6. Compare the common blaming of violence on the mass media, with Mike Males' critique of this argument. How does Males explain the high rates of violence in society? Assess this debate.

Many look to the media to make sense of why there is so much violence in society. Males makes an awesome assessment to inner city youth and non inner city youth in California. I must admit that I am a media basher. The media is overly violent, sexist, etc. I think the power of the media is not so much making people want to go out and do the violent acts, but making society view the violence in a specific form. We are supposed to be hardened to inner city crime because they are shown to be a different kind of criminal in media. They seem to be portrayed more cold hearted than serial killers. Not as crazy, but more cold hearted. The media seems to be there more to buffer us from acting on the civil war we see in the media.

Imagine what would happen if the kind of carnage that is daily in ghettos began in the suburbs. Wow... the government would definitely step up and do something.

The high rates of violence in society are due to the desperation people are finding themselves in and the inability to get out no matter how hard they try. They constantly see the token success lifted up, yet they know from their own experience that the vast majority of their class is not able to have the same successes in life. The media teaches us that they are just lazy and have a self-destructive culture... so many turn their heads away, close their eyes, or turn their noses up.

Violence is a response to the situations people are in, but media normalizes this violence. It teaches us that women "ask for it" when they are raped, mothers abuse welfare, black men are lazy crack dealers, poor white men are beer drinking women abusers, black people just are violent and cruel by nature, and so on and so on and so on. We therefore cannot hear the cries, pleas and screams of those people and their dire conditions because their stereotypes have already spoken all we want to hear from them.

Jesus' Peace and Love, Meorah