The Power of Suggestion

I've given thought for some while to the question of whether violence depicted in media can lead unbalanced people to engage in real-life violence. I believe it can. I believe it was no coincidence that the Colorado youth set up shop in a movie theater during a showing of a particularly violent Batman film. I think all branches of media, film, TV, fiction, can trigger such conduct in a troubled person.

I turned down the chance to write such western gunman novels a year or two ago, even though the money was good. I'm not opposed to depicting violence, but if it is depicted, I want it to be fully consequential. The violence in a certain sort of gunman fiction is without consequence. Anonymous characters are gunned down; law and order avert their gaze.

We all live according to a social contract. On the one hand, we are safe and comfortable in our daily lives and homes because of that contract; on the other, the contract requires us to behave in a manner that protects the lives and property and safety of others. Most fiction expresses that contract. Mysteries, for example, are devoted to solving a crime and restoring safety and good order, and bringing the criminal to justice. But a certain sort of gunman western throws that social contract to the wind, and mocks it. You can spot a story like that because of the lack of consequence. Killers walk away. The dead are nonentities, without kin or history.

I oppose censorship in all forms, and bridle at the thought of government at any level telling storytellers, and others, what may be published or displayed. My own preference is simply to boycott literature that mocks the social contract. I won't buy, or promote, books in which violence is without consequence. That holds for movies and television, too. Don't go. Don't watch. Don't read.