679. The Subtly Detrimental Influence Of Movies - An Example
Recently I watched the movie 'You've Got Mail'. I had heard of this movie before as if it were simply a nice and friendly romantic story of an internet match.
I was quite surprised, when I discovered its detrimental subtle message.
When only looking at the dynamics of the story, it could be a very exemplary story of the slippery slope of how the allegedly and mistakenly innocent initial behavior of chatting first escalates into emotional cheating and ultimately leads to the breakup of two couples.
Unfortunately, the movie is not at all a warning for considerate and responsible people to beware of this slippery slope. To the contrary, it reinforces and encourages people to pursue their own selfish goals without any consideration for their partners, without feeling any commitment and obligation. The movie is a story about how ruthless and irresponsible transgressions are rewarded.
Already the secrecy in the first scenes shows, that both protagonists are fully aware of doing something, which they know as not being accepted by their respective partner. It is clearly emotional cheating.
Additionally, both couples are shown as being principally in harmony, the respective partners are not presented as having done anything to deserve being dumped. When the two protagonists decided to cheat, they had not the least excuse in their partners' behavior.
Movies are fictional stories, but movies like 'You've Got Mail' are realistic enough to influence people's behavior and their moral compass. This movie contributes to the desensitization of people towards denial or unawareness for the hurting consequences of how they treat others.
The fiction of this movie is very unrealistic by presenting the dumped partners as not suffering but both ready to get involved with each other.
In real life, a dumped partner rarely ever goes through such an ordeal without being wounded and scarred.
The two protagonists could not foresee this exceptionally benign outcome of their transgression. When they made the first step upon the slippery slope towards emotional cheating, they decided to do this in spite of the then very real risk of deeply hurting their partners.
Such movies propagate the fallacy as if it were morally acceptable to look for someone new and dump the previous partner, even though he did nothing whatsoever to deserve this.
Of course this is just one movie, but those people seeing such movies frequently often end up desensitized. When they hurt others and the others are damaged and show this by their demeanor, the transgressors are unable to comprehend, what they themselves have done. Instead of taking responsibility, they define the damage done to the hurt person as a weakness, a flaw, a defect. Even those not directly involved are under the fallacy of blaming the victims for lacking resilience and not seeing the transgressor's full responsibility.
Sometimes people do worry about the effects of violence in movies and computer games upon people. But hardly ever anybody worries about the subtle desensitization of superficially harmless movies, which are teaching people to be ruthlessly selfish, irresponsible and inconsiderate.
Recently I watched the movie 'You've Got Mail'. I had heard of this movie before as if it were simply a nice and friendly romantic story of an internet match.
I was quite surprised, when I discovered its detrimental subtle message.
When only looking at the dynamics of the story, it could be a very exemplary story of the slippery slope of how the allegedly and mistakenly innocent initial behavior of chatting first escalates into emotional cheating and ultimately leads to the breakup of two couples.
Unfortunately, the movie is not at all a warning for considerate and responsible people to beware of this slippery slope. To the contrary, it reinforces and encourages people to pursue their own selfish goals without any consideration for their partners, without feeling any commitment and obligation. The movie is a story about how ruthless and irresponsible transgressions are rewarded.
Already the secrecy in the first scenes shows, that both protagonists are fully aware of doing something, which they know as not being accepted by their respective partner. It is clearly emotional cheating.
Additionally, both couples are shown as being principally in harmony, the respective partners are not presented as having done anything to deserve being dumped. When the two protagonists decided to cheat, they had not the least excuse in their partners' behavior.
Movies are fictional stories, but movies like 'You've Got Mail' are realistic enough to influence people's behavior and their moral compass. This movie contributes to the desensitization of people towards denial or unawareness for the hurting consequences of how they treat others.
The fiction of this movie is very unrealistic by presenting the dumped partners as not suffering but both ready to get involved with each other.
In real life, a dumped partner rarely ever goes through such an ordeal without being wounded and scarred.
The two protagonists could not foresee this exceptionally benign outcome of their transgression. When they made the first step upon the slippery slope towards emotional cheating, they decided to do this in spite of the then very real risk of deeply hurting their partners.
Such movies propagate the fallacy as if it were morally acceptable to look for someone new and dump the previous partner, even though he did nothing whatsoever to deserve this.
Of course this is just one movie, but those people seeing such movies frequently often end up desensitized. When they hurt others and the others are damaged and show this by their demeanor, the transgressors are unable to comprehend, what they themselves have done. Instead of taking responsibility, they define the damage done to the hurt person as a weakness, a flaw, a defect. Even those not directly involved are under the fallacy of blaming the victims for lacking resilience and not seeing the transgressor's full responsibility.
Sometimes people do worry about the effects of violence in movies and computer games upon people. But hardly ever anybody worries about the subtle desensitization of superficially harmless movies, which are teaching people to be ruthlessly selfish, irresponsible and inconsiderate.
