The point ....... that children who watch fantasy TV, films, and video games [and read books or comics] ........ could transfer negative attitudes ...... is probably true to some extent, in my estimation.
Absolutely. There's not question in my mind that story-telling in media inculcates [ Inculcate definition - to teach and impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions.] values and attitudes. But transference of positive attitudes - if they are propagandistic- is just as potentially dangerous.
There's no question in my mind that [for example] Star Wars, Star Trek and Dr Who inculcates values and attitudes.
foreigners are "like vampires, zombies, and orcs,
I hadn't considered Vampires and Zombies in this context, so thank you. I avoid both Vampire fiction and Zombie fiction, so am cut off from a large amount of current mulit-media fiction. But I'm fascinated.
Currently Zombies are the villains of choice in many TV shows, Video Games, Books and comics.
Suggestion - In these PC times you can't pinpoint any 'real' political group or nationality as villains, [Except NAZI's] so Zombies are a fictional substitution for Racial Vilification.
Not so Vampires, who are now more of a substitute identity for for the experiences of puberty and feeling alienated from the World around them. Hence Goth Culture. And the prevalence of Vampires in fiction aimed at teenagers. [Twilight, The current Vampireation [my word!] of the Archie/Riverdale universe.]
"hatred" they have been learning from their parents, reinforced by transferring those feelings from the Human peoples hated by their parents (or their teachers
Never mind the middle ages, Antisemitism is currently on the rise worldwide. In the middle east there are children's shows on TV that teach Arab children that Jews are less than human.
But how about some good news?
https://sites.google.com/site/hugomercier/not-born-yesterday
Hugo Mercier is a research scientist at the CNRS (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), where he with the Evolution and Social Cognition team and the Collective Intelligence team.
His work has focused on two main topics:
The function and workings of reasoning (see The Enigma of Reason).[Book]
How we evaluate communicated information (see Not Born Yesterday).[Book]
Not Born Yesterday explains how we decide who we can trust and what we should believe―and argues that we're pretty good at making these decisions. In this lively and provocative book, Hugo Mercier demonstrates how virtually all attempts at mass persuasion―whether by religious leaders, politicians, or advertisers―fail miserably. Drawing on recent findings from political science and other fields ranging from history to anthropology, Mercier shows that the narrative of widespread gullibility, in which a credulous public is easily misled by demagogues and charlatans, is simply wrong.
Lets hope he is correct
I wish he were. But I don't believe he's correct about the degree. I think there are a lot of people who ARE good at that; but there are a LOT more than that who are NOT inherently good at that. That is based on my experience having lived in Germany, and listening to old people, some of whom had been children during the Nazi period, and others who were adults then. I listened to so many people who were normal, who seemed like decent, empathetic people, who explained how they were indoctrinated with the propaganda, and thought nothing of it, that it was just "information" or "advice" for their own benefit, and they realised later, that they had been manipulated, but couldn't see that as it was being done. That was especially true for the people who started being taught that by their parents and grandparents when they were very young, and when they were old enough to hear it from their priests and reverends, and teachers, and sports coaches, the different sources only reinforced each other. Everything about it seemed natural and normal.
As a Jew, growing up learning early that Humans can hate each other for seemingly no reason, that kind of propagandist behaviour would trigger a feeling of "something is VERY wrong here. Can those other people REALLY be so terrible that they are demonised to that extent, and "deserve" to be treated so terribly? Something smells very wrong here. It just doesn't seem right. But, when children are taught that by their parents and grandparents (the people they love and respect, and think they only have good in mind to protect their children, they become blind to the meanness, lack of empathy for the demonised, and irrationality of such behaviour. It becomes second nature, and they carry that lack of empathy for the dehumanised object of hate into adulthood, and for the rest of their lives unless a shocking event snaps them out of the blindness, such as seeing the horror of the films of what was done in the concentration camps, or meeting members of the hated group and discovering that they are Human, after all (by living through a life-threatening event together, or some other very emotional situation).
I grew up with prejudice in my schools, by Some of The Anglo Canadians in Winnipeg, but especially from immigrant Ukranians, whose whole families and ancestors had hated Jews for hundreds of years. I attended a high school in South Chicago that was 50% Caucasian and 50 % Black, at a time when African Americans were moving into the neighbourhood, and The "Whites" were moving away. There was terrible hatred exhibited by many of those people moving away (most of them were Polish, who hated Jews as much as The Ukranians). I had some acquaintances who hated Blacks from the time they started talking. We could seedhow they learned that from their parents. One of my Neighbours, with whom I walked to school learned that early from his father. He became an extreme right winger. A few years ago, while visiting family in Chicago, I ran into him. We talked a bit. He was a changed person. He had realised that the right-wing political leaders, who he had thought were not far right enough, were bad for the regular working man (he had been an auto mechanic). They had busted the workers' unions. They had "stolen" lots of money from hard-working people, and not given much back in the way of services (no medical help for people who worked hard all their lives, - only the rich can afford decent education, the rich are bleeding the middle classes dry. Old people losing their homes and everything they own to medical costs and inflation. It took him till 60+, perhaps 65 years of age to turn from almost Nazi to a slightly leftist. He seemed to have the attitude "Maybe my father was wrong?" His ideas and prejudiced attitudes about Blacks and Jews were milder, too (although, they were too deeply ingrained at a young age to be thrown away completely. I had always been a "white Jew" to him. Now he admitted that it was wrong to assume that ALL of any group of people are identical, and one cam=n met decent folk in any group (but, in Blacks they are just harder to find).
He still couldn't realise that the US society treating those people so horribly was one reason why he always had met Blacks who were not friendly to him, and that the other reason was that his own prejudiced attitude learned from his father made any potential good outcome from any such encounter, impossible.
Author
Topic: Is it Racist to Hate Orcs, Vampires and the Walking Dead? (Read 657 times)
