Where Have All The Monsters Gone?

Anybody else sick of this? I am on my elliptical tonight and yet another explicit horror movie commercial comes on. Maybe I’m just getting old, but it seems to me in the old days there were two horror movie seasons. One was the obvious -- Halloween. The other was the summer drive in season (shows how old I am). Not anymore!

Of course, as a teenager, I relished those films with my best friend Stacey so we could scream and then keep the rest of my poor family up all night while the two of us had our after horror movie obligatory sleepover (or should I say, screamover).

But now, we have this year-round fright fest with commercials and ads that I actually have to tell my kids to cover their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and yell "lalalalala", but we also seem to have another major difference. Have you noticed that most of the monsters walk on two legs and live in the regular world?

Ok, so we did have two-legged vampires and Frankenstein in the old days, but the ones on two legs now are very similar if not the same as anyone else you see walking around. In the majority of what I have seen lately, they are no longer fantasy monsters. They are people. People in a never ending parade of reality crime programs. Much closer to real life than before.

"Because millions of people tune into shows such as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Law & Order," "Cold Case" and "The Closer," understanding the way they influence people is important", says Glenn Sparks, a professor of communication who studies mass media effects. "We found that people who watch these shows regularly are more likely to overestimate the frequency of serious crimes, misperceive important facts about crime and misjudge the number of workers in the judicial system," Sparks said.

"This kind of television viewing can lead to ‘mean world syndrome,’ where people start to think about the world as a scary place," Sparks said. "Some people develop a fear of victimization, and this belief can affect their feelings of comfort and security."

But what about the effects on kids? This from The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: "American children watch an average of four hours of television daily. Television can be a powerful influence in developing value systems and shaping behavior. Unfortunately, much of today's television programming is violent. Hundreds of studies of the effects of TV violence on children and teenagers have found that children may:

Become "immune" or numb to the horror of violence

Gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems

Imitate the violence they observe on television; and

Identify with certain characters, victims and/or victimizers"

I am not a proponent of censorship and never will be, but I do question whether the constant barrage and parade of reality-based types of psychopaths and sociopaths on our screens each night could contribute to some level of desensitization and maybe for some, a reason to cross the line themselves.

I love a good creature movie -- always have, but somehow when the monster is the guy next door, that goes a little too far for me, especially when it is over and over again.

I remember the day I went to see Uncle Buck in the theater and we sat behind two young boys, probably aged 10. A scene came on in which Uncle Buck punches a drunk clown and he pops back up from the punch in a comical way. Literally two seconds after that scene, one kid in front of us turns and punches the other one. I elbowed my boyfriend (now husband) and said, "You see? That could have been used in a study."

With modern technology and gaming, we not only have the TV and movie screen but also the point of view, first person screen in the gaming world. I remember seeing an interview with a man who trained soldiers for the military, and he indicated that the point of view, first person killing games in the gaming world were very similar to the training games soldiers would use to desensitize them to the human response. The purpose of the games, he explained, was to create a constant trigger response without any human response. Of course the normal human response is one of not wanting to kill, so the purpose of the training game is to re-train that instinct.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who studies the effect of video games on the brain, touched upon this subject in his book, On Combat: "Through violent programming on television and in movies, and through interactive point-and-shoot video games, modern nations are indiscriminately introducing to their children the same weapons technology that major armies and law enforcement agencies around the world use to "turn off" the midbrain "safety catch" that Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall discovered in World War II."

As offensive as that might be to some, it is imperative in a life of a soldier, but does it have a place in the life of a teenager?

Ok, maybe a no-brainer, but a 2008 study on the "Longitudinal Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression," written up in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics indicated that habitual violent video game play early in the school year predicted later aggression, even after controlling for gender and previous aggressiveness in each sample. Those who played a lot of violent video games became relatively more physically aggressive.

Somehow, the old days of Dracula, Godzilla, Frankenstein and The Blob seem tamer and less able to be imitated.

I know many would say that art imitates life, and it may, but I also think life imitates art. I don’t think it is a coincidence that when the Brady Bunch and Mayberry RFD were the nightly fare with a choice of about 8 channels, that there was less in the way of violence. Of course, you could always say that the violence was still there, but the 24 hour news cycle wasn’t. I just liked it better in the days when "We Loved Lucy." Thankful for TV Land and Me Too!

What do you think?

Dr. Sherri was a Child and Family Processing and Motivation expert seeing people via webcam. She is currently a writer and consultant, updating her website and will post when done for contact purposes.