when it glamourises violence, criminal behaviour, illegal drug consumption, violence against women, and especially, vengeance type behaviour using firearms or aero planes. Then it becomes insidious and it needs to be controlled.

Advertising a product is different compared to depicting violence, drug use, or whatever antisocial activity on media. You are comparing chalk and cheese. That "six degrees of separation" argument has no relevance.

Most people do not directly emulate on screen behaviour of role model heroes, because they are mature people who recognise that the antics of an screen heroes is an entertaining fantasy, because the hero is usually ignoring the social norms of society. He or she is just doing whatever he or she wants to do. We would all like to do whatever we want to do. The problem is, that not everybody is a mature adult. What is entertainment to you is not the same thing to children, people suffering from mental disorders, or low IQ, poorly socialised young men with very low self esteem levels who harbour resentments against a society that they feel is hostile to them.

The argument you are making here is that people with mental disorders, or low IQ, poorly socialised young men with low self-esteem levels and harbour resentment against society would not engage in criminal activity if they did not see antisocial behaviour in media. I am telling you that these people would likely be more engaged in criminal activity if they were not distracted. Maybe you think politicians and people, in general, are idiots and incapable of making your connection about the media's effect. What you fail to recognise is that if these people who commit crimes were not mentally disordered, or low IQ, poorly socialised people, would they have committed a crime? If their need to commit crimes were out of necessity, we don't bother trying to deflect the issue onto the media or even the gun industry. I could argue that after watching a movie or tv show that depicted someone with some kind of social problem (as a lot of shows and movies depict), I might be reminded of someone I know with similar issues. That might motivate me to engage more willingly with that person and relieve them of some of their social problems.

Wrong. Society condemns this behaviour on one level, then applauds it in the media on another. In the movie Death Wish 3, on screen hero Charles Bronson guns down 35 bad guys, the same number murdered by Martin Bryant (IQ 65) at Port Arthur. But in the movie Bronson is considered a hero. There were even instances of audiences bursting into applause after each time Bronson killed someone. By glamourising vengeance type behaviour using firearms, we are sending a mixed message about vengeance type behaviour using firearms to half wits like Bryant who have a compulsive neeed to think of themselves as strong men to be admired, not oddballs to be avoided and shunned.

Half-wits like Martin Bryant was a half-wit all his life. He got access to a lot of money. Then he got access to a number of firearms. Had he not access to firearms, 35 people would not have been killed. John Howard did not go about putting media censorship into action to prevent the general public from knowing about the massacre. He was not worried that there would be copycat incidents of dozens of people getting gunned down. Bryant's actions were displayed all around the world. Howard's response was to do a gun buy back program. Gun laws were tightened. No more gun massacres occurred for about 15 years in Australia. And not again until 2018 and 2019.

Leonardo di Caprio used a private jet to fly to Europe to get an award for his support of reducing CO2 emmisions. He then leased a private yacht from a Saudi oil billionaire. If you think that movie stars are paragons of virtue, you must be living in a cave.

I am not a climate alarmist. So, I do not care what the Chicken Littles say.

Society is not going to restrict the freedom of artistic expression until things get so bad that they have to think straight. That, (if you claim to study psychology) just happens to be the way people think. People can always be relied upon to think logically and rationally, when the emotional responses which have long guided their behaviour no longer work, and the world turns to shit. Crime in western siociety will continue to get worse even after all firearm's are banned, because we are blaming the tools used in anti social behaviour, and not the causes which inspire people to use the tools in anti social behaviour. The UK is an instructive example of that. No guns? Just use knives then.

If you understood psychology, you would understand that when people are confronted with a problem, they go about trying to resolve them. If you found someone laying injured on the road, would you stop to help render aid (as you are legally required to do)? Or would you injure them further? Our natural instincts are to protect the vulnerable. This is why I always argue that people counter problems with solutions to the best of their ability.

USR:

Given that I have a few weeks off for holidays soon, I can probably be able to put together a straight essay detailing (with citing resources from psychology books) why the entertainment industries are not advertising antisocial behaviour. In fact, even at nearly 2 in the morning, I might grab a few books around the house to refer to when I next post on this topic.

Bogan:

I look forward to you doing just that. Keyboards at thirty paces?

I dunno. I have found 3 psychology books in no time. All three of them talk of aggression. One of them speaks about the topic of media violence. Hopefully, the 10 other psychology books I have will have much the same.

[Bogan]

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That is not up to me, as I am not a gun owner. My point was that Whitman shot and killed a lot of people with his marksman-skilled shooting. Had he not had access to a firearm, he would not have killed so many people. But, it is a long time since I have read up on Whitman and the circumstances, that I will have to find the books to recall what tv shows and movies he watched to set him off. Oh wait, it was in 1966. Chances are, he probably did not have a television to distract him from considering a mass shooting.

You are once again submitting the wacky thesis that TV entertainment reduces violence by keeping murderers, rapists, and armed robbers off the streets, by keeping them entertained. Science has already proven you wrong. There is a direct link between TV violence and real life violence. Would you like me to post up the US Surgeon General's 1972 report, TELEVISION AND GROWING UP: THE IMPACT OF TELEVISED VIOLENCE?

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The factor I have stated in previous posts is that television is a distraction.

GROAN! Science says otherwise. You are the one arguing against science, not me.

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I do not know what statistics you are referencing.

The statistics I am referencing are Lucy Clark's book RISING CRIME IN AUSTRALIA, which was published in 2000. Clark's graphs showed that from the time of the liberalisation of our entertainment industry censorship laws, crime began rising. This was for every class of crime. And the graphs were not rising linearly, they were rising exponentially. That meant that the rate of crime was increasing. Now, you come along and just say that "the statistics" say that crime is decreasing, without giving any source at all. You are asking me to believe that exponentially rising crime rates suddenly reversed course after the year 2000? Bullshit.

USR

The shooting scene that I watched on youtube showed di Caprio's character, Jim, walk through the doors in a trenchcoat (and no sunglasses) and take down a few students with some shotgun work. Meanwhile, his friends watched, cheered and celebrated watching Jim shoot down the (supposed) bullies of the classroom. I would have to dust off the dvd copy of the movie I have in my cupboard and rewatch this movie for the first time in 10 years. But I recall that scene was part of a dream sequence of the movie. The distinct impression I had of this movie was that it was anti-drug themed.

It was also pro violent revenge with firearms against school bullies themed. Leonardo showed how to deal with school bullies. And you say that his classmates cheered him on?

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One consideration that we have towards explaining juvenile crime is that courts are so lenient for any child aged between 10 and 15 years, it is not really worth the $300/hr that the sitting magistrate gets paid to sit and lecture juvenile criminals. I have even been invited to watch 12-year-olds get a mention in court -- I forget the terminology. I was witness to watching the pre-teens just mouth off to the magistrate and not let the magistrate get a word in, except for a few "excuse me... excuse me" pleas for calm. Obviously, the children in question were out of control and about as rebellious as they can be. For what reason? The courts allow the children's age and racial background to work in their favour as excuses. And given the hyperactive nature of the children, I could probably surmise an abusive upbringing and drug abuse as possible reason behind their out of control behaviour. I do recall trying to sneak out of the courtroom so that I did not end up telling the kids to "shut the **** up".

