On December 8th, 1980, Mark David Chapman murdered famed musician John Lennon in New York City armed with a .38 revolver, several hollow point bullets, and a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (Lovett). On April 23rd, 2006, 23 year old Jeremy Allan Steinke and his 12-year-old girlfriend Jasmine Richardson murdered the girl’s parents and younger brother several hours after Steinke had watched Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (CBC News). December 1st, 1997 saw Michael Carneal, age 14, open fire on a group of students, allegedly influenced by a scene from the film adaptation of the Jim Carroll memoir The Basketball Diaries (AP). January 29th 1958, Charles Starkweather was arrested for eleven murders alongside his 14 year old lover. When he was arrested, he was in attire replicating the appearance of his professed idol, Jim Stark, James Dean’s iconic character from Rebel Without A Cause (Beaver, 34).
Whenever a bullet soars through the air, whenever blood is spilled, whenever tragedy strikes, the media typically sets out to find who is at fault, and as can be expected from the 24 hour news cycle Ouroboros, the media usually puts the blame on itself, or more specifically, the media outlets besides the ones placing the blame. No one who was alive in 1999 will forget the tragedy that was the Columbine Massacre, and neither will they forget the media blitz which followed, as news anchors, pundits, and all the many polyester clad commentators struggled to lay blame for the tragedy. I, for one, was nine years old, but remember vividly watching the unfolding accusations, fearing that I too had the potential to become a deranged killer, an unstoppable, murderous slave to the demands of an inexorable puppet master. For I, by the age of nine, had listened to music, seen movies, and even played videogames.
A large deal of blame for the Columbine Massacre was laid on musician Marilyn Manson, with concerned parties going so far as to protest Manson’s presence at the Denver stop of that year’s Ozzfest, with Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Rep. Tom Tancredo demanding he be taken off the bill, as Manson’s lyrics “hate, violence, death, suicide, drug use, and the attitudes and actions of the Columbine High School killers,” (D'Angelo ) and the obvious fear was that Manson’s presence would breed hate in the innocent audience members there to see other acts, such as Hatebreed. Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary Bowling For Columbine examined the allegations that Marilyn Manson’s music influenced the Columbine Massacre, revealing in part that the only allusions the shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold ever made to the singer was writing “Marilyn Manson sucks” in a notebook (Moore). I watched clips of the Manson protests on the news, fearing that my parents would discover my copies of Mechanical Animals and Antichrist Superstar on cassette (both Manson album) hidden amongst the Weird Al and The Eagles. I had developed an affinity for Manson, as had many disaffected youth of the late 90’s, and I was afraid that the same kind of murderous rage a sexually-ambiguous glam-rocker has instilled in Harris and Klebold was bound to effect me, as the news media would have me believe it would. Worse yet, I had also at that age been exposed to rap music, which as a study would reveal in 2003, resulted in even more violent tendencies.
Craig Anderson at Iowa State University performed a study in which they presented a group of students with music within the rap genre that contained what they dubbed “violent” lyrics (Anderson, 960). The study states that those who listened to the violent lyrics were more aggressive and hostile than those who did not. The artists in question were Cypress Hill, The Beastie Boys, and Run-DMC. It is worth noting that I have personally listened to every album by The Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, and to the best of my researching ability have only been able to find scattered violent lyrics. The most fighting done by The Beastie Boys was for their “…right to party” (“Fight For Your Right to Party”) and as for Run-DMC, their two most popular songs to date are a duet with Aerosmith (“Walk This Way”) and a Christmas novelty song (“Christmas In Hollis”). Yet, it cannot be avoided that rap does contain some violent lyrics. Indeed, one cannot argue that there is not a violent side to today’s music industry when lyrics exist like the following:
I'm shootin babies, no ifs ands or maybes/Hit mummy in the tummy if the hooker plays a dummy/Slit the wrist of little sis/After she sucked the dick, I stabbed her brother with the icepick/because he wanted me to fuck him from the back/but Smalls don't get down like that/Got your father hiding in a room; fucked him with the broom/Slit him down the back and threw salt in the wound. (“Dead Wrong”- The Notorious B.I.G.)
A new study by C. Nathan Dewall makes the assertion in a new study that violent lyrics have been on the rise in recent years, and that this accounts for the rise in violent behavior. That Eminem and Marilyn Manson have begun glorifying violence through music, and in doing so encourage their listeners to commit violent acts. Dewall’s study insinuates that there was a simpler time, before music was so dark and violent. Many critics of the modern music industry seem to repeat this sentiment, yet in all the research I’ve done, I’ve yet to find the time of musical innocence these critics seem to long for.
