See Jane go mad. See Dick chop head.

Being somewhat familiar with human psychology - and with the inner works of the media - I always found it profoundly irritating when I heard self-important "pundits"and "media experts" (even some "psychology experts") deny any lasting impact of behaviours - particularly recurring patterns* of violence and/or graphic gratuitous sex - depicted on TV and in cinema (and now the internet) on the viewers, especially those in the formative stages of their development.

I found them either disingenuous - which would inevitably lead to rather sinister conclusions regarding their intentions - or... well, stupid. There is no other word for it.

In either case, such "experts" had no business lecturing the public - even overtly mocking those who were concerned.

But, interestingly enough, I have noticed such opinions becoming more and more muted, less and less prominent in the past few years - in the first years of this not-so-brave new millenium. (BTW, do you know anyone who loves the new millenium so far?)

What made them pause?

Was it the many school shootings, in the USA and other places of the globe?

Or would those "experts" still insist and perhaps attribute the swift spread of this cultural phenomenon (yes, we are at a point when we actually have to call school shootings a "cultural phenomenon") to some sort of virus?
A contagious insanity? 
What spreads it? Rats? Pigeons? What?
And I wonder how would those same people respond to the same question today.

Because this is today's news:

Skinheads plan killing 88 people and beheading 14 African-Americans


Beheading?
My, it's becoming quite a fashion, isn't it?

I haven't been really counting, but it strikes me there has been a remarkable increase in the popularity of this practice, which was once upon a time, not so long ago, considered (and often misinterpreted) in modern Western societies as an especially gruesome, culturally alien - "barbaric" in the true meaning of the word - way of terminating someone's life.

I am not going to count them even now, but I can think of at least three or four cases of people parading someone else's detached head - in public - in the past few months alone.

But, interestingly, no such cases occurred prior to the early 2000's, which brought to our TV screens the infamous, gut-rending sight of kidnapped individuals in orange jumpers, with their abductors wielding sables in the proximity of their necks - and more than that, FAR more than that, on internet sites that feed on morbid curiosity.

(Not that it matters - not one bit - but yours truly has never watched such a video, nor do I intend to.)


This is not the place to discuss the reasons for and against airing such videos. Some other time, perhaps.
But I would like one - just one! - of those anything-goes apologists of yore to come and tell us that the media does nothing to desensitise the viewing public, that people do not imitate what they see on their screens; that the media does not influence people's view of what is acceptable - and what is shocking.

Would they still have the dubious guts of looking people in the eye and claiming that there is no such influence?

I am not sure they would. And, frankly, I don't care.

The damage has been done. Thresholds of tolerance have been breached - long ago - and there is no going back.

"Shock value" is more than a term. In a society that craves notoriety at all price, even "shock value" really is a - value. We see that every day, in seedy pictures everywhere. Only, starlets publicly displaying their very private parts and other such cultural "icons" is just the tip of an iceberg. And tastelessness is the least dangerous of the shocking "values" currently in use.

Now, confronted with an increasingly global culture of violence, we have to find a way of radically healing the minds, of young people especially (and I don't know how this could be done) - or else, the world as we once knew it will sink in its own violence.

Who needs "terrorists" to bring down the "Western civilisation"?

This civilisation will behead itself.With its own sword, by its own hand.

***

For a somewhat more sedate - and coherent - expose on the same subject, go here:

The media doesn't influence us... except when it does

(and related articles)


NOTE (*)
When there are no recurring, systematically observed - i.e. memorable and thus easily mimicked - patterns, when gratuitous violence (and other excessive behaviours) is dispersed in a variety of "random" manifestations, any excesses are much more likely to remain outside the frame of the common cultural code of expression (In every group or society there are thresholds, progressively transgressed, of behaviour - i.e. of what "we DO" and what "we do NOT do". Even destructive, "negative" behaviour has its code of general acceptability.)

They are still potentially damaging, but at least they don't spread as easily - and they are far less alluring to would-be "copycats".

RELATED CONTENT:
The Right to Violence and Cynicism