You can not blame the court system for the fact that children today are committing very serious crimes, including murder, rape, and violent assault, sometimes against their own parents. These are very serious crimes that children have only very rarely committed previously. But if the entertainment industry keeps glamourising violent criminal behaviour, that is hardly surprising, is it?

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In general, juvenile behaviour is dictated by applying responsibility to a person.

Children are not born with moral values already in their heads. What is right and what is wrong, is inculcated into their heads by the parents, teachers, religious leaders, their culture, and the role models provided by society. Parents, teachers, and religious leaders do their best to teach children right from wrong, then along comes the entertainment industry which teaches children that violent people are respected people, criminal behaviour is cool, and vengeance seeking violent role model heroes are to be admired.

USR wrote

I recall high school students that had behaviour problems in their early teens were the type of people that grew up and acted right by the time their senior year came around. They realised that they would have to look after themselves after high school. And then they knuckled down and studied to a point that their behaviour and grades were commendable. When you have little shits front court and mouth off to a magistrate, you know full well that the child has had a free ride on the back of the taxpayer. That is why they do not care about remediating their behaviour.

You have a point. But the main point that you are studiously trying to avoid, is that you can hardly blame the kids if the culture of today, transmitted by the media, is that disrespect for parents and other authority figures is what a real cool child does. Look at almost any TV show which appeals to kids (including cartoons). The kids are the smart ones and the parents are fools.

USR wrote

That is a whole lot of crap. I know for certain that I have not watched any more than 50% of that movie. However, given that the 9/11 attacks happened nearly 21 years ago, a scene like the one you described would have been all over the news and debated in media about the appropriateness of the scene. The fact is that the movie was so ridiculous (even for a 1987 movie release) that we would have seen this alternate ending by now. The way you describe this ending, it is like you are making things up.

I am making a reasonable deduction. You seem to think that the entertainment industries would investigate whether their products cause real life violence? Sure they would. That is like the tobacco industries sponsoring scientific investigation as to whether smoking caused cancer.

USR wrote

HOWEVER, it is seemingly that you have been given a lifeline. The Stephen King book "The Running Man" shows that this is the ending of the book.

That could be possible, I read the book first and the movie came out later. But from my personnel recollection, it was the ending in the movie, too. I watched all of the movie.

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But, in Australia, our crime rates are falling. With facebook and other social media outlets, reporting of crime in the region where I live has gone up. But, crime statistics have fallen.

I am not on facebook, and from what I understand of it, it is just individuals posting their thoughts. I also know that the social media outlets are very biased and they remove information which contradicts their woke narrative. I would not trust a word the bastards say.

USR wrote

Given that fifty years ago, you did not have 20 tv channels with several channels having regular news report updates, access to the internet, or other ways to access news, you might have the feeling that society was safe back then. It was not.

That was the excuse given by the woke little bureaucrats in the Australian Institute of Criminology, when they published a paper claiming that ethnic criminal behaviour was just a figment of the Australian public's imagination. Nobody but the woke believed them.

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So, it was not in the movie. But, it was in the 1982 book of the same name. Perhaps that is where you got the information mixed up.

Once again, i admit that my recollection may be faulty. I read the book first and then saw the movie. My recollection was of Arne giving the finger to the media executives the moment before he committed suicide by crashing the plane into the building. When 9/11 the suicide bombers hit the twin towers, I immediately made the connection. Perhaps there has been a sequel movie where Swartzenegers suicide at the end of the movie was removed? They are making sequels for every movie today, because their young writers today are so bad that nobody wants to watch their new woke movies, which consist mainly of car chases, explosions, special effects, and beautiful young women punching it out with the men while wearing almost nothing but panties and an armoured bra.

USR wrote

Let us get right to the point here. You are basically stating that if people are not shown how to do stuff, they would not do it.

No. That is only one aspect of what I am saying. I am saying that culture is a guide to teaching people what is right and what is wrong. Western culture is changing because the entertainment industries are now largely the custodians of western culture. If this culture teaches children that smoking is glamourous, a significant minority of children will ignore their parents and teachers advise to not smoke because it is addictive and very harmful to their health. That is why we ban smoking advertisements. So the tobacco industries use movies to promote their products until the US authorities clamped down on that too. But we are still allowing the entertainment industries to promote drug abuse and criminal behaviour, and we are wondering why our streets are full of fentanyl zombies and violent criminals?

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Why the hell would he do that?

Rod Serling was traumatised because he could clearly see the connection between the script he had written and real life violence, of course. He could see it. Why can't you?

USR wrote

Seven years later, Marlon Brando was set to receive an Oscar award for his part in "The Godfather". He refused the award and did not attend the ceremony. In his place, a Native American came on stage to apologise for Brando's absence. She then refused the award on Brando's behalf, citing that this was a protest for the depiction of Native Americans being the villains of most American movies. John Wayne was witnessed trying to come on stage to attack Sacheen Cruz Littlefeather, but was stopped by security.

You are stating that Serling would swap one antisocial drama for one about killing Native Americans.

And Marlon Brando was correct. Up until the early seventies native Americans in movies were all portrayed as the bad guys, which probably did cause contempt for native Americans by the rest of the US population. The politically correct narrative of the day was to justify the invasion of native American lands by white settlers to European/American children. Today, movies depict the white guys as the bad guys (except for people portrayed by Kevin Costner in DANCES WITH WOLVES, who the educated elites can identify with) and the native Americans are the good guys. This conforms to the woke attitudes of today, and is meant to educate US children that white people are evil, and US society is evil too. Seems to be working.

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Fewer and fewer people are taking up the habit because cigarettes are getting more and more expensive. Dad quit smoking when I was about 10 years old. We saved so much money that we could afford quite a bit more. All the chain-smoking characters on tv would not get any of us to take up smoking. And we seem to see a rebellion against your surmised theorum.

It is not a surmised theorum at all. Cigarette advertising will cause people to smoke cigarettes, which is why every civilised western country bans direct, and even indirect, cigarette advertising. I am utterly amazed that you refuse to recognise something which is so plain to see, and so easy to understand.

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Advertising a product is different compared to depicting violence, drug use, or whatever antisocial activity on media. You are comparing chalk and cheese. That "six degrees of separation" argument has no relevance.

Rubbish. If you glamourise smoking, a significant proportion of the population will take up smoking, which is bad for society. Which is why cigarette smoking is banned. If you glamourise suicide, a significant proportion of the population will commit suicide, which is bad for society. Which is why every civilised country in the western world has very strict laws governing the depictions of suicide in the media.

Now you are claiming that glamourising violent behaviour, especially violent, revenge type behaviour involving firearms, will not do anything? That is a hard sell. Although, too many people with wishful thinking mindsets like you do believe it, because they so desperately want to believe it. They have swallowed the entertainment industry kool aid.

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We should not take chemistry, in case we learn how to make drugs to sell. We should not learn information technology in case we decide to take down a network. We should not learn fighting techniques, just in case we decide to go and beat people up. And we should not learn marksman skills, just in case we decide to climb a tower near a university and shoot down a lot of students. You are arguing that people who are psychotic should not be shown how to do things just in case they use it against others.

