There certainly is something to it, Talfuchre. But it's more complex than saying that violent TV does or does not promote violence or psychological harm in viewers. I have taught courses on this sort of thing.
The main issue, in my opinion (and this is supported by some good literature), is that the spectacle of death on TV is almost entirely decoupled from any deep context. In fact, the medium makes the meaningful exploration of context all but impossible, since it operates at a pace that guarantees that powerful material with complex content will be juxtaposed with shallow entertainment, scandal, and advertising.
With TV, you get 10 minutes of gut-wrenching, emotional news (perhaps something that strikes a chord at a personal level), followed by a car commercial and an advertisement for the next reality TV dance show.
When you get right down to it, it is a curious pathology of the modern condition that we can actually deal with and process this sort of media without going crazy. You tune in, have various emotional strings pulled, begin thinking about some important issues, and then tune out or get hit by a new stimulus. Sometimes, and especially when you are dealing with deep issues, the impact of the material will linger (as it should, when you think about it) after the programming has moved on, which it does almost instantaneously. Sure, we can engage with death in a purely desensitized fashion. But, at the same time, I think everyone would acknowledge that death is worthy of - and sometimes demands - deep contemplation and emotional engagement. Taken seriously, it also requires time and context. Contrast this with the treatment of death in the 24 hour news cycle, where someone is shot this morning, pronounced dead this afternoon, mourned this evening, and old news by tomorrow.
Additionally, programming structure ensures that only some acts of violence or death will be dealt with in anything approaching detail. So, following the adage "if it bleeds, it leads", we are exposed to some in-depth (but largely decontextualized) horror stories, while other events are reduced to bare-minimum statistics (remember 1/2 hour of the OJ Simpson trial coverage followed by two minutes on the situation in Rwanda?). Further, in contemporary media culture, the line between the accurate depiction of real deaths and the accurate depiction of deaths for entertainment purposes is so blurred as to be almost irrelevant.
Want to try an interesting exercise? Next time there is a tragic 'breaking news' event, go to the front page of one of the major news sites and do a 'screen capture'. Save the image and don't look at it for a few months. When you return to it, take a look at everything on the screen, and try to integrate it into a coherent narrative about society. Odds are that you will see the headline "Terrorists kill XYZ ..." along with a few related stories, some large pictures, and so on. At the same time, on the same page, you will probably find entertainment listings, links to movie reviews, human interest stories, and brief headlines about unimaginable atrocities occurring on the other side of the world. If you really try to step back and view things with a fresh pair of eyes, you have to conclude that this kind of news bombardment is more than a little absurd.
Anyway, I could go on about this for hours, but I worry that if I let my working life bleed into my BF time, the reverse will happen, and I'll find myself stroping a knife in front of a class of bewildered students.
All the best,
- Mike