Indeed, if Marilyn Manson’s singing about his disdain for “the beautiful people” is what spurs on school shootings, why were there not violent crime sprees in 1982, when Bruce Springsteen released Nebraska? Those who suggest that lyrics have only become glorifying of violence in recent years forget that this album’s titular song tells the story of two thrill killers from the perspective of the main (unrepentant) killer. Clearly, those making the assertion have also forgotten how country music icon Johnny Cash has been telling of how he “…shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” as far back as 1955 in “Folsom Prison Blues”, or that the beloved Bobby Darin standard “Mack The Knife” is the story of a serial rapist written by Bertolt Brecht in 1928. Indeed, those very people who advocate bringing the music industry back to the “good old days” probably marched down the aisle at their wedding to “The Bridal Chorus”, which originates as the lamentation of bridesmaids as the titular character of the opera Lohengrin slaughters four men.
So why have no murders been attributed to the influence of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska? While Marilyn Manson has no lyrics that are particularly violent, while Nebraska contains the lyrics “From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska with a sawed-off .410 on my lap/Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path/
I can't say that I’m sorry for the things that we done/At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun.” So why is the former of the two artists the alleged inspirer of violence and not the latter? In fact, one of the few cases where any killer’s motives can be truly linked to music was a different Manson, namely Marilyn’s partial namesake, Charles. Allegedly, Charles heard within the Beatles music an angel who instructed him to murder the “piggies” and write “Helter Skelter” on their walls in blood. In doing so, Manson believed John Lennon was warning him of a coming race war (Bugliosi, 50). Indeed, it is the work of John Lennon, not Manson or Run-DMC or Springsteen, that has been conclusively linked to the factors that influenced two violent crimes (the other being Lennon’s own demise at the hands of Mark David Chapman, a matter which we shall return to.) Yet there has never been a parental group that has asserted on the record that perhaps The Beatles music influenced Columbine.
I can't say that I’m sorry for the things that we done/At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun.” So why is the former of the two artists the alleged inspirer of violence and not the latter? In fact, one of the few cases where any killer’s motives can be truly linked to music was a different Manson, namely Marilyn’s partial namesake, Charles. Allegedly, Charles heard within the Beatles music an angel who instructed him to murder the “piggies” and write “Helter Skelter” on their walls in blood. In doing so, Manson believed John Lennon was warning him of a coming race war (Bugliosi, 50). Indeed, it is the work of John Lennon, not Manson or Run-DMC or Springsteen, that has been conclusively linked to the factors that influenced two violent crimes (the other being Lennon’s own demise at the hands of Mark David Chapman, a matter which we shall return to.) Yet there has never been a parental group that has asserted on the record that perhaps The Beatles music influenced Columbine.
To further debunk the assertion that violent lyrics make violent individuals, one needs simply think about the logic of the assertion. If Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar truly insires its listeners to commit violent acts they wouldn’t otherwise do, then there had ought to be a global mass murder pandemic, since the album is owned by 7.6 million people worldwide. So perhaps it’s time to accept that violent music doesn’t make mass murderers. Indeed, to this day I continue to listen to Marilyn Manson, Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, even The Notorious B.I.G. I have worn out LPs of The Beatles and Nebraska from which I learned to play guitar. Yet, as of writing this paper, I have not murdered one person, never even severely injured anyone, and have never had the desire to. So violent music clearly isn’t what turns the innocent youth of America into killers. Indeed, there are some pundits who have never once suggested music is the cause. Most of them suggest that rather it was violent movies that ruin American youth.
In 1994, Oliver Stone released his film Natural Born Killers, his satire of the media’s fascination with grisly murder. The response was a media storm of fixation on murders attributed to copycat killers. To date, no less than twelve murders have been in some way allegedly influenced by the film. There have been numerous demands that the film be banned. Since its 1996 release, Wes Craven’s Scream has been “credited” with inspiring 4 murders. Elizabeth Newsom, in her 1963 report, alleges that Child’s Play 3, and it is important to note that it is not accusing Child’s Play 1 or 2, but Child’s Play 3 influenced the murder of a young British boy (Newsom, 34). Though, as Michael Brooke would later point out, “…those criticizing the report pointed out that her case studies were sourced from often highly speculative accounts in the press rather than independent first-hand research.”(Brooke) Returning to the personal a moment, I have watched Natural Born Killers, as well as all four Scream films, and have not at any pint been driven to the point of murder by them. I cannot speak to Child’s Play 3, but rather than try to defend all violent films outright, one should simply note that theirs is a marked difference between the violence in Child’s Play 3 and Natural Born Killers. Children are not taught that killing is ok by Chucky, Child’s Play’s protagonist, as Newsom would have her readers believe. If anything, it teaches kids’ killing is ok if they are put on death row and reincarnated as a child’s toy. Let us please note for a moment that the films Newsom chooses to attack in her essay are films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, and Friday the 13th. More recently, groups following Newsom’s lead suggest that the recent outburst of “torture porn” films like Saw and Hostel encourage violence even more than the earlier horror films. Yet, they seem to forget that there is a dramatic difference between imitatable violence and fantasy violence.
