Cartoon Violence and Kids

[Guest MrRant]

I am of the mind that cartoons do not make kids violent if the parents are there to tell the child that its fake and the child is made aware of what happens when he does a jump kick off the 5th step of the stairs. And for those that say today's cartoons are so horrible... they never bring up Tom & Jerry or Bugs Bunny. Elmer Fudd is shooting at Bugs with a shotgun TO KILL HIM. Never a word. Jerry has bashed in Tom's face with a frying pan on numerous occasions. I certainly grew up on this and I never once bashed in my sister's face with a frying pan because my parent's were responsible enough to tell me what would happen when 4-5 pounds of steel meets an 8 yr old's face.

 

Your thoughts?

[Guest Lethargic]

Actually the Bugs Bunny cartoons that air today have been edited for violence. Most of it is still there but some of the more extreme things have been cut.

 

I can just go by my own personal lifetime. When I grew up we grew up watching GI Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, He-Man and gasp, even uncut Bugs Bunny. The TV shows at night were Airwolf, A-Team things like that. Our movies were Star Wars movies were whole planets were destroyed. We basically grew up on violence. But I never once had to be scared to go to school because somebody might have a gun.

 

Now, TODAY, this generation who's grown up in this over-sanitized PC correct world where the most violent cartoon is Pokemon....they go to school and blow everybody away.

 

It doesn't have a damn thing to do with TV. It's got to do with upbringing. You could sit around watch violence all day, but if you have decent parents you'll be just fine.

[Guest Spaceman Spiff]

I'LL KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Guest Ravenbomb]

I don't think that cartoon violence affects kids in the slightest way. If there's a kid who sees Wakko drop an anvil on Dr. Scratchnsniff's head, and then goes and tries to drop a heavy object on his dad's head while he sleeps, then he would probably do that anyways. If you don't have the sense to know that people in reality don't have little dancing stars floating about their heads and get up groggily right after having an 800 ton anvil dropped on their head then you're dumb enough to try, cartoon or not.

 

This is getting rediculous, now they've edited friggen BUGS BUNNY! In this world of cartoons with sexual implications and endless cursing, the only cartoon that was good and wholesome were the Loony Toons, and they've tainted them forever. Even if they show unedited ones, they'll be billed as 'Unedited' which impies that it has thing unsuitable for youngn's, because if it didn't then they wouldn't need to edit it, which they don't. There's far too much attention given to censoring things so kids won't go and shoot the school up, and it's not working. Maybe if kids see all the violent head mashings, mass murders, bloodenings and such they want on TV, they won't have to get their fix by raiding their grandfathers arsenal of it's military weapons and killing his schoolmates. But even that wouldn't help, because kids are gonna go nuts, end of story. Censor all the things you want, make all the disorders you want and all the prescription and over-the-counter brain-numbers you want, kids'll still go nuts, 'cause none of it works. Either the kid'll still blow his school up or he'll start selling his Ridalin and Focusall and all that crap to other kids, because it's got cocane or whatever in it. But I digress.

 

I think parents should show kids a cartoon of Elmer Fudd shooting Daffey Duck (Bugs never got shot) in the face with a shotgun at point blank range, then show them a movie that shows someone getting shot in the head, then point out the difference (just make sure the movie isn't one where the guy who gets shot comes back later in the movie).

 

 

EDIT: While I'm thinking of it, and I know this is off-subject, but schools are going way overboard on this security stuff about kids shooting up the school. I'm actually looking FORWARD to the day a teacher decides to bring a sawed off double barrel 12 gauge shot-gun to the school with a briefcase full of extra shells and starts gleefully blowing the heads off anybody in the imediate area at the time, partially to see if they twist it around to blame it on kids again (Don't go making your teachers crazy, it was the kids fault Mr. Smith shot up the school, ya know), and partially to see if they lighten up on the kids a bit with the realization that you can't make schools safe, because they can't cover every single way to attack a school. If someone was really adamant about blowing the school up or something, they'd just shoot any security guard dead (they don't let the guards carry guns because the guard might go nuts or something I think, but the cops around the school carry guns, which kinda defeats the whole purpose)), and if someone had a gun in his bookbag and they did a check, and he had the intention of shooting up the school, what do you think's going to happen when they see the gun in there? HE'S GOING TO START KILLING PEOPLE!!!

