I remember Dionna Warwicks attack on hip hop from its derogatory lyrics add references to violence on a constant basis. Being a child of the culture I thought to myself she and anyone who thought like her was wrong and were only using attacks on rap music to get back at the fact that they were old and out of touch with what was current in music. Now that the child has grown up in music I honestly say now Mrs. Warwick may have been right all along. Not just with music, but with movies and video games have become more aggressive and realistic. I also feel they are subconsciously fulfilling a psychological primate need to kill and create destruction that is within all of us. I recently saw the movie “The Purge” which led me to ask, “How far off are we from this becoming a reality?”
What does science say about listening to music?
A few years ago a team of Montreal researchers were trying to pinpoint “the potent pleasurable stimulus” that music creates. The study was published in Nature NeuroScience online magazine. The research was based off of taking a study group of 217 that was dwindled down to the top ten who most reliably got “chills” listening to instrumental music. The group was then asked to bring in a playlist of their favorite songs. Combining the methodology of both PET and fMRI they were able to accurate snapshot of the activity in the brain while you listen to music. The first discovery is that dopamine is released in both dorsal and ventral striatum when triggered by music. Both regions of the brain have long been associated with pleasurable stimuli. The result in the listening to music is we get a sense of happiness normally listening to music we like. My question to that is could the same effect music has on the dopamine release also trigger drops of seratonin the chemical responsible for violent aggressive behavior in certain individuals? Something to think about.
I know it’s a stretch to think that just listening to music can make you a killer. On the other hand Tyler Hadley(17yrs old) told his friend Michael Mandell that he had done exactly that. Become a killer I mean, Tyler confessed to killing both his parents with hammer hours before he had over 60 people over his house for a house party. Don’t worry the room where he killed his parents was locked and only Tyler and Michael knew why the door was locked and blocked off. Mandell states Hadley told him that the devil possessed him along with rap music and constant arguing with his parents. Tyler also confessed to taking the drug ecstasy. Mandell was in disbelief about the whole event. “After he told me, I didn’t believe him because he’s been my best friend forever. I would never suspect anything like this,” Mandell said. “I was looking around, he told me if I look enough I could see signs. I looked on the floor and could see signs of blood.”
Science and films
Neurocinematic studies aim to find out the secrets our brains holds during share experience behind movie watching. “Movies are highly complex, multidimensional stimuli,” said Uri Hasson, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Princeton University. “Some areas of the brain analyze sound bites, some analyze word context, some the sentence content, music, emotional aspect, color or motion.”In one study, for example, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging—or a procedure that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow—to watch volunteer’s brains as they viewed Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Alfred Hitchcock’s Bang! You’re Dead and Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. They also showed participants unedited clips of a random scene filmed in Washington Square park in New York City, which they thought would most closely reflect a cinematic experience of reality. They then compared all of the viewers’ neurological responses to calculate an inter-subject correlation, or the degree to which brain processes aligned between viewers watching the same film.
Not all movies elicited the same cranial reactions, they found. The highly structured Hitchcock film similarly engaged nearly 65 percent of the viewers’ cortexes (the outer layer of the brain that plays a role in processing memory, attention, awareness, thought, language and consciousness), for example, while the segments of reality taken from the park engaged the same responses in only about 5 percent of the viewers’ cortexes. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ranked similar to Hitchcock, at 45 percent, while Curb Your Enthusiasm fell to 18 percent.
In other words, highly controlled films, in turn, exert a higher level of control on viewers’ minds than unstructured clips that are closer to our day-to-day experiences of reality. When Hitchcock directs our gaze to a bloody knife or an open door, we all look together. In real life, however, our attention is diverted, focusing at will on the guy with the newspaper, the woman wrestling with her shopping bags or the wind in the trees, with little rhyme or reason. Neurocinematic studies while it is still a young field may in theory use movies to study the behavior in the brain.
We have discussed the science behind movies and the studies that may lead us into finding out if movies can actually direct us to kill. While that is still for the future to let us know, movies are being blamed for crime and murder today. The Colorado shooter James Holmes was quoted as saying “I am the Joker” when he was caught by police. Holmes also mimicked the Joker by booby trapping his own apartment. A couple in Chicago tried to rob a bank wearing nun habit’s and ghoulish masks. The couple was said to have gotten the idea from watching the movie “The Town” where the robbers wore a nun’s habit, semi auto’s and a big bag for the cash. The couple walked away with $120,000 dollars before getting caught.
Kyle Shaw a teenager who was inspired by “Project Mayhem” from the movie “Fight Club”. Shaw was able to set off a bomb made out of fireworks, a plastic bottle and electrical tape outside a starbucks in NYC back in 2009. One of Shaw’s classmates said that Shaw was well-known for his obsession with the book and movie. In Iowa one male student bit over 10 girls in one month after watching the Twilight films. His father knew about the boys over indulgent love for the film and the boy was sent to juvenile corrections. Who did see this coming? The popular show Dexter has at least one fanatic that claims they highly influenced by the show. Andrew Conley(17) strangled his 10-year-old brother by choking him out. Prosecutor Aaron Negangard says “The fact is, he has said on numerous occasions he had fantasized about killing people,” In fact, an hour into his first interrogation by police, Conley said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s called ‘Dexter,’ and it’s on Showtime. And I feel like him because he’s a serial killer of bad people … but I just feel like him.”