Exactly where the line should be drawn between information media, and media which gives people direct information on how to commit serious crimes, has already been established in the USA in the famous "Hitman" case which was resolved by the US Supreme Court. If you really want to see a good movie, watch DELIBERATE INTENT starring Timothy Hutton, Ron Rivkin, and Clark Johnson. This is a first class movie based upon this court case and the sort of script you should be aspiring to write. As a student of history, I have always been amazed that script writers ignore so many interesting items of history, in favour of writing politically correct garbage that nobody wants to see.

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The argument you are making here is that people with mental disorders, or low IQ, poorly socialised young men with low self-esteem levels and harbour resentment against society would not engage in criminal activity if they did not see antisocial behaviour in media. I am telling you that these people would likely be more engaged in criminal activity if they were not distracted.

Science completely disagrees with that wacky explanation. To quote again the scientific evidence. The American Psychological Association (APA) "The scientific debate is over." The APA also testified before congress and stated " There is absolutely no doupt, that the increased level of TV viewing, is correlated to the increasing acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behaviour........Children's exposure to violence in mass media, can have harmful lifelong effects."

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Maybe you think politicians and people, in general, are idiots and incapable of making your connection about the media's effect.

I have never seen a program on TV questioning the effects of media violence on real life violence. That would be like the tobacco companies sponsoring programs examining whether smoking causes cancer. The information I get is from books, which the entertainment industry can not self censor.

Russian people are not idiots, but 80% of Russians agree with Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Why? Because Putin controls the media in Russia and the media can control the behaviour of entire populations. Which is why totalitarians always insist upon the total control of all media.

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What you fail to recognise is that if these people who commit crimes were not mentally disordered, or low IQ, poorly socialised people, would they have committed a crime?

Some emotionally immature young men are borderline cases, teetering on the edge of outright criminality. Many more are walking a path through life that often meanders dangerously close to the rim. The more that our culture glorifies criminality, sneering disrespect, drugs, guns, gangs, attention seeking and violent heroes, the more we incline their pathways in the direction of a self destructive criminal abyss.

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If their need to commit crimes were out of necessity, we don't bother trying to deflect the issue onto the media or even the gun industry. I could argue that after watching a movie or tv show that depicted someone with some kind of social problem (as a lot of shows and movies depict), I might be reminded of someone I know with similar issues. That might motivate me to engage more willingly with that person and relieve them of some of their social problems.

Your premise is very much opposed by the scientific community, which has proven the link between on screen violence and real life violence "over and over again."

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Half-wits like Martin Bryant was a half-wit all his life. He got access to a lot of money. Then he got access to a number of firearms. Had he not access to firearms, 35 people would not have been killed. John Howard did not go about putting media censorship into action to prevent the general public from knowing about the massacre. He was not worried that there would be copycat incidents of dozens of people getting gunned down. Bryant's actions were displayed all around the world. Howard's response was to do a gun buy back program. Gun laws were tightened. No more gun massacres occurred for about 15 years in Australia. And not again until 2018 and 2019.

The link between on screen violence and the media was publicly aired at the Australian Institute of Criminology's media conference in Canberra, which came about becasue too many people were making the connection between media violence and Port Arthur. The AIC 'conference" was a complete whitewash of the facts. This is because the bureaucratic class identify with the artistic class as fellow elites, and they will defend them to the death.

Another keynote speaker (who spoke after the AIC 's director) was Mr Norman Reaburn, Acting Secretary of the Attorney General's Department. Mr Reaburn dismissed any suggestion that there was any link between the entertainment industry and the Port Arthur massacre. He told the conference that the Bryant's video library consisted of largely innocuous titles such as "The Sound of Music" and other 1950's era films starring Clark Gable and Bette Davis He inappropriately quipped that these would be enough to send anybody mad. He did not mention that these video's had probably been the property of Miss Helen Harvey, who had died in a car accident and who had willed her home and her entire estate to Bryant These were the sort of video's that would have appealed to a middle aged woman. Significantly, Raeburn did not mention that there was a link. About 20 violent action movies and a gruesome horror movie had been found among the collection. It is doubtful if these had been purchased by Helen Harvey.

It was not until months later that the full story came out. The OFLC later revealed, that among the violent video's seized, the violent movies starring Steven Segal were the most common. Another movie found in the collection was the then newly released movie BABE. This child's movie by itself suggests some indication of Bryant's immature level of intelligence. Another movie in his possession was the violent/ horror movie CHILDS PLAY 2, and Bryant was reported to often use the expression "Don't fuck with the Chuck!" ( as well as, "I'll kill you!") This was an expression used by the murderous doll "Chucky" in the movie CHILD'S PLAY. This was significant, because it was strongly believed to have influenced the two child murderers of James Bulger. It is also known that customs officials had confiscated four video's from Bryant when he returned from an overseas trip to Amsterdam. These video's featured bestiality.

Newspaper reports, quoting interviews with Bryant's girlfriend and his local video store owner, claimed that Bryant had a preference for violent video's. The video store owner claimed that Bryants favourite movie was Sylvester Stallone's RAMBO, FIRST BLOOD.

The fact that Bryant did have a preference for violent movies, and especially ones as signifigant as CHILD'S PLAY and FIRST BLOOD, was a subject of obvious public interest and relevant to the conference. But here we had a senior bureaucrat who was privy to all the facts, publically saying that no link even existed, and failing to even mention that any violent movies had been seized at all. Even though the mere presence of these violent movies, suggested that Bryant might have been influenced by the entertainment media, to carry out the worst civilian criminal firearm massacre in history.

Bryant had a measured IQ of only 66, and had been examined by a State appointed psychiatrist for a state disability pension. He was diagnosed as being "intellectually handicapped and personality disordered." Laughed at and bullied at school, suffering from low self esteem, socially inadequate, and unable to make friends, he was desperately lonely and nursed deep feelings of rejection and anger. As expected from a young man with such low self esteem, he became obsessed with firearms, violent video's, and survivalist type magazine publications. Despite not having a license, he was easily able to buy a military weapon, which had been surrendered to the police in Victoria, and sold by them for vast profit in Australia's burgeoning, black market for guns. One by one, the people who were important to him, and who had maintained his mental equilibrium, died or left. First Helen Harvey was killed, then his father committed suicide. Finally a young girl, with whom he had a short romance, walked out the door. For Bryant there was nothing left but his feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, rejection, and anger.

Unfortunate people like Martin Bryant, or Wade Frankum, or Julian Knight, or immature teenagers who go on shooting sprees in US high schools, had always existed in society. But never before had they got the idea into their befuddled heads to commit massacres, even though self loading weapons had been around for over 100 years. But today's movies provided scripts that showed the vulnerable, how Real Men reacted to people or societies, that persecuted or humiliated them. They picked up a weapon and got even. For Bryant, it meant more than anything else in the world, to show that he was a strong man to be liked and admired, not a weak one to be laughed at and shunned. To produce movies showing mass murderers like RAMBO to be strong and powerful, instead of what they really are, weak and stupid, is to sow the seeds of infamy on fertile ground.

USR quote

If you understood psychology, you would understand that when people are confronted with a problem, they go about trying to resolve them. If you found someone laying injured on the road, would you stop to help render aid (as you are legally required to do)? Or would you injure them further? Our natural instincts are to protect the vulnerable. This is why I always argue that people counter problems to the best of their ability.

