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Analysis: Why Violent Media Is Good For Kids

Decent Essays

After reading “Violent Media Is Good for Kids” by Gerard Jones and “When Life Imitates Video” by John Leo, Both articles have opposing views on violent media for kids and use pathos and logos to persuade a readers reasoning on violent media. Gerard Jones believes that violent media is good to help children express their feelings and not hide them. John Leo believes that killing games can lead to violent behavior and possible imitation of what kids see in violent games such as Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. There are many reasons why violent media can be good and bad for children and teens there really isn’t a right side. In “Violent Media Is Good for Kids” the author Gerard Jones tries persuading his readers on violent media and the reasons …show more content…

Once Gerard got to his thirty years of age he found himself writing action movies and comic books then even seeing his own creations being turned into action figures, cartoons, and computer games. Now Gerard Jones has a son and uses the same technique that helped him express his emotions. An example Gerard shows why violent media is good is with his son he was scared of climbing trees with his friends because he was scared of falling and afraid of centipedes crawling on the trunk of sharp branches.When Gerard Jones saw this he took it as his cue to help his son by reading him some Tarzan comics then “For two weeks he lived in them, Then put them aside, and climbed the tree”(Gerard Jones). Gerard’s son with the influence of some violent comic book was able to overcome fear of climbing a tree. Gerard then starts a research to make violent media look almost necessary to help some kids “to explore their inescapable feelings that they’ve been taught to deny, and to reintegrate those feelings into a more whole, more complex, more resilient selfhood”(Gerard Jones). A great meaning for Gerard is to help parents get to understand the importance of not limiting their children from violence because when you “try to protect our children from their own feelings and fantasies, we shelter them not against violence but against power and selfhood”(Gerard …show more content…

In the article John Leo talks on the Colorado massacre at Columbine high school in nineteen ninety-nine were Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris used pistol-grip shotguns “As in some video-games. The pools of blood, screams of agony, and pleas for mercy must have been familiar”(John Leo). The massacre was a tragic event having “two teens cackled and shouting”(John Leo) as if it were just a morbid killing video-game after killing innocent people. Then to end the massacre by ending their own lives by “shooting themselves in the head, the final act in the game Postal”(John Leo). This event awakened people to the seriousness on violent video games and the effect that it could have on anyone to influence them to do tragic things. John Leo believes that the “outlandish weapons, the cheering and laughing while hunting down victims one by one. All seems to reflect the style and feel of the video killing games they play so often.”(John Leo) the similarity of the killing games and actions taken in real life is too similar making people think that killing video games are the reasons for the shootings and massacres. John Leo also believes that violent video games can almost be as a dress rehearsal for some of the unstable kids that play these games obsessively and that don’t know the difference

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