Violence In The Media: Are You Living In A Haunted House?
By: Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox
The Shulchan Aruch records a law for Shabbos observance: One should not read books about war. The commentaries trace this to a passage in the Talmud and add that one also must not go theatres and circuses on Shabbos, or in general. When we examine this law and tradition in context, we find that the theatres and circuses referred to in the Talmud were like the Roman colosseums. These were places where families went for entertainment, to watch heavily armed gladiators butchering helpless slaves, or watching ferocious beasts mauling and devouring human beings. Some Torah scholars also forbade watching a bullfight. The thought of enjoying bloodshed as entertainment was regarded by Torah authorities as horrifying. There was nothing fun about viewing a murder or senseless slaughter as sport. There was nothing calming about reading stories about warfare on our sacred Day of Rest.
I recently fielded some calls from worried parents. Their children have viewed social media and internet footage of killings, both the terroristic attacks in Eretz Yisroel and the news clips from here in America that show people being gunned down, run over, and lives terminated. Many children, even teenagers, react with horror, dread, nausea, and fear. Some react with sadness or depression, emotional pain, and existential worry. And there are some who seem to enjoy the footage as one more form of media-based entertainment. It’s like viewing violent video games that they play on their apps, only with real targets and victims.
Yes, it’s possible to become traumatized by watching death and murder. I can remember watching a scary episode of the Little Rascals (Our Gang) when I was young on an old black and white television. It was supposed to be a funny show for children, yet that episode had some scary moments and I remember being in shock and fear for days. There was no killing, no murder, no death. It was about a group of little children who stumbled on a scary man. It was enough to convince me never to watch the show again.
Without a doubt, the vividness of today’s media, the precision with which the camera captures the reality of an actual event, brings horror into one’s bedroom or living room or wherever you and your children are viewing catastrophic footage. The child is haunted by the images he sees in his own house. It’s bound to bring fear and horror and leave an impressionable child in shock or worse. Yet, when we view these films or allow children to view them (as if it was some form of entertainment, chas v’shalom), what are we teaching them? Even if the children view these horrifying events as “news,” and not as entertainment, the psychological association a person makes when using the same computer or smartphone, which is also used to watch movies and cartoons, is that these are also a form of “cartoon.” A person can become desensitized and reconditioned by recurrent watching so that they lose any sense of dread and horror. A person, especially a child, can become impassive and detached when watching scenes of bloodshed—and even murder. Parents once took their families to cheer for the gladiators. When their children viewed the acts of inhumanity in the amphitheater, watching people being murdered and dismembered as the crowd cheered, with time, it became a matter of rooting for the victor and jeering the victim. That can happen to us and our children as well.
From the standpoint of mental health, what is best is prevention and protection. There is enough violence in the world that our children will learn about without needing to see it in real time. We can educate them, provide them with appropriate reading material and lessons (although not on Shabbos!) and discuss their reactions as they learn about the morbid side of human nature. But when it’s too late and the child has been prematurely tainted by acts of violence on film, we should also discuss their reactions. Hear them out. Listen to their emotions and thoughts and be supportive and validate their shock and horror. Avoid trying to talk them out of their reactions; avoid trying to reframe what they have seen, and never attempt to rationalize why someone took another person’s life. Do not go into the politics or philosophies or other efforts to distract the child from their reactions by trying to provide some rationalized intellectual framework for why evil people do evil acts.
As for the child who is numb, who feels no distress, or expresses no sorrow or compassion for the victims and their loved ones, or the child who thinks the film was “cool” or appears to be impassive at the violence and may even echo other things they have heard in the media as adults speak casually about the killings or seem to endorse them: you have your work cut out for you. Parents and educators: it is healthier for a child to be in crisis about encountering gruesome scenes than to think that dead bodies are no big deal. n
Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox is a forensic and clinical psychologist, and director of Chai Lifeline Crisis Services. To contact Chai Lifeline’s 24-hour crisis helpline, call 855-3-CRISIS or email [email protected]. Learn more at ChaiLifeline.org/crisis.
