Why is it that every time this 'violence vs. sex' shtick is brought out, the people who are upset about violence often react to it in the same way the people they are criticizing act about sex (i.e., ban this sick filth!) ?
Death is just as natural as sex. Arguably more so - everything dies, and nature seems to have no aversions to violent death. Why would fictional death bother you?
Interesting that you'd narrow it down to 'murdering', because violence is much broader than murder. We're quite sheltered from the effects of warfare, for instance, especially when the casualties are not our own. The major media does not like to show bombed-out villages, and burned corpses. Granted, people may not want to see them...but perhaps they should see them?
"Death is just as natural as sex." was what I was responding to. Sex happens far, far, far more often than death, let alone violent death. No-one will die more than once, but most people have sex a great number of times.
In some human societies, violent assault and murder are common.
In others, they are not because we have they agreed to work to stop them.
I know where I would rather live.
Also, there is a difference between acknowledging that unpleasant things happen sometimes, and making it look standard, routine or even glorifying it, and arguably many TV and Movie productions cross that line.
(& Don't assume I want it banned - I never said that.)
Yet despite the rapid rate at which media is getting more and more violent, violent crime rates continue to decline. Of course, correlation != causation and all that, but it is certainly appearing that exposure to violence in media, glorified or otherwise, isn't really a big deal.
No credible study has ever really been done that links violent media with violent behavior.
I'd rather live in a free society that deals with fake violence in media but does not tolerate it in real life than one that does the opposite, of course, but I never see the point of this 'sex vs. violence in media' thing, because they really aren't equivalent and allowing one but not the other really isn't 'hypocrisy', it's just a difference in cultural norms.
Murdering people was never common, certainly nowhere near as common as having sex. Don't forget that the histories you look at highlight the murders and wars just like modern-day journalism does - because it's "interesting and different". For example, the vikings are burned into our collective memory as vicious raiders - but they were traders that got on well with their neighbours. Murder has always been something out of the ordinary, right back to the bloke who jotted down "Thou shalt not kill"
No - but pointing out that something happens in nature, and _for_that_reason_ shouldn't be bothering people. Nature being full of violent deaths does not have anything to do with whether fictional deaths on TV are good or bad, yet this was (IMHO) implied.
Death is just as natural as sex. Arguably more so - everything dies, and nature seems to have no aversions to violent death. Why would fictional death bother you?