VIOLENT MEDIA IS GOOD FOR KIDS BY Gerard Jones Free Essay Example, 1000 words

Suddenly I had a fantasy self to carry my stifled rage and buried desire for power. I had a fantasy self who was a self: unafraid of his desires and the worlds disapproval, unhesitating and effective in action. "Puny boy follow Hulk! " roared my fantasy self, and I followed. I followed him to new friends -- other sensitive geeks chasing their own inner brutes -- and I followed him to the arrogant, self-exposing, self-assertive, superheroic decision to become a writer. Eventually, I left him behind, followed more sophisticated heroes, and finally my own lead along a twisting path to a career and an identity. (Jones) Just like any other impressionable child, he found an outlet by which he could be creative and unleash his pent up emotions without actually getting physical with anybody. He used the influence positively as it fed his imagination and allowed him to dream beyond the borders set by his parents and the limits of violent media story telling. Upon reaching his 30s, Jones had successfully parlayed his violent comic book exposure, or creative violence exposure as Mr. We will write a custom essay sample on VIOLENT MEDIA IS GOOD FOR KIDS BY Gerard Jones or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Jones describes it within his article, into a successful career as a comic book creator and author. What exactly is bad about creative violence when it can inspire children to dream about their futures? Its kind of hard to find an argument against that isnt it? I must point out though that Mr. Jones has perhaps unwittingly committed a fallacy by implying that violent media no longer has a cause and effect scenario on the youth of today. Jones is quoted within his article as having tried to explain away the cause and effect (fallacy) scenario as: Im not going to argue that violent entertainment is harmless. I think it has helped inspire some people to real-life violence. I am going to argue that its helped hundreds of people for every one its hurt, and that it can help far more if we learn to use it well. I am going to argue that our fear of "youth violence" isnt well-founded on reality, and that the fear can do more harm than the reality. We act as though our highest priority is to prevent our children from growing up into murderous thugs -- but modern kids are far more likely to grow up too passive, too distrustful of themselves, too easily manipulated. (Jones) Although it is evident that Jones is on the right track with his argument, the truth is that the future generations will be anything but passive, distrustful of themselves, or easily manipulated because they belong to an era of children who grew up with creative violence as an outlet for their inner rage.