Television

Monday May 11th - the season finale of "The Practice" is broadcast on ABC. The episode, entitled "Rhyme and Reason", portrays the story of a 13-year-old who shoots and murders his mother after an argument. Bobby defends him while Helen tries to convince the judge to try the boy as an adult.

What role does television play in the thinking and world-view of young people today? Is it conceivable that young people exposed to situations and traits and actions on TV do not internalize those impressions?

Even adults who "know better" can get lost in movies - cry when good characters are hurt, get furious when evil characters do wrong, get turned on when cute characters slap on the charm. Soap operas, drama series and films draw you in and delude you that they are real. And you justify your emotions, saying the characters and events are at least "symbolic" of real things that happen to real people in real life.

But what if children extrapolate from the world of film to the world they live in? Against what standard do they measure the behaviors to determine what is regular behavior and what is extreme?

Take a late-20th-century American kid who reads bedtime stories about young children orphaned in London during the blitzes of World War II. Perhaps he will then go to bed afraid the air-raid siren will go off and he will be left alone. Perhaps the kid has no way of knowing the prospects of that happening where and when he lives are very, very extreme. He extrapolates, and the world in the story intrudes in his own reality in a very meaningful way.

There is more in movies and television shows these days than violence and guns. There is also the more subtle threat of violence, the strong themes of alienation and betrayal and frustration, the constant presence of not only crime and war but also injustice and mean-spiritedness. These themes become surreal for young people living in quiet bedroom communities where family and church are strong. A child's imagination invents demons in corners where no demons hide.

It is argued by some that persons in therapy can sometimes be led by their therapists to "remember" incidents of abuse in their own childhoods that never actually occurred. The power of suggestion is profound. The past is a dark vista, and we can sometimes impose false shapes on the amorphic shadows that dwell there.

If an adult can "remember" something that never actually happened, couldn't a child imagine threats and mean-spiritedness and conspiracy in memories and perceptions of events in his life? Isn't it just possible he could be reorganizing his memories and perceptions of his community and friends and family in accordance with a grand scheme he has experienced in fantasy?

A person sees a movie where a child is abused or mistreated or undermined by adults, and that person imposes the attitude of mean-spiritedness on the adults in his own life. He sees scenes of parents hurting their children, and he identifies with the children while projecting the malevolence on his own parents. Is this plausible? Yes. It is more than just plausible. It actually occurs.

"But it's just TV! Surely you are exaggerating its power to influence!" - But are you so certain?

Which kids saw the season finale of "The Practice"? How many identified with the boy whose parent was barring him from enjoying his own life with his friends? How many kids watched this show in homes where they sat isolated from their friends by distance and curfews and parental decrees?

Take the boy who is once prevented by his parents from attending a birthday party of a girl he really likes. He hates them for the decision. They are ruining his life. Then he sees a boy in a television series who does something about it. Isn't it just a little possible he might identify with what the TV character did and feel a strong urge to do the same - as if he is destined to handle a similar situation in a similar way?

And is it possible to argue, further still, that the boy's capacity to tell right from wrong has been impaired by his propensity to interpret life in terms of what the television shows tell him is real?

Does constant exposure to television's extremes jeopardize the legally-defined sanity of some children? Might it leave them with an immature or defective understanding of what is right and wrong and how to tell the difference between the two?

Studies have shown that exposure to TV violence can lead children to behave more aggressively. [For example, see the book The Open Window.] What does this finding mean? Are children simply mimicking the actions of their TV heroes? Or are they internalizing general rules about what behavior is acceptable? And if it is the latter, then have we not proven that television scenarios can impair a child's understanding of, and ability to distinguish between, what is right behavior and what is wrong?

You may say a child's critical abilities advance with age. But what fills a child's mind for much of the day is powerful stuff. Hence the role of peer influence in behavior. Hence the role of defective parenting in behavior.

And why not a similar role for television and even video games and the Internet, which occupy large parts of the life experience of many kids? If it's on TV, it must be okay to a lot of people and certainly not contrary to society's moral standards, a teen might assume. If it's on a video screen, the same. If it's on the Internet, it too is fair game. If it were dangerous or illegal, then surely it would already have been removed. A fair presumption for a child.

What does it mean to say television, music videos and the Internet are changing society and its values? We say such things without giving the matter a moment's thought. But doesn't that mean these media have the power to propel a wholesale shift in moral codes away from those accepted in society at large? If these media can shift the values of an entire society - and there are countless examples that it can, some of the changes being quite positive - then who is arguing that it cannot distort or corrupt the thinking of one teenage boy?

And if this corruption means he no longer has full capacity to tell right from wrong as society at large defines right and wrong (even if he can tell right from wrong according to some artificial media-grounded standard), then have we not a moral case (if not a legal one) for insanity?