People have become too desensitized to violence

By: Sean Mulcahey

Posted: 2/5/03

On Jan. 16, 1999 Yakima, Wash. resident Jason Whala killed his 19-month-old cousin by “powerbombing” him into the ground when he wouldn’t stop crying.

He was later convicted of 2nd degree felony murder. The boy was completely emotionless when being interviewed by the police.

He sat there without remorse, describing how he repeatedly dropped his infant cousin on the ground, even after his friends told him to stop. On TV, during his trial, he was seen napping in the courtroom.

I remember being in first grade. It was a great year, the Bears won the Super Bowl, and I was emulating my hero William the Refrigerator Perry, memorizing his part in the Super Bowl Shuffle.

This was also a sad year. On Jan. 28, 1986 the space shuttle Challenger took its last flight and I watched the tragedy unfold before my eyes on live TV in class.

Sixteen years later, a similar accident occurred with the space shuttle Columbia.

I turned on my TV and it was on all of the local stations and news programs. I found that after I listened long enough to get the facts, I just changed channels.

Why didn’t the second shuttle crash make as much of an impact on me? Am I an insensitive jerk?

Perhaps the Challenger accident meant more to me since I was younger. Maybe I was affected more because I watched it actually happen on television. Maybe the fact that an elementary school teacher was on board kind of hit home to me.

Some say that Americans have an unhealthy fascination with reality lately. It actually seems to have started with the media reporting from the front lines in Vietnam.

In the last few years the line between fiction and reality has become blurred. Stories such as the one about Jason Whala are not as unique as one would imagine. We tend to forget that when things are reported on the news, they really are real. Some writer didn’t hawk the story idea to a producer in the hopes of getting a multi-million dollar contract to film a summer film blockbuster. Real people got hurt or killed and families suffered.

This doesn’t mean Americans are bad people. I just think that we have been so desensitized to violence. We can watch people with bullet holes in them lying on the ground on C.O.P.S, or watch motorcycle crash victims get their brains operated on in emergency rooms on the Discovery Channel.

Blood and gore have worked their way into our video games, replacing blue hedgehogs and Italian plumbers with fighters ripping the spinal cords out of their foes.

Is the damage we have done to our perceptions irreversible?

We will find out in the future.

Perhaps the only way to reverse what the media has done to our tolerance levels of violence is to experience the heartbreak and emotional suffering that comes with a crisis actually happening to us or someone we love.

Bringing the reality into our homes to see firsthand seems to be the best cure. It is neither a suggestion nor a solution, though. I would never wish that upon anyone.