Normalizing Violence

I recently saw a video made by Penn Jillette about this Japanese Game called RapeLay. As far as I know, this game has only been released in Japan, but basically it's a video game about raping little girls. Naturally, a game like this has a lot of people upset. Some women groups are saying this game is normalizing rape and people have said similar stuff about violent video games that supposedly normalizes murder and stuff like that.

Personally, I don't buy it this "normalizing" argument. I don't think that playing a video game, reading a book, or watching a movie with violent acts in it will make a normal person do evil things. I think a person already prone to do these evil acts might be more likely to find entertainment in violent movies, or video games, but take those away and that person is still prone to do evil acts. Take away those fake forms a entertainment and they might even be more likely to find entertainment in real life victims. I think Penn makes one of the best cases I've heard against this normalizing violence argument.



He's basically making the point that normalizing the behavior is actually from trying to ban the video game, or denounce it, and saying that it's a video game's fault that a person might rape. It's not an object, or something someone sees simulated that makes them do bad things. A normal person can tell the difference in reality and fantasy. A person does bad things because they want to do bad things. Perhaps a person had horrible things done to them as a child to cause a mindset of revenge, or to seek out power over someone else, but entertainment like video games, or movies don't do anything to you. You're the one in control, not them. If anything, people could use those as an outlet to express aggression in a safe way instead of doing it in the real world. I think this same argument can be applied to many things people wish to ban, like guns, or drugs.

A lot of people state that drugs, like steroids, cause "roid rage", and some drugs do affect judgment, but when people talk about this, they seem to overlook the fact that a lot of already violent people might want to be the toughest and meanest dude on the block and take steroids. Which comes first; the chicken, or the egg? I don't think it's the steroids that make the guy mean, it's just that a mean guy is more likely to use steroids.

It's the same way with guns. I know lots of good people that own guns. Even I own guns. I don't look at a gun, or pick one up and all of a sudden get the urge to start mowing people down. I've played lots of violent video games and watched lots of violent movies and don't get the urge to mow people down. These objects hold no evil magic that can possess a normal human being and turn them into a murderer. People just do bad things because they want to, not because some object, or a form of entertainment takes over their mind.