In Today's America people are constantly exposed to violence- the video games are more violent, movies have increased exponentially in violence, television has increased in violence, the news is full of violence, and on-line media is full of violent images and video. Yesterday, The Huffington Post had a video of a head on highway collision as 'news,' and someone here on DK posted a video of murdered children in Syria (which really is news, I guess). These sorts of things would have been hard to find a scant decade ago, in some cases with good reason, but today they are a constant in news.
And, for an insane publicity seeker, there's no quicker way to stardom, then great violence.
It's been shown in studies of children who play violent video games that they become more violent when they play them, and return to normal baseline when they are removed from them. (there was a baby in the audience at Batman by the way)
Art, though, is mostly a response to societal demands, and yes partly an instigator as well.
11 years of constant war have taken a psychic toll-and it can be seen in the sorts of art people watch. More bodies going through basic training take a toll, more wounded minds coming back do to. Living among you today, are people who pilot drone bombs in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, then they play golf, or drive to the mall with all the rest.
A new report released today by SIPRI, a Swedish-based think tank, reveals that U.S. military spending has almost doubled since 2001. The U.S. spent an astounding $698 billion on the military last year, an 81% increase over the last decade.
U.S. spending on the military last year far exceeded any other country. We spent six times more than China — the second largest spender. Overall, the world expended $1.6 trillion on the military, with the United States accounting for the lion’s share..
http://thinkprogress.org/...
It's been three years since I last flew to the US. There's a sense of tension and fear in the air there that I do not remember in the past. Fear and complacency, as people wait in long lines, go through scanners, remove their shoes, it almost feels as if they're all waiting for something bad to happen, the other shoe to drop, if you will.
The online reaction from the American right has been laughable and predictable: more guns, better guns would have prevented this-despite that they never have, and that gun ownership in the USA ranks as #1 in the entire world already -- 88.8 guns per 100 residents (wikipedia).
No, actually, more guns might have caused 10 other smaller incidents, that we never would have even heard about since these are so common, and because the tension level is so high.
I don't think though that gun control is the entire solution to the problem (though it's needed, no doubt) , I think that American society needs to take a strong look at itself, and re-think what it wants to be, re-think why it's acceptable to use tax money to cause violence elsewhere in other nations, with nary a look over, and re-think how militarized Americans want to be, all the way down to the kind of art produced, and whether children and babies should be viewing it or not.