The unfairness of linking medias to juvenile delinquency
Marie Gao
I think it is not fair to link movies, comic books, and Rock and Roll to all juvenile delinquencies no matter in modern days or in 20th century because movies, comic books, and music are just a way to enrich and entertain our lives, these things would not have effects on how the person is, and people will have their own judgments as well as coming up with their own comments when they watch or listen to these things.
First of all, media is used to enrich our lives. The reason for people creating these media is because we need something to make our lives more colorful and more interesting. These media do a lot of contribution to our lives, we would not know so many pieces of information without them, and the media help us to have deeper thinking. For example, the movie “Blackboard Jungle” showed a lot of problems of teenagers, which reflected parts of the real phenomenon of society in a visual way. This movie existed was because there were some juvenile delinquencies on the society, and the people who made this movie was trying to reflect this situation to all American citizens, made more people think about their children and how to educate them in order to avoid these behaviors. Also, teenagers who watched this movie at that time would also make some self-reflection, is this phenomenon is good or bad? Should they do something like that or not? What are the consequences of doing something that was shown in the movie? I think teenagers had the ability to consider these problems. The appearances of movies, comic books, and rock and roll were not a bad thing, these could help to establish a variety of cultures, and helped more people to know more aspects of the society, which lead people to think more and improve themselves.
Secondly, the media will not affect the essence of a person. If some teenagers became a juvenile delinquency after they watched a movie, they must plan these behaviors earlier than they watched this movie. The example of the movie “Blackboard Jungle” is still useful at this point. People will not choose to do something they never thought about. It was ridiculous to say the reason for the murderer killed a person was that he watched a criminal movie. If he never prepared and thought about it, even if he watched a criminal movie, he would just use this movie for fun. So the same as these juvenile delinquencies, movie is just a trigger for them, and this trigger could be anything, like a conversation, a classmate, etc… The juvenile delinquency was not the fault of movies and other media because these medias just reflected facts truly and artfully. The behavior of a person was totally affected by their parent, their families, the education they received. Movies and other media did not have so much power that could change the essence of a person.
Last but not least, people were not machines, they would have their own judgments when they received information from the media. There is an interesting fact that people would have many comments when they know something new, that’s why things can go viral. People will talk about some viral topics and express their own opinions toward these. This phenomenon can be the best evidence to argue that the media will not affect a lot on the behavior of teenagers. When teenagers watched a movie like the “Blackboard Jungle”, they would have their own opinions, whether this behavior was good or bad, if they could do something like this in their real life. They could come up with their basic judgments when they know this topic, then they would have their own opinions when they watch this controversial movie. By the way, the comments that most people have were just their feelings toward it and the value of this movie or music, only the people who have already done something like the movie or they have already wanted to do something may discuss on the feasibility of the action, and that was not the deal of this movie. Media was just a tool for people to know more and realize more.
All in all, the blames on medias was just the excuse of not educating these juvenile delinquencies properly. This should be something that need to be concerned more, rather than the function of medias.
