Mediacy Articles – Volume 15, No. 3
What do scar-faced teen icon Freddy Krueger and rap performer Bobby Brown have in common? They have both been blamed for inciting a 13-year-old Kitchener boy to sexually assault his ten year-old step-sister. Horror hero Freddy Krueger slashed his way into the collective consciousness of thrill-seeking teens during the 1980s in the notorious Nightmare on Elm Street horror flicks. Every woman's worst nightmare, Freddy would enter his victims' (usually nubile young females) nightmares then kill them, often in a bloody, stylized manner. Bobby Brown's song Humping Around was also cited as a contributing factor in making the thirteen year old sexually aggressive.
These are the latest victims in a long line of teen cult heroes who have been slammed for a host of deviant behaviors. Rock music has traditionally taken the most hits for allegedly causing everything from teen silliness to suicide. Various lawsuits have been launched (so far without much success) charging heavy metal rock groups with inciting teens to kill themselves. British rock singer Ozzy Osbourne's song Suicide Solution was linked to the suicide of a nineteen year old California youth in 1984.
Sex and violence in popular music, rock videos, films and, most recently, video games and collector cards portraying serial killers are the forbidden fruit for today's curious adolescents. The more adults threaten to censor, ban or restrict the availability of these items – the more alluring their appeal to youth. Yet we deny any connection between our society's fascination with media products containing sex and violence and real sexual assault – at our peril.
Many of my students strongly resist the notion that they are adversely influenced by the glut of sex and violence they are exposed to. Yet when asked if their younger brothers or sister would be negatively affected by a steady diet of so called slasher films, most indicated they would. One confident female student admitted to having recurring nightmares after covertly watching part of a slasher film her older siblings had rented.
But the fact is, most of the teens I know tend to believe they are too sophisticated to be affected by make-believe violence. One of my male students laughed when describing the plot of the horror film Slumber Party Massacre in which a crazed killer stalks, then skewers, his female victims to death with a menacing drill.
The now famous amateur video of the Rodney King beating shows us that even real graphic incidents of violence lose their visceral impact if viewed repeatedly. Chilling scenes of real violence on reality type television programs such as Code 3 and I Witness Video tend to evoke less of a response with each episode.
I have witnessed a kind of psychic and emotional numbing in the reactions of my students when discussing such programs. Being exposed to countless violent acts, real or manufactured leaves all of us somewhat jaded. What will be the cumulative long term effects of all this violence on society? Will we be able to react at all to real violent acts which may occur before our eyes? Or will we freeze and stare with eyes glazed as though viewing just another reality TV show?
Soon pizza-sized satellite dishes will serve up more than 500 television channels for the public to choose from. Cable companies will also offer a comparable smorgasborg of visual delights. If present network scheduling is any indication, programs containing sex and violence will be even more enticing to impressionable young psyches. Some software programs for computer users now feature soft-core pornography for those who so wish to indulge.
Clearly communication technology has surpassed our ability to keep pace with the social and moral implications of such rapid change. The ever-expanding information highway threatens to deluge our youth with an increasing array of violent and sexually explicit images and lyrics.
Certainly our children's ability to cope with this onslaught will, as it always has, depend largely upon the internalization of sound parental values. As well, parents should take an active role in monitoring the amount and type of music television programs, video, and computer games their children may have access to. Yet how we help our children process these potentially harmful messages will also be an important factor in their overall psychological and emotional well-being.
Hence parents and schools have a responsibility to ensure that students be given the opportunity to openly discuss and critically examine the issues surrounding violent or sexually explicit material. One way to lessen the impact of such material is to deconstruct it. Studying slasher films or heavy metal rock videos in segments reduces them to the largely misogynistic, formulaic products that they are. Young people quickly learn that what appear to be seamless extensions of reality are merely the result of carefully constructed camera shots and angles, soundtrack manipulation and special effects. They also begin to see the connections between the predominant "female as victim" motif in various forms of pop culture and the real problem of violence against women in society.
What will become even more essential for our children in the high-tech 90's will be their ability to distinguish between what – in this vast electronic field of dreams – is really important and what is not. It is imperative we help guide them along the way; otherwise Freddy's nightmare may very well become our reality.
Michael G. Redfern teaches media studies and English at St. David Catholic School in Waterloo, Ontario.