Murder on the box

Which it is. But we don’t or should not need, a study to tell us any of this. We have children or we’ve witnessed other people’s children.Children watching cartoons, horrors like Aahat, Zee Horror Show; watching crime shows such as Yehi Hai Raaz, Bullet, Panther, Murder She Wrote; watching real crimes on India’s Most Wanted; watching Hindi and English films (many of which are quite literally, blood awful). Watching and becoming frightened, being unable to sleep but always ready for the next dose.

Violence doesn’t end here. TV programmes/films are `shot’. Programmes which are generically different, have overt and covert aggression in them, too. Remember, there is more violence in a cartoon than in a thriller; that in comedies, most of the humour is based on violent acts or words. Last week in Tu Tu Main Main, the daughter-in-law gave her mother-in-law such a shove, she fell off the stool she was seated upon and immediately the TV cackled with laughter.

That’s not all: when our politicians speak, their entire discourse is a war of words. If you watched last week’s Parliamentary behaviour, listened to the Parliamentary language, you’d havenoticed that the air waves were thick with battle cries and threatening gesticulations. When television (or print) reported on the election campaign and the subsequent political developments, the reports, the headlines were like loaded guns aimed at parties and politicians. Every constituency was a battleground (STAR News Channel even had a programme by that name), every opponent the enemy, every issue a conflict. Sonia declared war on the BJP, the BJP attacked her on Bofors (what else but a gun?), the UF defended its record.

Turn to sports: each sportsman is described as some sort of gladiator, each team as a combat unit. On TV, Sachin Tendulakar describes himself and Shane Warne as aggressive players; Ian Chappell describes Australia’s leg-side bowling at Bangalore as a “defensive” tactic. And so it is with hockey or soccer: shoot outs, sudden deaths… Life is not about living; life is about fighting.

We’ve absorbed the cult and culture of violence the way a sponge soaks up water. It permeateseverything. So why blame TV? Unfortunately because television happens to be a conduit for most activities (entertainment, politics, sports, wars, etc.) and beams them into our homes where children are sitting ducks (there we go again). Also, whereas the pen might be mightier than the sword, the visual is almighty.

In the West there have been so many studies on children and the impact of media violence (especially TV) that nobody should be left in doubt about the linkage. Yet, for every such report there is a counter report (thrust and parry, thrust and parry). And still there is more violence on TV in the USA than probably anywhere else. Because, inspite of all the reports, channels have discovered that whether anything else does or doesn’t, crime pays: people like o watch it. Even as we accuse TV channels of insensitivity, or worse of being accessories to murder, we must also ask what it is about human nature which fatally attracts us to acts of violence? In books, in films, in music videos, in TV serials,in sports….Let’s be honest: parents don’t force their children to watch a serial like Aahat; the child insists on watching it.

We must work to lessen channels’ bloodthirstiness; protest and fight (!) against the media’s commercial exploitation of violence. Educate our children about the depiction of violence. Find them alternatives to TV. And somewhere down the line help them dissect, understand, the anatomy of human destructiveness.