Gerard Jones’ essay “violent media is Good for Kids” was a very interesting paper. He opens with a story of him as a child, “alone and afraid” of the rage that was inside of him. His parents taught him that violence was wrong and that rage was something that could be simply overcome. Jones’ main argument was aimed at parents, saying that they are stifling a child’s natural instinct of anger and rage.
He wrote that “we send the message to our children in a hundred ways that their craving for imaginary gun battles and symbolic killing is wrong…”, and uses his own childhood as an example of how comics were good for him because they were juvenile and violent. I feel that his explanation of our fear of “youth violence” is logically sound, and I agree with him that violent media can actually help children. Jones states the children will feel rage. He goes on to explain that children are going to get angry regardless of how sweet the child is, or how much the parents try to help it.
Jones proposes that “creative violence”- head-bonking cartoons, bloody video games, playground karate, toy guns- gives children a tool to help control and manage their rage. While growing up, his parents never really allowed him to project violence and anger. But through reading The Hulk, he was able to pull himself, and eventually an entire audience of his own readers, “out of emotional traps by immersing themselves in violent stories”.
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As an avid reader of comics and a player of video games, I find Jones’ ideas, that violent forms of media help children explore violent emotions without any consequences, very convincing. “Fear, greed, power-hunger, rage: these are aspects of our selves that we try not to experience… but often want, even need to experience vicariously through… others. ” He found this quote from Melanie Moore, PhD, and with her, he helped develop the program Power Play, which helps children “improve their self-knowledge and sense of potency through heroic, combative storytelling”.
Jones uses a lot of real life experience as his sources for his theories. As I’ve previously stated, he has worked with Dr. Melanie Moore to create a program to help children deal with rage in a healthy manner. Jones has also worked with children individually. Emily was a little girl who “went around exploring with fantasies so violent that other mom’s would draw her mother aside and whisper, “I think you should know something about Emily… ””. Her parents were splitting up and she wrote violent stories to help her cope with the anger.
The more parents tried to stifle the creativity, the more she “acted out the roles of her angry super heroes”. With Jones’ and her mother’s help, she was able to become “a leader among her peers, the one student on her class who could truly pull boys and girls together”. His use of visual aids is also quite interesting. Jones is a writer, who mostly writes fiction novels, and is also works for various DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse comics. The two visual aids he uses are scenes from his and Gene Ha’s comic, “Oktane”.
The synopsis of the comic states: He’s nine friggin’ feet of sinew, muscle, and auto parts, with an insatiable appetite for motor oil and action. He may look single-minded, but he’s got two things on his mind: gettin’ his next paycheck and makin’ the next fill-up. From what Jones states in his essay, as well as the depictions we are shown in the visual aids, this comic is not for a pacifist. Though he doesn’t talk about his own work, we can assume that these comics are violent, gory, and are without shame that kids are reading it.
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While he does agree that violent entertainment isn’t all harmless, and that it has cause some real life violence, Jones feels that “it’s helped hundreds of people for every one it’s hurt… ”. Our fear of “youth violence” is in fact, more harmful than the actual violent material. He goes on to explain that while a parent is mostly trying to prevent their children from turning into “murderous thugs”, they’re actually turning their children into someone that is overly passive, distrustful of themselves, and even easily manipulated.
He states that “in the process, we risk confusing them about their natural aggression in the same way the Victorians confused their children about their sexuality”. Jones ends his essay by stating that parents tell their children that play fighting is wrong, and try to steer them away from certain action figures and media. And in the end, “When we try to protect our children from their feelings and fantasies, we shelter them not against violence but against power and selfhood”.
