Why does American media love violence?
Maria Ly
Staff Writer
When you turn on the TV, scroll through social media, or watch a movie, you’ll most likely notice that each and every thing you watch contains violence in some way.
If you can’t sell sex, sell violence. If the allure of handsome serial killers who murdered for fun, a pedophile who convinced a girl she was abducted by aliens, the tradition of running into each other so hard till your brain turns into mush to get a ball across a line, the fight in the cafeteria that draws more eyes than an optometrist, and a girl who got so famous for eliciting fights and catching people outside doesn’t sell, then what does?
Scary movies with clowns eating children excite us with adrenaline, and even then sometimes it’s not enough. Our pupils dilate at the sight of blood on our TV screens. Video games with guns and knives get us through our day. This mindset of destruction is so powerful that we can’t stop.
A nation where our love for guns is so strong, we name them like our cars. We love them like our pets, and point them to anyone who threatens to take them away.
A nation where so many murders go unnoticed. A nation where a mass shooting is an annual occurrence. They say it’s an American dream, but all I see is blood. To me, it’s an American nightmare.
This obsession with people who kill gets more glorified and recognized more than their victims. An obsession that has its own category on Netflix. Actors who we used to watch play basketball in high school and sing their heart out in a musical is now portraying a serial killer who killed to feel and gets aroused by the wetness of the blood dripping from his hands. But hey, they’re hot as hell, so we buy it.
Violence is around us everywhere. It’s used to entertain, to solve national and global problems, to fire up a revolution, to make others scared and others cheer.
Why do we break bones more than we break bread? Why do we press triggers more than we fill out ballots? Why do we watch from the side more than we interject in the middle? Why do we love a sport that produces catastrophic injuries mental and physical?
Why is pain so captivating, blood so mesmerizing, the sound of punches so exciting, the act of violence so alluring to America? Sometimes first love never dies, and violence will always be America’s sweetheart.
Feature photo courtesy of Flickr.