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Even though I'm only 19 it seems like I've gone through a lot of media demonization.
For example: Video Games not only are Moral Guardians such as Jack Thompson complaining that violent video games will make you reenact violence. There are also talks that video games are an addiction. Also the classic video games rot the Brian, waste your time, make you fat and stupid. Harry Potter some religious groups have targeted Harry Potter because they thought it promoted witchcraft. The Internet/Social Media every other month, you'll hear how Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are ruining social skills Pokemon Same thing with Harry Potter but Pokemon was thought to teach Evolution.
What forms of media were demonized when you were a kid? What interesting stories do you have?
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
--Socrates (469–399 BCE)
There is nothing new under the sun... (Ecclesiastes)
Punk rock and disco were the joint ruination of society during my formative years. You can also throw in Saturday Night Live for its degradation of societal values.
Even though I'm only 19 it seems like I've gone through a lot of media demonization.
For example: Video Games not only are Moral Guardians such as Jack Thompson complaining that violent video games will make you reenact violence. There are also talks that video games are an addiction. Also the classic video games rot the Brian, waste your time, make you fat and stupid. Harry Potter some religious groups have targeted Harry Potter because they thought it promoted witchcraft. The Internet/Social Media every other month, you'll hear how Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are ruining social skills Pokemon Same thing with Harry Potter but Pokemon was thought to teach Evolution.
What forms of media were demonized when you were a kid? What interesting stories do you have?
Also from our generation: Rap music. Eminem in particular. Maybe because he's white but it seems that not until Eminem got big did suburban soccer moms finally figure out this whole rap thing was getting mainstream.
Rock & Roll. Wearing jeans to school. (1956 -1960) Saying the words, 'pregnant' or 'sex' or 'rape'.
Back in those days a couple could not appear in bed together on TV unless one of them had a foot on the floor. So they usually used twin beds with a night stand between them.
I was a teenager in the '60's, so it was pretty much everything. The clothes, the hair, the music, the movies...all signs of certain Apocalypse for America.
In addition, I was stuck attending Catholic schools, so the demon list was expanded to cover their eccentric morality points as well. We used to get these weekly handouts on Friday which were a list of movies, tv shows and pop songs which had been condemned by the National Legion of Decency. The list was extensive, all that was required a for a film to make it was having any sort of scene which flew in the face of Catholic orthodoxy. Thus we were warned to avoid films which "condoned divorce" or "undermined parental authority" along with all the ones condemned for their carnal aspects.
And of course we wound up using the list as a reverse barometer...if a film was condemned for sexual content, then that made it the film we all went to see.
Tipper Gore was railing against video games and music back 30 years ago as some crazy mad mother trying to get the "nanny state" in gear, even before her ex - Ozone Man Al, became VP.
And even way before that, parents were up in arms against the damning effects and influence of pinball machines.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
--Socrates (469–399 BCE)
There is nothing new under the sun... (Ecclesiastes)
Also from our generation: Rap music. Eminem in particular. Maybe because he's white but it seems that not until Eminem got big did suburban soccer moms finally figure out this whole rap thing was getting mainstream.
Rap went mainstream long before Eminem. Run-DMC was very popular in the mid-late 80s and I would say that was when rap went mainstream. By 1990, hip-hop was the second best selling genre of music, second to rock.
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