The leading psychological associations in the USA know a thing or two about psychology, and their scientific research supports me. Yet you reject them? You can not use science to support your argument if the scientific consensus rejects it.

USR quote

I dunno. I have found 3 psychology books in no time. All three of them talk of aggression. One of them speaks about the topic of media violence. Hopefully, the 10 other psychology books I have will have much the same.

You did not quote it so I am sure it supports me. That must have been heartbreaking for you. I am glad you will read 10 more psychology books, when you find out that I was right all along, I promise I will not rub it in.

[Bobby]

Hi Bogan,
it might be better to make your posts short and punchy? -
people might then read them.

[Bogan]

I would say you are a young person, Bobby. Anything more than a 15 second sound bite and you can't handle it.

I am quite enjoying this. I will say something about USR, at least he mans up and debates in good faith. Too many contributors on this and other sites never bother to debate at all. All they want to do is heckle and insult each other with sneery one liners. This is a real debate, just in case you have never seen one before.

[Bobby]

I would say you are a young person, Bobby. Anything more than a 15 second sound bite and you can't handle it.

I am quite enjoying this. I will say something about USR, at least he mans up and debates in good faith. Too many contributors on this and other sites never bother to debate at all. All they want to do is heckle and insult each other with sneery one liners. This is a real debate, just in case you have never seen one before.

I am actually quite old.
I don't have the patience to read all your replies.
I think other people are the same -
just giving you a heads up.

You're not writing a book - it's just a forum.

[UnSubRocky]

You are once again submitting the wacky thesis that TV entertainment reduces violence by keeping murderers, rapists, and armed robbers off the streets, by keeping them entertained. Science has already proven you wrong. There is a direct link between TV violence and real life violence. Would you like me to post up the US Surgeon General's 1972 report, TELEVISION AND GROWING UP: THE IMPACT OF TELEVISED VIOLENCE?

I have not put up any "whacky thesis" in this forum topic. It has been a tried and tested concept that entertainment keeps people occupied and away from causing trouble. What would low IQ, poorly socialised people do when they are bored? They might have more time to do the right thing and be useful to society. Or they might get caught up in their own boredom and go out and create trouble. We have already seen the effects that when "Home and Away" premiered in England, juvenile delinquency dropped by a considerable margin. Why? Because teens were indoors watching an hour of the show each weekday. Say what you will about television viewing and sedentary effects on health. But, when someone is distracted from creating trouble, trouble is avoided. I actually find it troubling that you think a bored, low IQ, socially troubled person would be less likely to be out committing problems if they were not distracted by media entertainment.

USR quote

The factor I have stated in previous posts is that television is a distraction.

GROAN! Science says otherwise. You are the one arguing against science, not me.

I forgot to mention in the previous paragraph that I have looked up the 1971 Surgeon General's report about the impact of televised violence. I have it in another tab that I will keep for the next few days. I will do a search through the pdf for words like "aggression". I spotted that early. All I could do was roll my eyes. I am currently having a large coffee as I type this post. Coffee causes people to be more aggressive because of the caffeine content. But, it does not cause violence. Or antisocial behaviour. Heck, I might even say that coffee drinking is a social activity. But, in the meantime, I might do a search for words like "violence" and "desensitise"/"desensitize" and read through their respective paragraphs. Have you got a few more keywords that I can search for, just so I know the specifics of your argument? I am not going to read the whole 174 pages, because I feel like I read this nearly 20 years ago. And I concluded that short-term aggression does not cumulatively build to a point of antisocial behaviour.

The statistics I am referencing are Lucy Clark's book RISING CRIME IN AUSTRALIA, which was published in 2000. Clark's graphs showed that from the time of the liberalisation of our entertainment industry censorship laws, crime began rising. This was for every class of crime. And the graphs were not rising linearly, they were rising exponentially. That meant that the rate of crime was increasing. Now, you come along and just say that "the statistics" say that crime is decreasing, without giving any source at all. You are asking me to believe that exponentially rising crime rates suddenly reversed course after the year 2000? Bullshit.

My teenage years were through the 1990s -- 1992 to 1999. I recall going through my first year of high school, the seniors were the last of the ratbag group of students that experienced the drug problems of the late 1980s. By the time I was a senior, our year level was considered the best year 12s of all time. Why would that be the case when the censorship of media was more relaxed in 1996 compared to 1990? I do not expect an answer when the paragraph is based on an anecdote that I cannot prove happened in my experience.

I would have thought that someone making the assertion that crime rates are rising would at least provide a link. But, seeing that I am asserting that crime rates are falling, I need to prove my point. I have read statistics twenty years ago that state that crime rates are falling. Assault rates were rising back then. But, recently, assault rates were on a considerable decline -- according to recent statistics. I will see if I can refind that government website.

It was also pro violent revenge with firearms against school bullies themed. Leonardo showed how to deal with school bullies. And you say that his classmates cheered him on?

I watched "The Basketball Diaries" last night. I had not watched the movie for over ten years, now. The movie is not much of what I remember. However, due to the fact that the narrative of the movie was so counter to your interpretation of the movie, I slept so well after the viewing. I had to conclude that the opening 20 minutes showed a bunch of teens living in a rough neighbourhood of Manhattan. They mirrored the society they grew up in -- Rough and streetwise. Unfortunately, their life was a lot of boredom. "Jim" (played by di Caprio) gets introduced to harder drugs by the 25th minute of the movie. Jim moves on heroin by the 35th minute of the movie. The main feature of this movie from then onwards is Jim's descent into chaos. He becomes more impoverished and nearly dies. He is involved in the death of a drug dealer. He mugs and is even shown turning to prostitution to make money to fund his habit.

The only time he seems happy is when he is playing basketball. Whether it is with his friends or with Reggie (the man who saves Jim and forces him to detox), it is the only time Jim is happy with himself. However, he loses all sense of reality when his drug addiction takes over. The movie describes his experience of the heroin high as like being free in a field and content. But the reality is that his health, his family and his social status takes a complete dive. And he blames everyone but himself for his problems. Only prison for 6 months gets him clean from his addiction.

The shooting scene in the movie depicted Jim fantasizing about taking his frustrations out on other classmates and a teacher. The reality is that he fantasized the scene and not lived it. The reality of the story was that Jim was washed up. When one of Jim's friends shied away from taking drugs, later on in the movie, that former friend was shown getting interviewed after a college basketball game, having been given a scholarship. A female prostitute who was a heroin addict that Jim and his friends made fun of, was featured earlier in the movie. Later in the movie, she was shown to have detoxed, whilst Jim was begging her for money. The tables were turned in that situation where the former prostitute could make fun of Jim.

I cannot see how this movie is any more anti-drug than it is. And if you cannot see that classroom shooting scene for the demented fantasy that it is of the character, that is concerning. The movie is practically begging the audience not to engage in drug use. I have not read the 1978 biographical of Jim Carroll's book "The Basketball Diaries". But, if a guy writes about his time in the 1960s engaging in heroin whilst he was in his teens, it gives me the strong impression that not all was well in the days when censorship was strict.