Films like Natural Born Killers, Mortal Kombat, Doom and The Basketball Diaries were accused of inspiring murder including the mass shooting that happened at Columbine High School. Lee Boyd Malvo was convicted of murder in 2002 for sniper attacks in Washington DC. It was stated that Malvo was gripped by the idea that he was in a blurred reality and was being mind controlled. The idea came from the groundbreaking special effect autochthonous film “The Matrix”, he even wrote in his cell “Free yourself of the Matrix.” The “Matrix Defense” was also used in the case of Vadim Mieseges a San Franciso man who dismembered his landlady and told police he was sucked into “The Matrix”. He was found not guilty by plea of insanity.
Thierry Jaradin who was 24 years old stabbed his neighbor Alison Cambier who was 15 years old 30 times while wearing a black robe and ghoulish mask worn by the killers in the Scream movie. It is said that Jaradin killed Cambier because she did not want his sexual advances. John Hinckley Jr. was said to have been inspired by the movie “Taxi Driver” Hinckley who was fixated on Jodie Foster’s character attempted to shoot President Reagan six times, but only 1 bullets hit Reagan at the time. Reagan’s press secretary was hit in the head by another bullet meant for the President. Hinckley, who was later found not guilty by reason of insanity, said that the shooting was “the greatest love offering in the history of the world,” and that “Everybody, but everybody, knows about John and Jodie.”
Science behind Video Games –
Specific types of video games may have a multitude of effects on and improvements and visuospatial attention. Video games differ on a range of dimensions and use different cognitive, affective and behavioral systems. Evidence is growing that emphasizes that video games effect social and antisocial behaviors, cognitive styles and affective processing. Laboratory studies of the relationship between exposure to video game violence and aggression demonstrate that exposure( as little as 15-30 min) to violent content during game play can result in increases of aggressive thoughts and actions.
Further research examining the effects of video game violence on aggression can be understood within the context of the general aggression model(GAM). GAM is a bio-social-cognitive theory designed to account for short and long-term effects of exposure to media violence. Continued repeated exposure and reinforcement of aggression can lead to the negative development of aggressive beliefs, attitudes, perceptual schemata, expectations, behavior scripts and desensitization to aggression. The end result is a possible increase in aggressive personality and changes in situational variables including peer groups and social activities.
One instant where life imitates art too well is where a 8-year-old boy from Slaughter, LA(that’s a real town) shot his 90-year-old caregiver in the back of the head. Police say the boy was playing Grand Theft Auto shortly before the boy murdered Marie Smothers with one shot. In the state of Louisiana anyone under the age of 10 years of age cannot be charged with a crime. “You have a child that does not know the impact or the consequences of the act that he has committed,” Sclynski Legier, an attorney, told WAFB-TV. “He truly doesn’t understand that.” It was never made clear how the 8-year-old got access to the .38 caliber weapon that was used in the slaying of the woman the boy says had a “normal, loving relationship.”
In 2007 sixteen year old Danny Petric shot both his parents because they banned him from playing Halo 3 in their home. The father found out the teen bought the video game and kept it over a friend’s house after the father forbid him from playing it. The father then put the game in a locked gun cabinet. Danny gained access to both the gun and video game and shot both parents after they sat down to watch a baseball game. The father lived and later blamed the crime on Halo 3.
In 2008 in New York City six teens went on a crime spree in Grand Theft Auto fashion. During the spree there was a reported mugging, motorists were robbed and smashing vehicles with crowbars and baseball bats. After they were eventually caught and arrested, Det. Sgt Anthony Repalone said “It was determined that they were emulating the character in that Grand Theft Auto game, going on a crime spree.” and “’We got certain admissions’ from the boys.” There is no word on the final sentence of the boys. We can be sure that their Grand Theft Auto defense probably didn’t help sway anyone in their favor in court.
To bring this article to a close, there is substantial evidence mounting against video games, movies and even music to a degree. All three of these mediums contain mind altering and mood altering traits that have been blamed on increased aggression in our society and our culture. For some people it is a stretch to believe that playing a game can end up killing someone. Personal responsibility, ethics, morals and values has to weigh in at some point on this complex, immeasurable quagmire.With that in mind if all people needed was a push then the increase aggression and the other negative attributes would be just that right nudge. As always what do you think???/
seems that love is overrated. Excuse me, the portrayal of love on tv, movies and online is overrated. There’s a million movies about the story of two young lovers finding fate and themselves and then fighting all the odds to become star crossed lovers. It’s the tale of love conquers all, but it only happens when you’re young and have no responsibilities. The other side are the blundering mid 30’s or 40’s age when the kids are hormone raging teens, your job has become mundane drudgery and your parents seem to be enjoying their golden age. Some how the characters are stuck in the middle, where the love well is drying up and they re-evaluate their love, but not until temptation, either from another person or life changing event happens. Out of both types of romance movies, which one is the one that makes it through?
newageoftruth 