While it would be fairly easy to replicate the actions of Mickey and Mallory Knox from Natural Born Killers, who are two regular people armed with guns, it is another thing entirely to replicate the ability of Freddy Krueger to stretch their arms across an alleyway, scraping their knife fingers across a wall, then cutting off their own fingers and growing, all the while stalking young girls in their dreams. Further to the point, Chuck is a sentient children’s toy, and Jason Vorhees is a mentally handicapped zombie. So unless Jason X encourages a child to cryogenically freeze himself so that he can awake in the future, escape a cryogenics chamber onboard a space station and murder a crew of people while becoming “Mecha-Jason”, then Jason Vorhees is only as guilty of influencing murder as Jim Stark is for influencing Charles Starkweather back in 1958. Similarly, Saw and Hostel actually further from replicable violence than that. To be Leatherface of Texas Chain Saw Massacre fame, all you need is a chain saw. To imitate Jigsaw of the Saw series, one needs an engineering degree, months of planning, and elaborate torture chambers.
So perhaps fantasy violence doesn’t inspire real violence. Indeed, many people saw Aragorn cut the head of an Orc off in The Return of the King, yet there has yet to be an epidemic of people beheading their neighbors in the name of Gondor. So let’s examine real violence in cinema to see if perhaps that is more influential. Michael Carneal was allegedly influenced by the infamous 20 second-long shooting scene in The Basketball Diaries. The scene in question was even brought into a congressional hearing on the subject of media influenced violence. Yet, as Henry Jenkins pointed out later when it was his turn on the stand:
William Bennett just asked us if we can make meaningful distinctions between different kinds of violent entertainment. Well, I think meaningful distinctions require us to look at images in context, not looking at 20 second clips in isolation. From what Bennett just showed you, you would have no idea that The Basketball Diaries was a film about a poet, that it was an autobiographical work about a man who had struggled between dark urges and creative desires, that the book on which it was based was taught in high school literature classes, and that the scene we saw was a fantasy which expressed his frustrations about the school, not something he acts upon and not something the film endorses. (Jenkins)
Filmmakers create films with violent acts with a context, and it is the responsibility of the film-viewer to understand that context. For the most part, they do. Natural Born Killers and The Basketball Diaries have been viewed by countless audience members, and there are only a few isolated incidents of violence that can be vaguely attributed to being reminiscent to the scenes of violence in the films. To blame Jim Carroll for a few people interpreting The Basketball Diaries as an advocation of violence would be akin to blaming J.D. Salinger for the death of John Lennon. Furthermore, it should be noted that Terrence Malick’s Badlands has been far from vilified as other violent films have. Telling a far more accurate tale of two thrill killers than Natural Born Killers, since Malick based it off of the Starkweather homicides, the film has been praised for its sharp cinematography, beautiful storytelling, and has even been deemed culturally and historically significant enough to be placed in the National Film Registry. There has not been one violent crime attributed to the viewing of Badlands. Personally, I have seen all of the films previously mentioned, with the exception of Child’s Play 3, and as of the writing of this paper, I have not murdered anyone. Perhaps viewing Child’s Play 3 would be the tipping point.
One has to wonder if screen violence truly influences actual violence. Let’s assume for a moment that despite all this essay has said, it is an accurate assertion. How, then, did Mary Bell, the 11 year old murderer of two children, learn how to kill back in 1968, a full 26 years before Natural Born Killers hit the screen? (Sereny) Are we to assume some bizarre time vortex sent a CD of Antichrist Superstar into the bedroom of a young Jack The Ripper? One can only wonder how the first warring tribes of Cro-Magnon on Pangaea were able to read Catcher in the Rye and hear its demands to murder the innocent.
Of course, one could counter by suggesting that violent media had always existed, from Aaron behanding Titus in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus to Jehovah’s sadistic torture of Job in The Bible. Yet not all Shakespeare scholars or religiously faithful are serial killers. So perhaps it is not the films, or the books, or the CDs that make murderers. Indeed, it seems as if the truth is not that cinema corrupts the innocent, but nor does it bear no responsibility at all. It is as one character utters at the end of Wes Craven’s Scream “Now Sid, don't you blame the movies. Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!” An unstable individual with violent inclinations could see a film or a song or a book as the tipping point into a violent rage, but at what point can one blame the author. Many are quick to blame Wes Craven for Freddy Krueger, but nobody says James Dean is responsible for the Starkweather homicides. Similarly, why is Marilyn Manson the cause of the Columbine Massacre, but John Lennon not the cause of the Manson Family Murders. If Mickey and Mallory Knox were the true villains of the April 23rd, 2006 murders and not Jeremy Allan Steinke and Jasmine Richardson, then by that logic, J.D. Salinger is a mass murderer.
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