You can not blame the court system for the fact that children today are committing very serious crimes, including murder, rape, and violent assault, sometimes against their own parents. These are very serious crimes that children have only very rarely committed previously. But if the entertainment industry keeps glamourising violent criminal behaviour, that is hardly surprising, is it?

I can bet you that most (if not, all) children who front the courtroom to face a lecturing from a magistrate have some kind of home life issue so serious that the issue needs intervention. In fact, I cannot see how any child who comes from a stable home life, where no abuse or drug use is present among the parent, would do something to the point of having a charge laid against them for anything serious. If my 43 years have taught me anything on this topic, every single teen that has a criminal record has had some kind of abusive upbringing.

Try working at a restaurant during school holidays when children aged between 11 and 13 are out, bored, hanging around parking areas and accosting people for money. You can bet that the children are out because their home life is so poor that they have to get away from the house. I have met the parents of one girl. Any concerns about an abusive parenting situation were confirmed the moment the father opened his mouth and showed what a complete arsehole he was. I would not be surprised if he is dealing.

Children are not born with moral values already in their heads. What is right and what is wrong, is inculcated into their heads by the parents, teachers, religious leaders, their culture, and the role models provided by society. Parents, teachers, and religious leaders do their best to teach children right from wrong, then along comes the entertainment industry which teaches children that violent people are respected people, criminal behaviour is cool, and vengeance seeking violent role model heroes are to be admired.

Awesome. And whilst parents and teachers (I do not count religious leaders) do their bit to teach right from wrong, they are not overruled by the value system of the celebrities. Celebrities are not putting food on the table or paying the bills of the children under the care of adults. Children understand this. And even if there is a concerted effort by the entertainment industry to change so that the role models are all respectable people, it will not shift the child's attitude to adopt a different attitude when their parents and teachers are out there doing one thing or the other with their lives.

USR wrote

I recall high school students that had behaviour problems in their early teens were the type of people that grew up and acted right by the time their senior year came around. They realised that they would have to look after themselves after high school. And then they knuckled down and studied to a point that their behaviour and grades were commendable. When you have little shits front court and mouth off to a magistrate, you know full well that the child has had a free ride on the back of the taxpayer. That is why they do not care about remediating their behaviour.

You have a point. But the main point that you are studiously trying to avoid, is that you can hardly blame the kids if the culture of today, transmitted by the media, is that disrespect for parents and other authority figures is what a real cool child does. Look at almost any TV show which appeals to kids (including cartoons). The kids are the smart ones and the parents are fools.

From the start of this topic to your last reply, you have offered criminals to add "media influence" as an excuse for their behaviour. Now, let it be known that people who are drunk or who are on drugs and then go out and commit crimes cannot mitigate or exonerate themselves from their criminal acts. That is a dangerous tactic to suggest that people are subconsciously influenced into committing crimes and antisocial behaviour. And because you keep telling me that I am claiming that because it does not affect me, that does not mean it does not affect other people, I have to deny you have any credibility. People usually stick to a societal standard. It is why we see large variations in wealth inside a region. Otherwise, why do we have people succeed in life and other people fail if you are so sure that the media is sending people into failure?

I would suggest that when the cartoons are depicting the children as smart and the parents are fools, the idea behind this is that children should develop some confidence to question whether their parents and other adults are doing the right thing. My own father would hit on my female friends (including my girlfriends) which lead me to hide my relationships from him. I got to my twenties before my father got to meet one of my girlfriends. And by that time, I had independent social and financial movement in my life that I could tell my father to get lost. That is disrespect for my father -- and quite justified. Children are not going to disrespect their parents simply because they saw another character treat their parents with disrespect.

I am making a reasonable deduction. You seem to think that the entertainment industries would investigate whether their products cause real life violence? Sure they would. That is like the tobacco industries sponsoring scientific investigation as to whether smoking caused cancer.

Crime rates are not on the way up. If you bothered watching news reports of protestors, the participants are very, very sensitive to matters that led them to take up a protest movement. That suggests that conflict is what they want to avoid.

That could be possible, I read the book first and the movie came out later. But from my personnel recollection, it was the ending in the movie, too. I watched all of the movie.

Having not read the book, I was not aware that this was the ending the "The Running Man" novel. I had the feeling that you truly believed what you wrote in that earlier post. That is why I investigated to see if there was something that I missed for that movie that was not available on when I saw 50% of that stupid movie. I could not recall watching the end of the movie. So, I watched the ending online. No such luck about "Ben" committing suicide by plane bombing in the movie. It was depicted in the novel, according to sources.

As for the 9/11 hijackers alleged to be inspired by "The Running Man" ending, why not just reference "Tora! Tora! Tora!" as inspiration? Or the actual Pearl Harbor plane bombings? The Bush Administration had people admitting that there was likely a hijacking situation about to take place that year (surprise, surprise) in 2001. Surely, it is not innovative thinking to plane bomb some place in an act of terrorism. Those guys in 1993 truck bombed WTC1 without needing any inspiration from entertainment media. These terrorists are not out to do acts of terrorism because of some "the tv man told me to do it". They are out to enact change for their people. From what I understand of the 9/11 attack, the terrorists were employed to plane bomb certain targets so that the world would panic and drive up oil prices.

Once again, i admit that my recollection may be faulty. I read the book first and then saw the movie. My recollection was of Arne giving the finger to the media executives the moment before he committed suicide by crashing the plane into the building. When 9/11 the suicide bombers hit the twin towers, I immediately made the connection. Perhaps there has been a sequel movie where Swartzenegers suicide at the end of the movie was removed? They are making sequels for every movie today, because their young writers today are so bad that nobody wants to watch their new woke movies, which consist mainly of car chases, explosions, special effects, and beautiful young women punching it out with the men while wearing almost nothing but panties and an armoured bra.

"End of days" is the only Schwarzenegger movie where he plays a human character that dies. Schwarzenegger's T-800 cyborg character dies in nearly every Terminator movie he is in. And apart from the first movie where he plays the villainous cyborg that gets killed by the protagonists, his hero role of the cyborg in the sequels shows him making sacrifices so that others can live. In "End of Days", Jericho is forced to commit suicide in order to save the life of the woman and prevent Satan from returning to Earth. I dunno. I can understand people sacrificing themselves to save the lives of others. But, I won't entertain a movie's credibility about fighting Satan.

No. That is only one aspect of what I am saying. I am saying that culture is a guide to teaching people what is right and what is wrong. Western culture is changing because the entertainment industries are now largely the custodians of western culture. If this culture teaches children that smoking is glamourous, a significant minority of children will ignore their parents and teachers advise to not smoke because it is addictive and very harmful to their health. That is why we ban smoking advertisements. So the tobacco industries use movies to promote their products until the US authorities clamped down on that too. But we are still allowing the entertainment industries to promote drug abuse and criminal behaviour, and we are wondering why our streets are full of fentanyl zombies and violent criminals?

Western culture is changing because Western societies are permitting non-Western immigration. But, that is a different topic. Smoking rates have halved in the last 30 years. We might be about 30 years away from finding smoking outlawed in the future. And we are not finding people wandering about the streets in large numbers high on drugs. You might find the occasional drug-affected person staggering about the streets. But, I bet they were be lucid enough to laugh that their problems were the result of watching too much tv or listening to too much music. Like I said earlier, illicit drug users are likely not to have a tv.

