Comments on: Mediamarch petition Premier

By: Christopher Shell

Christopher Shell — Fri, 13 May 2005 12:46:41 +0000

One glass of alcoholic drink for a child in a pub is less harmful than ten for an adult (or most adults). Yet which of the two is illegal? You’re not wrong – but there’s more to it, & I think the fact that the adults make the rules explains a lot.

By: tom p

tom p — Thu, 12 May 2005 17:10:25 +0000

Nobody is saying that watching adult programmes on telly is beneath the dignity of children. It is age-inappropriate. Because a five-year old may not be allowed to go to the shops on his own, does that mean that it is beneath his dignity? No. It is simply age-inappropriate because he’s too easily suggestible and may run out into the road when his mate calls to him to come and play football.
Kids can’t drink booze. Is that also beneath their dignity, or would it be unduly deleterious to their health, more so than it is for adults?
False presupposition leads to false conclusions, doc.

By: Christopher Shell

Christopher Shell — Thu, 12 May 2005 14:08:04 +0000

Yes, I agree that children are more impressionable. I agree with all your para 2 and most of your para 1.
The point that hasnt been addressed is how something (an activity, an interest etc) can be beneath the dignity of a child (an immature person) but not beneath the dignity of an adult (a mature person). It’s logically a puzzle that adults can be allowed to do all sorts of things that are forbidden even in school rules. The true answer is probably that it is the adults that make the rules and they want to be allowed to do what they like.

By: tom p

tom p — Thu, 12 May 2005 10:37:11 +0000

You’re assuming that everyone is watching all the same telly programmes, when audience figures show just the opposite, especially in multi-channel households.
You stated earlier that you watch a lot of TCM. A high proportion of their movies are in black and white. Does this mean that you think the world is actually greyscale, or do your everyday interactions with the world around you counteract the impression given to you by the telly?
I enjoy watching Humphrey Bogart films. Does that mean that I think it’s ok to give a broad a slap when she’s being hysterical or just uncooperative? No. My interactions with the world around me show otherwise.
If what you say is true (and clearly it isn’t), then everyone should be forced to spend an hour a day with G. Tingey, sharing his atelevisual experiences and reacquanting ourselves with true normality?
.
The children/adults dichotomy is both valid and important.
A child does not have experience of life and how people genuinely interact. An adult does. If a child is exposed to violence at home, either from parental beatings of themself, their siblings or their mother, or through seeing inappropriate violent films, then they are more likely to be violent outside the home, eg in the playground. The former part of this claim (the actual violence) has been shown to be true and, if uncorrected, also to carry on into adulthood. The latter stems from my own experiences growing up. The kids who were allowed to watch Rambo and kung-fu flicks were the ones who were most violent at school.
The kids exposed to violence had not the experience of life necessary to know that this wasn’t appropriate or normal.
As a child, I was strictly forbidden from watching such movies. As an adult, I rather enjoy watching gore-spattered slasher flicks and ultra-violent japanese and korean films. Because I have experience of how one behaves, my behaviour has not been influenced by these films.
Children do need protecting and are by law (film certification, swearing, sex and violence being on after the watershed etc). This should be backed-up by responsible parenting.
Adults do not need protecting by self-appointed moral guardians. These busybodies would be best advised to put their energies into useful and productive activities.

By: Christopher Shell

Christopher Shell — Wed, 11 May 2005 13:26:16 +0000

How do you know it counteracts it? Do you want it to, or do you actually know it does? After all, the very ppl they are talking to are also having some of their perceptions of normality fromed by the telly.

The children/adults thing is a joke. If these things are inappropriate for immature ppl, they must logically be far more inappropriate for ppl who have reached maturity – if indeed they have reached maturity.

By: tom p

tom p — Tue, 10 May 2005 12:53:55 +0000

Regardingthe normalising part, most people spend more time in conversation with others than watching the telly. That counteracts any abnormal bias that the media may introduce.
Programmes made for children, who are far more susceptible than adults, ‘cos they don’t have years of life experience to fall back on, deliberately don’t include violence, sex or swearing.

By: Christopher Shell

Christopher Shell — Wed, 04 May 2005 12:00:46 +0000

The sexual revolution is an interesting one. Ive already mentioned that I see it as a single interrelated causal nexus, rather than a cause-effect chain. But either way, the media (in the persons of Hugh Carleton Greene &c) were big players in its onset in this country.

Naturally the media will often reflect socisty. This has no relevance to the question of whether they played any part in creating that society in the first place. A few relevant factors:
(1) media people are atypical of the population at large: overbalance of young upwardly-mobile educated liberal whites etc. – so what they see as normal is no more than what is normal in their own circles. Of course, you could say that ppl of other ages, cultures and backgrounds were equally strong trend-setters – but without their having as much airtime on tv, one would be disinclined to believe this. The Christian contingent is a case in point. It constantly catches the largely nonChristian media world by surprise, in its bestsellers, in the strength of its feelings etc.. In other words, there are some subcultures which are better understood by tv moguls than others. It is the first group of subcultures which they will end up portraying as normal, whether statistically they are normal or not. This may then end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they normalise such things. This brings us on to normalisation…
(2) How do we determine what is ‘normal’? By what we see around us. If ppl on average spend several hours in front of the tv, then a decent proportion of what we see is what we see on tv. Hence a decent proportion of what we perceive to be normal will be derived from what we have seen on tv.

By: tom p

tom p — Wed, 04 May 2005 09:14:51 +0000

If all other societal factors could be discounted, and it could be shown that portrayal preceded action (it could easily, of course, be the other way round, with the media merely reflecting a growing trend in society. since it tends to lag behind most trends anyway, this is quite likely), then your incredibly narrow definition of your actual hypothesis would be less easily disprovable.
However, no man is an island, and the media does not operate in a vacuum. If memory serves, you previously referred to the ‘sexual revolution’ and many of the facets of the societal change it wrought. Your awareness of this makes it even more surprising that you genuinely believe that the meejah makes a large difference to the way adults behave.
Your talk of normalisation of certain behaviours is certainly appropriate with children, but adults have more experience and wisdom and are generally able to separate fiction from reality better than kids (on that last point, religious believers excepted, of course)

By: Christopher Shell

Christopher Shell — Tue, 03 May 2005 15:55:28 +0000

I think my suggestion is a more modest one. If the portrayals of X and the incidences of X both just so happen to rise sharply at exactly the same time (and in general their rises and falls mirror one another), AND no other obvious explanation springs to mind, then we may well have a case of causation.

By: tom p

tom p — Tue, 03 May 2005 12:52:16 +0000

the reality of X and the portrayal of X are clearly quite closely connected, since both centre on one thing: namely X

well, duh! however what you correctly didn’t say there is that portrayal of X leads to X.
Your statement in no way shows that portrayal of an event leads to a rise in an event.
You are clearly implying earlier that this is the case, so why not say it here?
Further to your point about divorce, if memory serves, the greatest cause of divorce is stress imposed by financial worries. The best way to minmise divorce would be to ensure that everyone was well off. However according to your usual ‘showing an event causes people to act it out’ (I paraphrase) argument, the best way to reduce divorce would be to ban screenings of kramer vs kramer