Intro To Soc and Mass Media

In to days society there is always a scapegoat.  People are never responsible for there own actions.  When tragic or disturbing events occur people are so quick to blame anything but themselfs.  They blame anything that even mutters an unhappy word such as movies and music.  They act like every movie and song that is recorded and filmed should be about rainbows and butterflies.  Video games are also targets of this blame game.  Games that are played as first person shooters that involve guns and violence such as grand theft auto.  Television has taken a punch or two also.
         Movies, a age old pastime and form of entertainment and even education.  Movies are rated with letter ratings to inform the public what kind of material the movie contains.  In 1994 the movie natural born killers was a young couples excuse for killing and robbing one person and leaving another paralyzed from the neck down. 18-year-old Benjamin James Darrus and his 18-year-old girlfriend Sarah Edmondson  had stated that they got the idea from tripping on LSD an watching the movie Natural Born Killers.  “The movie was titled  Natural Born Killers  and its director was Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone. Its release in 1994 inspired a young couple from Oklahoma to set out on what they planned to be a killing spree that left one person dead and another paralyzed from the neck down.”  (1)
         Music, Plenty of bands and musicians have had the blame pinned on them for people’s stupid actions.  In 1999 Marilyn Manson was forced to cancel his Rock is dead tour because of protesters who blamed him for the columbine high school shootings.  My personal favorite is My Chemical Romance who is being blamed for starting an Emo death culture.  A British tabloid had stated that the band encourages teenagers to mutilate themselfs.  Needless to say the band was outraged.  In the movie Bowling for Columbine Manson stated  “The two by-products of that whole tragedy were, violence in entertainment, and gun control. And how perfect that, that was the two things that we were going to talk about with the upcoming election. And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about, uh, the President was shooting bombs overseas, yet I'm a bad guy because I, well I sing some rock-and-roll songs, and who's a bigger influence, the President or Marilyn Manson? I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the President.”.  (2)
Frontman Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance states In the UK there's a conservative newspaper and they refer to us basically as a death cult that encourage kids to self-harm (themselves). It was the most ignorant, ridiculous thing we've ever read.  (3).

         Video games, Dr.  Phil among many others has blamed video games for shootings like the most recent tragic shooting at Virginia tech.  Saying that we are programming people to be mass murders and video games give them a cause to fantasize and even carry out these fantasies.  Dr.  Phil states  “The problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you - that if these people are playing video games where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath, or someone suffering from mental illness, add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is just too high. And we’re going to have to start dealing with that. We’re going to have to start addressing those issues and recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.”  (4)
         My personal feelings on the matter are that people need to be more responsible for there actions.  You have a mind and a brain use it.  As for those with brain damage and those who need psychiatric help.  These things should be tested from a young age and there are always warning signs.  Parents pay attention to your children because its not the movies and music that is shaping the mass murderers of the future, its you.