Rod Serling was traumatised because he could clearly see the connection between the script he had written and real life violence, of course. He could see it. Why can't you?

I loaded up "Doomsday Flight" on youtube last night. I listened to the remainder of the movie whilst I typed this post. As far as I am concerned, the antagonist of the movie was depicted as some kind of visually impaired psycho with advanced knowledge in engineering, the telecommunication system, and airport protocols. That might make him similar to the Howard Payne of the movie "Speed" in terms of intelligence. But, it makes him seem like a loser. Were you not concerned that a character this intelligent could have made a profitable living honestly? That discredits the whole narrative of the movies. The ending of the movie showed that the antagonist was outmaneuvered by the airline. The appeal of the movie is that the hero goes up against a formidable opponent and beats the antagonist.

But, you avoided my issue with Serling. You said that he would rather have made a stagecoach drama with John Wayne starring. You would rather have a racist, misogynistic guy like Wayne make an anti-Native American movie ahead of a movie about countering a terrorism incident at an airport. The reality of the world is that we live in a complex social structured society where there is no defined good guy/bad guy dichotomy. There are a set of various laws that people can live by at their own expense. People who break the laws have no one but themselves to blame. I hate to tell you this, having known about security issues at airports for years, that the more security measures they have at airports, the more people get caught.

Remember back in the 1960s to the 1980s, there was a bit of a concern about the Olympic Games having athletics performing superhuman world record performances. And after only a few years of observation, it was revealed that athletes were taking drugs. More and more sophisticated tests were made to detect more and more sophisticated masking agents and performance enhancers. By 1990, it became mandatory that international sporting events would have athletes be drug tested, before and after events.

Drink driving was a minor problem in Australia... until the 1970s. Then the introduction of breathalysers meant that people were detected drunk driving. Before then, it was up to the police officers' discretion to determine whether the person was well enough to drive. Drink-driving charges escalated dramatically in the following years. Road fatalities from drunk drivers fell considerably. That does not mean that drink-driving was practically non-existent before the 1970s. It means that we have the technology to detect people who are committing drink driving acts in far greater degrees of confidence.

Much like the prompting of thinking about the topic of violence and antisocial behaviour in Australia. You get a reminder every time you turn on the television to watch the news. It is not television that is causing crime in Australia. It is television reminding you that there is violence in Australia. And with falling crime rates in Australia, it seems that these reminders are helping Australians to develop a "stay safe" attitude to counter the perception of possible crime in their neighbourhood.

[UnSubRocky]

You are stating that Serling would swap one antisocial drama for one about killing Native Americans.

No. I was stating that it would seem implausible for a director to swap one movie about counterterrorism at an airport for one about killing Native Americans in a 19th-century setting. By 1966, society was on the verge of changing socially that a stagecoach drama would have been seen, even in that era, as being out of date with the values of American culture.

And Marlon Brando was correct. Up until the early seventies native Americans in movies were all portrayed as the bad guys, which probably did cause contempt for native Americans by the rest of the US population. The politically correct narrative of the day was to justify the invasion of native American lands by white settlers to European/American children. Today, movies depict the white guys as the bad guys (except for people portrayed by Kevin Costner in DANCES WITH WOLVES, who the educated elites can identify with) and the native Americans are the good guys. This conforms to the woke attitudes of today, and is meant to educate US children that white people are evil, and US society is evil too. Seems to be working.

You do not need to make one group of people be the villain all the time. You just need to put the story into context. I do not know of one Australian movie where indigenous people are portrayed as the villains. Thomas Kenneally wrote "The Commonwealth of Thieves". His book described that indigenous people brought about the spread of disease among their tribes because the indigenous people would walk into the settler camps of Sydney Cove and steal whatever they thought was useful, even whilst the First Fleeters were laying ill or dying. The problem was that the settlers had brought with them the unhygienic conditions of their transport ships ashore. And with the malnutrition taking place at the time, this prolonged illness of the settlers, transferring the disease onto recently used tools and some food that the indigenous people then stole.

Imagine someone writing/directing a movie where Kenneally's historical tale is told. There would be a field day of woke liberals out and about trying to accuse the director (and Kenneally too, in greater consideration) of rewriting history/being anti-indigenous. But, that is how things should be. Diversity of thought helps expand collective intelligence.

It is not a surmised theorum at all. Cigarette advertising will cause people to smoke cigarettes, which is why every civilised western country bans direct, and even indirect, cigarette advertising. I am utterly amazed that you refuse to recognise something which is so plain to see, and so easy to understand.

https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/c ... ing-adults

Once and for all, please recognise the evidence that smoking rates have fallen. All the "glamourisation of smoking" in the media is not cushioning the fall in smoking rates over the last nearly 80 years. Costs; health effects; and social exclusions are what I would estimate as the main factor in people's decisions to either not take up smoking or quit altogether.

If you glamourise smoking, a significant proportion of the population will take up smoking, which is bad for society. Which is why cigarette smoking is banned.

Cigarette smoking is banned indoors at public places. Cigarette sales are banned for purchase by people under the age of 18 years. Hopefully, we will see smoking banned in the next 10 years.

If you glamourise suicide, a significant proportion of the population will commit suicide, which is bad for society. Which is why every civilised country in the western world has very strict laws governing the depictions of suicide in the media.

The suicide rate is at least 10 times the murder rate in Australia. Paul Green's suicide was notified to the media not long after the police determined his death was not suspicious. And yet we have mention of Green's suicide in the media. Did you write a letter to the editor condemning the media for announcing Green's suicide?

Now you are claiming that glamourising violent behaviour, especially violent, revenge type behaviour involving firearms, will not do anything? That is a hard sell. Although, too many people with wishful thinking mindsets like you do believe it, because they so desperately want to believe it. They have swallowed the entertainment industry kool aid.

Because we live in a relatively safe society where we get shunned by work colleagues, peers and family if we are caught out doing wrong. Security surveillance is near ubiquitous in towns with a large centralised population. When confronted with security footage of a crime being committed, the accused usually cops that they were caught out. They know that the consequences of lying mean more severe punishment could be served.

Your basic argument is that you think that a criminal does not think about the consequences of their actions. And when you see footage of people wearing hoods and masks to rob others, you know for sure that they are trying to avoid detection. They do not want to be caught. Their motivation for committing a crime is not to impress movie stars or others. They are their to rob so that they can fund some kind of habit -- gambling or drug-related. But, when they get caught by police, their options are to deny involvement. Or they can confess their crime. Police have an array of techniques they use to prove someone has committed a crime. The accused has the benefit of the doubt to avoid prosecution. And if you are saying that people are mindless drones that are OH-SO-EASILY manipulated by the media to do criminal things, you can BET YOUR BOTTOM dollar that they would simply confess their crime to police upon interrogation.

Exactly where the line should be drawn between information media, and media which gives people direct information on how to commit serious crimes, has already been established in the USA in the famous "Hitman" case which was resolved by the US Supreme Court. If you really want to see a good movie, watch DELIBERATE INTENT starring Timothy Hutton, Ron Rivkin, and Clark Johnson. This is a first class movie based upon this court case and the sort of script you should be aspiring to write. As a student of history, I have always been amazed that script writers ignore so many interesting items of history, in favour of writing politically correct garbage that nobody wants to see.

