your suite101 essay

john garvin jgarvin at bendcable.com
Tue Sep 18 17:03:30 CEST 2001


Robert:
"I'll be brief for all you interested in positive discussions on Ducks.

I wrote a commentary on the website Suite 101 on how the entertainment
industry might change after this past week's events.

Here's the link
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/11/79756

You comments and passing along my thoughts would be appreciated."



Hello Robert,

I think you are making the same mistake that most would-be censors make:
you are equating comic book fictional violence with real world actual
violence: most people, yes, even most kids, know the difference and do
not need to be shielded by those who want to make us "more sensitive to
life."  I grew up reading violent horror comics, watching violent
western TV shows and violent cartoon shows.  A dozen American indians or
more died each week on Disney's own "Davey Crockett" tv show in the
1960s, for instance, or Jonny Quest would use a high-powered rifle to
take out several bad guys at a time.  How many people of my generation
grew up to be killers?  Probably the exact same number that have from
every generation, whether they were reading penny dreadfuls from the
1910s, pulps from the 20s, read comics from the 50s, or played violent
video games from the current generations.  I have yet to read a
convincing study which shows otherwise.   Dr. Frederick Wertham did not
save a single child from delinquency, and making entertainment more
"sensitive" is only going to make it more politically correct and
bland.   The Disneyland theme park is currently in the process of
removing all of the pretend "guns" from its park.  What will this
accomplish?  Do the whining parents who have complained about armed
pirates and frontiersmen really believe that these pretend gun fights
are going to turn their children into violent criminals?  The censors in
Disney comics are even more ridiculous:  They removed a six-shooter from
a Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge story which took place in the old west!   Try
this instead, have parents actually spend *time* with their kids, and
teach them the difference between right and wrong, fiction and reality.
It is not the responsibility of comics and other forms of entertainment
to educate us or make us "more sensitive to life."  It is the
responsibility of comics to entertain us.  If you personally don't find
fictional violence entertaining, then spend you dollars elsewhere, but
don't water down comics for the rest of us with an anti-violence crusade
that will change nothing.

John Garvin





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