 

what a bunch of idiots.

[Guest IDrinkRatsMilk]

It's totally true about how sanitizing everything makes kids more violent in real life cause they can't get it out of their system anywhere else. Case in point, when I was a kid I used to play Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo all the time, then my dad took it away cause he thought it was a bad influence, and I got kicked out of school for fighting.

[Guest redbaron51]

I think it actually does. To us it doesn't because we know what is right and wrong, but tell that to a five year old, he wouldn't know better than a Schwartzenager movie from a real life murder, or that if super man can fly, so can I.

 

I think it only happens to toddlers up to about 6-8 years old...then they realize.

 

But I think its video games are worse than TV

[Guest Ravenbomb]

I think little kids know that they aren't from Krypton and that their genetics aren't altered by the yellow sun...

 

But video games are worse than TV, but that's not saying much, and I don't think either one will affect anyone much, but back in the heyday of MK, I have known kids to reinact their favorite Sub Zero vs. Scorpion matches

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

I grew up on watching violent and profanity-filled movies and television shows. My favorite movies at the age of 8 were Terminator 2, Aliens, and RoboCop. I played Street Fighter II from the age of 5 (when it came out in the early 90's, like '91) until just a few years ago when my SNES broke down. Do I suddenly want to go out and light people on fire, or Flash-Kick them, or shoot them with a Ruger Shotgun? No. In fact, I'm more content to just let people be. Why? Because my parents told me that it was all fantasy, all fake, and that, in real life, there is no button marked "rewind," no "reset" button, and I couldn't just tap "forward forward A" to solve my problems.

 

And I plan on raising my kids on a healthy dose of intelligence, because it worked for me. I'm not a violent person (although you wouldn't guess that from the forms of entertainment I seek out on a constant basis), but I do need a release. That is where DOOM and the ultra-violence of Natural Born Killers come in.

[Guest El Satanico]

Violent people will be violent no matter what they watch as a child. Just because a few bad seeds have shot up schools doesn't mean kids everywhere are now becoming violent monsters. When will people start bringing up the bullies that drove those bad seeds to kill? No one bring that stuff up because tv, video games, music and movies are easy targets.

 

This whole violence on tv leads to real life violence shit is just lazy parents making excuses to explain their fucked up children.

 

I don't believe that seeing violence is what makes someone violent. The mind is a crazy place and it's nuts to believe that it's just a big ball of clay that can be molded just because you see a mouse hit a cat with a rake.

 

Violent people have other stuff going on in their minds that tv can't be held responsible for. No one will ever understand the human mind and what makes it tick. I've yet to hear them explain what led to violence back before there was tv.

 

Local and National News is the worse thing concerning violence in media yet you NEVER hear people bitching about kids watching the news or reading newspapers.

 

Also if you notice Japan has ultra violent cartoons yet you rarely hear of Japanese people going nuts and killing a room full of people.

 

There will always be people claiming that a form of entertainment is immoral and is turning our children into monsters. It started with Elvis and hasn't slowed down since.

 

to qoute The Simpsons:

 

"Won't sooomeone please think of the chiiildren!"

 

I hate those people.

[Guest Redhawk]

The Looney Tunes stuff is so over-the-top and unrealistic that I doubt any kid would allow it to drive them to violent behavior.

 

I think the biggest influence may not be the violence itself, but the whole "Get violent when you get pissed" attitude that shows up on cartoons and regular TV.

 

I watched all kinds of violent TV and I'm not too messed up. But then, some kids aren't as sensible.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

Actually the Bugs Bunny cartoons that air today have been edited for violence. Most of it is still there but some of the more extreme things have been cut.

