Summary
Contents
Subject index
Taking the provocative stand that television violence has been misinterpreted, this book posits that rather than undermining the social order, television supports order by providing a safe outlet for aggressive impulses. Fowles demonstrates that the scientific literature does not support what many believe; asks readers to question their viewing habits; explains that the anti-violence critique is best understood as the key issue in the conflict between high and popular culture; situates the arrival of televised violence within the historical context of the disallowance of traditionally sanctioned targets of aggression.
Backwards and Forwards
Backwards and Forwards
To this point, the argument has been that the assault on television violence is absolutely unwarranted. Seen within the broad context of human history, television violence is simply the most recent and least damaging venue for the routinized working out of innate aggressiveness and fear. Societies need to tame the maliciousness of their populaces in the interest of their own well-being, and symbolic displays of video violence is a late-twentieth-century response to that perpetual requirement. Without harm to himself or herself or others, the voluntary violence viewer steeps himself or herself in phantasms of vile play, derring-do, and deterrence, and emerges in an improved state of mind. This occurs not occasionally but nightly and by the tens of millions; the ...
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