[LINK] Seeing is believing

[Jan Whitaker]

[warning, political reply - delete now if not interested]

At 11:54 PM 7/01/04 +1100, Tim Lister wrote:

>and really, the tendency to show that violence is the best, and
>preferred, way to solve problems seems a bit of a worry ...

Yes, like major countries going to war as a pre-emptive move against a 
regional bully on what to date has been shown to be false evidence.  Set 
ups to rationalise violence is not nice, even when done by countries.

>sometimes it seems that all cop movies start out with a square-jawed cop
>who "breaks the rules", and heroically kills everyone who gets in his
>way - do you think that this might be distorting the behaviour of police
>officers?

I have been thinking about this lately given some of the shows on at the 
moment, both US and Brit.  The Shield is a nasty piece of work that I 
refuse to watch any more because of the very bad light it shows police in 
and in effect glamourises.  Then there is one I do like on the ABC called 
Murder Investigation Team where some of the junior investigators do things 
that are obviously outside the rules.  The most recent one on Monday was 
breaking into a person's house -- essentially breaking and entering.  The 
redemption of the situation was that the 'guv' dressed them down for it.

Gestapo cops are not good.  Showing gestapo cops on TV only breaks down the 
relationship with the community and says there are two laws:  one for the 
cops [or govt or privileged or wealthy] and one for everyone else who isn't 
in one of those groups.

I don't disagree that television and other messages from parents, peers, 
internet sites, and even books(!) influence how we think about the 
world.  Seems that the repetition of the same message [multiple program 
themes for example] without counter messages or contact in real life 
experience is the main problem.  If you're told that your mother is an ax 
murderer too many times  and no one ever tells you different, wouldn't you 
start to wonder, too?

Jan


JLWhitaker Associates
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at melbpc.org.au  --  http://member.melbpc.org.au/~jwhit/whitentr.htm
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