Carl Cannon Honey, I Warped the Kids & John Leonard Why Blame TV - Literature review Example

Carl Cannon – Honey, I Warped the Kids & John Leonard – Why Blame TV? Carl Cannon in his essay Honey, I Warped the kids introduces the subject of violence propagated through the medium of TV in a roundabout way that all other social evils are given coverage and nobody is pointing towards the violence in kids’ behavior due to their viewing of TV programs. The industry people, earning good money via the medium through programs and advertisements, provided the answer that violence on the small screen projects a catharsis of human emotions, which is far from truth.. To prove his point and argue, Cannon quotes the example of experimental study of 1956 when a group of dozen each children viewed violent and peaceful cartoons and it was found that children who viewed violent cartoon behaved aggressively. It showed the bad effects of violence being shown on the small screen. The structure of the essay shows that it is a thesis essay that finishes with an analysis. The writer has given a list of numbers and dates with some examples to prove his point that TV is playing a negative role in propagating violence. One-by-one, Cannon quotes others views similar to his to blame TV for the increasing incidents of violence. He advocates censorship with caution. One of the strong points raised by Cannon is the research study done by two doctors on four groups of youth. The last group who viewed slasher films showed desensitized behavior towards a particular rape victim and other rape victims in general. To further substantiate his point, Cannon questions high profile police officials about the changed violent behavior pattern seen among children. They also agree with him that some sort of control is must because there is some relation in real life violence and violence depicted on TV. Cable and rental movies have further worsened the situation. Mostly, crimes were committed by such youth who viewed horror movies and violent stuff. Cannon has made good use of logos, ethos and pathos – the Aristotelian appeals to prove his argument right. Cannon style of writing is solemn and objective. On the other hand, John Leonard in his essay – “Why Blame TV?” has elucidated the positive aspects of TV. He argues that there are other reasons of children reacting aggressively. He makes fun of the Senator Earnest Hollings who is bent upon advocating the cancellation of licenses to such programs showing violence. John Leonard uses imagery – an example of rhetorical strategy to compare Senator Earnest Hollings with a Sumer warrior king, all set to bounce upon his target by declaring in the pages of New York Times to stop giving licenses to show such programs that provoke violence. Repetition of the phrase “Never mind” gives strength to the concept that so much has been taken for granted and assumed as right and it kills our sense of reasoning and argumentation, reaching on a conclusion without checking the other side of the coin – that’s the benefits of viewing television for children. The example of a five-year-old Ohio child who burned his family trailer after seeing violence on TV is quoted to prove the set assumption that TV is a medium to propagate violence. To counter this incident, the writer reminiscences an incident of his childhood when fire broke out and burnt his own bedroom when he was five years old and firemen pointed fingers at him. Playing with matchsticks is an old favorite indulgence of children, which has nothing to do with TV violence. Leonard uses rhetorical strategy of satire by attacking the inability of the congregation of industry bigwigs gathered at Beverly Hilton to define what is violence. Labeling violence as “happy” or “graphic”, making it unclear what is actually violent because sometimes one gets hurt not by violence but other person’s attitude also. Leonard makes use of oxymoron by labeling violence as “happy violence”, which provokes attacking attitude. The gathered dignitaries at Beverly Hilton had no clue of what is going in the mind of kids while viewing their favorite programs. John Leonard argues that instead of blaming TV, one should point a finger at Hollywood movies that come on cable TV and are beyond the reach of poor who are blamed as easy target and source of violence propagation and anti-social behavior. He quotes the analysis of Douglas Davis to prove that people are spending more time in outside recreation than before, giving less time for TV viewing. On the contrary, it is quite entertaining to view TV rather listening to congress discussions on sex and violence and reading nonsense books about the wrong effects of TV. It is TV – giving all essential knowledge on social problems and ailments and the writer claims that he has viewed some very good stuff about world happenings only on TV; Hollywood doesn’t provide all the stuff. Before TV, children used to rush to cyber cafes to play video games. Earlier, public schools were blamed for all children nuisances. In fact, it is human nature to attack easy targets while there are so many genuine reasons like ‘Original Sin’, inherent in human nature to commit crime. The writer has quoted a long list of names and programs to prove his point that TV is a very good medium of learning. After reading and analyzing Carl Cannon and John Leonard’s views on the uses and abuses of TV, one finds that both the writers are neither totally wrong nor right. There is some solid truth in Carl Cannon’s thesis that TV has become a medium to propagate violence. But why blame TV only. There are so many other reasons of increasing violence. Hollywood movies, cable, cyber cafes are some; other reasons could be socio-economic, changing social patterns, population increase and openness to follow new trends etc. TV is a wonderful source of entertainment as well as information. The examples of Mahabharata – the great epic serial shown on TV and writings of Sulman Rushdie and Tashma Nasrin, as given by critics, to propagate communal violence have no valid ground as elucidated by John Leonard. But we can’t totally reject the role of media and particularly TV in arousing similar feelings in children what they see on TV. It is in the very nature of kids to imitate. They are like monkeys who imitate what they see. In India, there have been many such cases, where children have broken their body parts while imitating their TV serial heroes like Spiderman and Superman and latest example of a Hindi movie Krish. Children see their heroes flying in the sky and jumping buildings. Out of innocence, they try to repeat what their silver screen heroes do. Same thing happens when children see violence and try to imitate acts. This, later on, becomes their attitude. It is the duty of not only parents but also society and government to check violence. Read More