I have watched the movie "Deliberate Intent" and read the book "Hitman". The only detail in the book that is not mentioned in the movie is something that I also will not mention here. If I can list off a few things I remember from the book and the movie about what people do to commit a successful contract killing:
*Do not take the job if you know for sure that you cannot get away with it.
*if you have an interaction with police on the day of the job, cancel and find another day to do the job.
*If you need to take a leak after finishing the job, do not use the mark's toilet.
*Change your shoes after you are well away from the area, and discard your old shoes.
*Use a file to change the pattern of a gun's barrel so that police cannot match the bullet.

There were a few other things that I read online and saw in the movie. Some of it has to do with mental and physical preparedness. Others to keep your ego balanced after the job is done. What I have to tell you is that these things do not work in this day and age. And I bet you that even in 1983, police had a considerable amount of investigative techniques that could locate a murderer. Having spoken to senior officers in the police force, they let it be known that their crime scene analysts have textbooks of knowledge in how to track down a killer. And when they have a suspect in custody, they have detectives that are so thorough with interviewing a suspect that you would have to be innocent to be walking out freely without charge.

My point is that no matter how intelligent a criminal is, there are educated people in the police force who know more. Even criminal masterminds get caught. Again, that book and that movie would probably have helped reduce the incidences of contract killings, or atleast helped resolve who committed the contract killings. If I recall the movie, the murderer was tracked down because he had read the book. And police did a process of elimination in determining the hitman was the one who borrowed the book from a library? In any event, Horn hired the hitman to kill his ex-wife so that he could get a portion of the $1.7 million that came from his disabled son's lawsuit. Are you seriously trying to suggest that if Horn hired a different contract killer -- one who did not read the Hitman manual, then the murder would not have taken place? That is naive, if true.

USR quote

The argument you are making here is that people with mental disorders, or low IQ, poorly socialised young men with low self-esteem levels and harbour resentment against society would not engage in criminal activity if they did not see antisocial behaviour in media. I am telling you that these people would likely be more engaged in criminal activity if they were not distracted.

Science completely disagrees with that wacky explanation. To quote again the scientific evidence. The American Psychological Association (APA) "The scientific debate is over." The APA also testified before congress and stated " There is absolutely no doupt, that the increased level of TV viewing, is correlated to the increasing acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behaviour........Children's exposure to violence in mass media, can have harmful lifelong effects."

That is a loaded statement. The public post about how they abhor violence, criminality and antisocial behaviour in comments made to the news media and to the social media. I have yet to come across comments of someone approving of antisocial behaviour in society. Even your objection to media depictions of antisocial behaviour is evidence that you are trying to counter people who commit crimes in society. But the way you go about inadvertently helping a perpetrator's cause by stating that they were influenced by the media and therefore not liable for their act, you probably should rethink your strategy.

I have never seen a program on TV questioning the effects of media violence on real life violence. That would be like the tobacco companies sponsoring programs examining whether smoking causes cancer. The information I get is from books, which the entertainment industry can not self censor.

Your information is based on superstitious assumptions. And it is also like a firearm fanatic examining whether gun laws reduce instances of mass shootings. If you are trying claim that people are so easily conditioned into to committing crimes through the power of suggestion, then I would suggest that you are furthering the justification for banning firearms altogether. If watching tv causes "aggressive feelings", then picking up a firearm would cause "aggressive feelings", too.

Russian people are not idiots, but 80% of Russians agree with Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Why? Because Putin controls the media in Russia and the media can control the behaviour of entire populations. Which is why totalitarians always insist upon the total control of all media.

I was not going to respond to this. But, I got curious about how accurate you were. Polls (allegedly) taken in the month of March of the year 2022 suggested that 58% of Russians support the (military operation) invasion of Ukraine. That allegation flies in the face of video footage showing Russian people protesting against the invasion of Ukraine. We do not know who to believe is the majority for or against the invasion.

Some emotionally immature young men are borderline cases, teetering on the edge of outright criminality. Many more are walking a path through life that often meanders dangerously close to the rim. The more that our culture glorifies criminality, sneering disrespect, drugs, guns, gangs, attention seeking and violent heroes, the more we incline their pathways in the direction of a self destructive criminal abyss.

I have yet to see anyone get glorified for committing criminality. And I have yet to see Australia fall into chaos because of relaxed censorship. We are safer now than we have been in the last 50 years.

The link between on screen violence and the media was publicly aired at the Australian Institute of Criminology's media conference in Canberra, which came about becasue too many people were making the connection between media violence and Port Arthur. The AIC 'conference" was a complete whitewash of the facts. This is because the bureaucratic class identify with the artistic class as fellow elites, and they will defend them to the death.

The fact that Martin Bryant shot dead 35 people (including 2 children) was indicative of his psychopathy. He had absolutely no remorse for what he did. If anyone is trying to excuse Bryant's behaviour by citing his media entertainment viewing, they need to be put on the monitoring list. I would love for any member of the Australian Institute of Criminology who genuinely believe there is a connection between media violence to put their money where their mouth is. No tv, no coffee, no firearms, no looking at other naked people, no swearing, no opinions, no directives to give others. We shall see how long they go without provoking other people through some action before they realise that the criminality of one person was the result of his own demented thoughts.

About 20 violent action movies and a gruesome horror movie had been found among the collection. It is doubtful if these had been purchased by Helen Harvey.

All people have to do to get mitigating circumstances when convicted of a crime is to have a number of gruesome horror and action movies in their collection. At least that is your implication that the AIC is making of Bryants movie collection.

It was not until months later that the full story came out. The OFLC later revealed, that among the violent video's seized, the violent movies starring Steven Segal were the most common. Another movie found in the collection was the then newly released movie BABE. This child's movie by itself suggests some indication of Bryant's immature level of intelligence. Another movie in his possession was the violent/ horror movie CHILDS PLAY 2, and Bryant was reported to often use the expression "Don't fuck with the Chuck!" ( as well as, "I'll kill you!") This was an expression used by the murderous doll "Chucky" in the movie CHILD'S PLAY. This was significant, because it was strongly believed to have influenced the two child murderers of James Bulger. It is also known that customs officials had confiscated four video's from Bryant when he returned from an overseas trip to Amsterdam. These video's featured bestiality.

Well, if you really want to defend Martin Bryant for his behaviour by deflecting towards the media as the problem, perhaps you need to pass that bar exam and go in to seek his release as Bryant's defence lawyer. Bryant could have possibly watched snuff movies. He could have possibly watched bestiality or child porn. He could have possibly watched torture scenes various. All of which would have been deemed illegal activity. But, none of it would justify him arming himself with various firearms and walking into a cafe at a tourism spot and shooting dead scores of innocent people.