 

Shit, you should see the racist cartoons. I saw this one where they had a black character hunting Bugs Bunny and to top the bullshit off, they ended the cartoon by shooting dice with each other. I used to like Merry Melodies/Looney Toons, but I can't look at them the same way anymore.

[Guest El Satanico]

Shit, you should see the racist cartoons. I saw this one where they had a black character hunting Bugs Bunny and to top the bullshit off, they ended the cartoon by shooting dice with each other. I used to like Merry Melodies/Looney Toons, but I can't look at them the same way anymore.

All that stuff was just a product of the times that they were produced in. Sure in the "pc" world we live in now they are terrible, but when they were made all of that stuff was perfectly acceptable. There's no reason to condemn the whole company over stuff that was acceptable back when it was done.

 

And that type of stuff shouldn't be edited at all either because it's part of American history.

[Guest El Satanico]

I watched all kinds of violent TV and I'm not too messed up. But then, some kids aren't as sensible.

And the kids that aren't sensible are going to do stupid shit no matter what they watch on tv. Thier minds are the problem not a box with images.

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

It's not the violence I'm worried about, but rather the sex.

 

Anyone notice that characters like Donald Duck don't wear pants? And they wonder why we gotta dish out Jimmy Hats in public schools now...

[Guest El Satanico]

Damn you Donald Duck daaamn yooou...you warped me...you turned me into this you no pants wearing freeeak!

 

wooon't anyone think of the chiiildren

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

Side story: Back in high school I took this public speaking class and one of our projects dealt with this topic. There were 8 of us and we took sides. I was in the Toon-violence-does-disturb-kids crowd, and we -- meaning the 8 of us -- did not prepare for this debate at ALL. When it came time for us to do our 30-minute discussion all we did was ad lib. About halfway through someone from the other side asked someone from our group if there was anything wrong with D. Duck. He said no, then the "but he doesn't have any pants on" line was thrown out and we all burst into laughter. It only got worse when our person said "this is a discussion about cartoon violence, not about how big the honkers on some cartoon character are," thus ruining the project, considering our teacher was a BIG TIME feminist...

 

We got yelled at for 5-10 minutes after that. God I loved high school/college blow-off classes...

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

I was smart enough to know that it was all fake, since the characters on TV were just drawings and stuff. No one had to tell me that it wasn't real. Some kids are just dumb, I guess.

 

As for the racist stuff being edited out of cartoons, it wasn't just minorities. They no longer show a scathing anti-German WWII era cartoon on television anymore, probably because it has Hitler in it or something, and some Jewish person was offended by Daffy Duck nailing him with a mallet as opposed to disembowling him with a wooden cooking spoon and leaving him to bleed to death in the moonlight.

 

I have most of these objectionable cartoons on a "50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time" tape my grandfather got me when I was eight. They aren't the 50 greatest(some are just there for filler... The Three Stooges cartoon?), but they're still all entertaining. As someone said, it's part of history and helps us to examine the attitudes of people at certain times. Erasing it is like erasing whole time periods.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest C.H.U.D.]

It certainly appears that today's youth (the 15 to 18 crowd) are the worst I have ever seen. They are disrespectful, violent and so many of them are into the drug scene. 10 years ago it wasn't nearly this bad. I don't know what caused the change, but I doubt it was cartoons.

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

I don't know. EVERY generation says the new generation is the worst yet. It doesn't make it true.

 

Anyway Cartoon Violence doesn't really affect kids. Violence on real people on TV maybe but not cartoon violence.

[Guest Ravenbomb]

yeah, kids'll have a hard time emulating that time Yakko pulled a piano out of his pocket and smashed it over a network censor...hmm, although kids have been taking drugs, so why not steroids too? And some of these new jeans have REALLY deep pockets...

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

I carry a grand Piano around in my pants...or is this supposed to be serious and NOT inneundo?

[Guest El Satanico]

Well much of this current generation has been raised in the overly pc world where tv is sugar coated so as to not "harm the minds of the young people".

 

So like someone said on this thread, maybe the problem is a product of safe guarding children too much.