Squirrels non-violently entertaining children at a campground
I am not entertained by violence. Not violence in TV shows
or movies, not violence in games. Not in books or songs. I reject superhero violence,
cartoon violence, dinosaur violence, monster violence, and spaceship violence.
I will not look at vehicular, gun, sword, magic, or fist violence. Not sports
that formalize or simulate violence. Not historical, sexual, or emotional
violence. The threat of violence, the tools of violence, aptitude for violence,
and the glorification of violence are unwelcome. My kids found superhero comic
books at the library and I will not support the reading of them. Chess is the
most violent thing I will entertain, and even there I would enjoy it more if
there was less association with war. My feelings about this have only
strengthened with age and events.
Feeling this way about violence is one reason I do not watch TV or movies, do
not watch sports, and avidly avoid American Popular Culture, which makes
allowance for those who are offended by sexuality but offers few refuges to
those who are offended by violence. Facebook for example insists on showing me
ads for horror movies, action movies, police movies, etc. That anyone can fail
to be entertained by violence is not allowed for in any algorithm.
I understand this focus on violence in popular entertainment in commercial
terms, in anthropological terms, in sociological terms, in evolutionary
psychology terms, but it feels alien and harmful.
Harmful in that it crowds out other ways for characters to interact with the
world. Harmful in that it perpetuates toxically-masculine depictions of what a
leader is, what an athlete is, what a conversation is. Just as much pornography
teaches unhealthy lessons to young people about sexuality, violent
entertainment teaches them unhealthy lessons about communication, empathy,
politics, and conflict. I would not ban either, but see the same avenues of
harm in both.
And it feels alien, not in the not-from-around-here way, but in the "I am
unlike all these people" way. What most members of our culture will pay to see, I find depressing
and enervating. The vast majority of fiction in our culture is about people
being bad to each other, and I fundamentally do not identify with finding that
interesting, relaxing, or desirable. Rejecting people-being-bad-to-each-other
entertainment is a position so far outside the norm that even those who know me
best tend to chuckle when I state my position. It cuts me off (by choice) from
vast domains of human endeavor, foundational cultural touchstones, central
shibboleths.
We are products of cultures built around violent entertainment. We print great
mythical violence-makers onto diapers and metaphors. We parade children in
costumes of characters named after the paramilitaries that brought the Nazis to
power. We make aircraft carriers available to film-makers because it helps with
recruiting actual sailors. I do not blame anyone for participating in our
culture, but this aspect of it I hope will eventually change.
