As kids, my sister used to watch horror, along with my brother. They’d get up late at night and turn the TV on with the volume low so my Mother wouldn’t wake up and catch them. My sister would have nightmares afterwards. As an adult, after she was nearly killed by a man who raped her and pounded her head into a concrete floor over and over again she changed her mind about watching horror. Now she is paranoid and even years later is afraid and has given that fear of home invasion, strangers and bad men to her son and daughters. Her children have nightmares along with her now.

I’ve been participating in a discussion about issues regarding censorship and the use of torture from the TV show, 24. How far should TV and movies be allowed to go before someone tells them to stop, they’ve taken it too far? A lot of people are against censorship, just because it restricts their rights, not because they actually want to watch all that stuff themselves. But, rights is a double edged deal. The rights of someone to see and create violence for entertainment infringes on my right to feel safe. It can be argued that TV and movies and such do not make me unsafe. However, having violence, rape, murder, torture and horror presented as entertainment every day and night, seven days a week, 365 days a year does change how they are perceived. If seeing someone brutally killed in front of you doesn’t bother you at all cause you see it every time you watch 24…. what does bother you? Where do you stop?

If someone breaks into a house, kills the family living there but gets it all on film and sells that film to be shown on TV would you watch it? If it’s on TV isn’t it entertainment? CNN showed a kid being shot in the streets (I forget where now). There was a lot of protest about them showing that. The kid really was shot, it was a real kid - it was reality. However, I’m sure that day on TV there were plenty of people shot, stabbed, raped, etc in the name of entertainment. Why isn’t it all entertainment? So what if it was a real kid? If watching people be killed is entertaining what difference does it make that one was fiction and the other was reality? All that matters is that you had fun watching, right?
[tags]censorship, media, TV, movies, violence, murder, rape[/tags]