Given that I have experienced various victimisations throughout my life, I find it unbelievable that other people would try and justify a criminal's behaviour by saying that they were conditioned to be criminals by the media. I have had problems with people who are/were drug addicts/dealers. And I have had problems with people who were religious fundamentalists. I have also had encounters and problems with people who were -- past tense because they are not around now -- genuine psychopaths. The drug addicts had a problem with me because I was in favour of seeing an end to drug problems in town. The religious fundamentalists had a problem with me because I was in favour of seeing religious institutions held accountable for brainwashing. And the genuine psychopaths had a problem with me because they were unremorseful, immoral, selfish lunatics.

When you mention the James Bulger murderers, you might want to delve deeper into the issue of the murder. Ask (retired) Detective Kirby his thoughts on the matter.

Newspaper reports, quoting interviews with Bryant's girlfriend and his local video store owner, claimed that Bryant had a preference for violent video's. The video store owner claimed that Bryants favourite movie was Sylvester Stallone's RAMBO, FIRST BLOOD.

Bryant watched a movie that millions of other people around the world have watched without troubling crime statistics. The difference is that Martin Bryant was a moron with a personality (clearly) suggesting psychopathy. Allegedly, Bryant killed Helen Harvey in a car accident in late 1992. And Bryant is alleged to have planned the Port Arthur massacre as the result of his suicidal thoughts 1 to 3 months before the attack.

And if Bryant's unremarkable, depressing and wasteful life was not what prompted Bryant to shoot dead numerous people in an apparent suicide by proxy attempt, then I have no concept of how you could supersede a motivation. Because we already know that billions of people around the world are not going on shooting sprees in response to their individual cumulative consumption of violent/antisocial mass media, that makes the argument that Bryant acted on implied solicitation from "Rambo" null and void.

The fact that Bryant did have a preference for violent movies, and especially ones as signifigant as CHILD'S PLAY and FIRST BLOOD, was a subject of obvious public interest and relevant to the conference. But here we had a senior bureaucrat who was privy to all the facts, publically saying that no link even existed, and failing to even mention that any violent movies had been seized at all. Even though the mere presence of these violent movies, suggested that Bryant might have been influenced by the entertainment media, to carry out the worst civilian criminal firearm massacre in history.

Being a diagnosed schizophrenic, I know that some of my unmedicated schizophrenic episodes resulted in myself getting lost in my own suburb -- a place I know well for years. I have also mistaken people for others. And whilst I was in mental health getting treatment, there was a time when I developed this superstitious idea of needing to get up moving to another section of the building every time the doorbell rang. In the weeks leading up to my schizophrenic episode, I watched a couple of movies at the cinema. The CGI amnesia I got from both movies probably played havoc on my schizophrenia. But, after about 6 months of treatment with medication, I managed to rewatch both movies without any trouble of headaches or that amnesia from watching the overuse of special effects in the movie.

Being that I am not an accredited psychiatrist, I can only question why mental health intervention was not made for Bryant after the death of Helen Harvey. If medication would do little to help with Bryant's condition, surely being placed in care would have prevented him going out and committed his massacre.

Bryant had a measured IQ of only 66, and had been examined by a State appointed psychiatrist for a state disability pension. He was diagnosed as being "intellectually handicapped and personality disordered." Laughed at and bullied at school, suffering from low self esteem, socially inadequate, and unable to make friends, he was desperately lonely and nursed deep feelings of rejection and anger. As expected from a young man with such low self esteem, he became obsessed with firearms, violent video's, and survivalist type magazine publications. Despite not having a license, he was easily able to buy a military weapon, which had been surrendered to the police in Victoria, and sold by them for vast profit in Australia's burgeoning, black market for guns. One by one, the people who were important to him, and who had maintained his mental equilibrium, died or left. First Helen Harvey was killed, then his father committed suicide. Finally a young girl, with whom he had a short romance, walked out the door. For Bryant there was nothing left but his feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, rejection, and anger.

Your paragraph right there is the overwhelming reason why Bryant committed the massacre. He was a violent, stupid child. He was a violent teen. He was a violent adult. And the only reasons he was able to keep from doing what he did was because he was dependent on his father and another supervisor. With nothing left to live for in his life, he wanted to take his revenge on society, allegedly.

But never before had they got the idea into their befuddled heads to commit massacres, even though self loading weapons had been around for over 100 years. But today's movies provided scripts that showed the vulnerable, how Real Men reacted to people or societies, that persecuted or humiliated them. They picked up a weapon and got even. For Bryant, it meant more than anything else in the world, to show that he was a strong man to be liked and admired, not a weak one to be laughed at and shunned. To produce movies showing mass murderers like RAMBO to be strong and powerful, instead of what they really are, weak and stupid, is to sow the seeds of infamy on fertile ground.

I mentioned the topic of revenge killings during the settler wars in Australia. Massacres aplenty. I mentioned the topic of Charles Whitman and his 17 dead and some injured. Allegedly a small brain tumour triggered him. You mentioned Julian Knight, a guy with a personality disorder, even though he had a high IQ. He was dismissed from the army after stabbing a superior. And then there is Wade Frankum. I get the feeling that you have like-minded people working wikipedia. The contributors also seem to be of the opinion that Frankum's reading of "American Psycho" and "Crime and Punishment" lead to his motivation to kill several people in Strathfield.

Why people are not going on shooting sprees in Australia is evidence that the mass media (in all its oversaturation of use) in the twentieth century. Crime rates are on the way down: https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/fi ... ndi359.pdf
Homicide rates are declining. And homicide numbers are in decline in real numbers since 1989. That is despite there being 9 million more Australians.
Assault rates are up between the years 1995 and 2006. That is the trend all across the board. And we can attribute that to increasing surveillance cameras being able to capture crimes in progress. People are more willing to come forward to press charges when they have evidence to help them get a conviction against the perp. Assault rates have fallen since the year 2008
Similarly with sexual assault, dna tests and sexual assault kits and surveillance cameras picking up details of circumstances that lead to arrest of rapists have become commonplace. When someone cannot establish and alibi, it helps the victim make a case against their attacker. In 2008, 5 in every 1000 females were sexaully assaulted. In the year 2020, 9 in every 1000 females were sexually assaulted. There was a low of 3 in every 1000 females sexually assaulted in the year 2013. Although for the age range of 18 to 29 year old women, a low of 7 women per 1000 were sexually assaulted in the year 2013. A high of 34 women per 1000 were sexually assaulted in the year 2020. (Source: ABS wesbite abs.gov.au)
Rates of robbery went up at the turn of the century. Then they fell to near 1993 levels, in the year 2006.

The leading psychological associations in the USA know a thing or two about psychology, and their scientific research supports me. Yet you reject them? You can not use science to support your argument if the scientific consensus rejects it.

The leading psychological associations cannot determine why there are high crime rates in the USA, but low crime rates in Australia. Is it because Australians have an anti-authoritarian culture where we are independently-minded and have to be self-reliant? Whereas the USA is an authoritative culture where they are highly dependent on conforming to their government's demands for their needs. You can imagine a capitalist society like the USA would cut people off. And those cut off from welfare would turn to dealing drugs and other crime.

You did not quote it so I am sure it supports me. That must have been heartbreaking for you. I am glad you will read 10 more psychology books, when you find out that I was right all along, I promise I will not rub it in.

The books are sitting atop my desk behind me. When I finish the clean up of the house, I will go through and read up on the books with the related information. In fact, I have open one book that I will discuss their topic of "violence and culture" in another post.