Jonathan, a ten year-old boy clutching his favorite stuffed animal, a three-legged giraffe, cracks a toothless smile as he waves good-bye. He has just spent his afternoon killing people. During our hour together he has thrown hundreds of animals and soldiers from the upper tower of my toy castle, crashed a flying dragon so hard into its sturdy stone wall that a visible crack has appeared, and created a raging fire that has slaughtered all the people who were trying to save the others. He has said very little during this intense hour, only once breaking his silence when he whispered, “It’s a killing world,” as a mother tried to save her newborn baby from the growing flames. This week, Jonathan has been only one of several children who blew up buildings, fired up blazes, and crashed airplanes. Jonathan’s therapy session with me, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, has taken place only three days after September 11, 2001.
Several months before, Jonathan had played violent games obsessively. His dad had tried to limit the activity, until I discovered that Jonathan was trying to cope with a bully at school. As he worked through that conflict, his violent play decreased. Then, after the 11th, it increased again dramatically. Jonathan told me that he was pretty scared after the terrorist activities. In fact, the only time that he wasn’t scared was when he was playing scary games–then he felt okay.
Killing games gave Jonathan control over events where he and others felt none and, perhaps even more important, they gave him control over his own feelings. With these games Jonathan no longer felt as helpless. He was not as scared of others or of his own feelings.
As a psychiatrist, I see on a daily basis that frightening and violent ideas, images, and fantasies are vital parts of children’s minds. The images of September 11th fueled Jonathan’s fantasies and spurred his play, but they also helped him understand what had just happened in the world. Playing with violent images frightened but also soothed him, helping him feel strong enough to handle what had happened.
Killing games have much to tell us about the worlds of children and teenagers. It is important that we try to listen. Gerard Jones’s book, Killing Monsters, helps us do just that. Listen. And it is not easy to listen to the violent stories that fill the lives of our children. It is far easier to pretend that these themes either don’t exist or should be completely eliminated.
What role do violent themes and entertainment play in children’s lives? What value do they have? In this powerful and important book, Jones helps us not only to listen but to ask the right questions. As a researcher of popular culture, a former comic book writer, a game maker, and equally important, a parent, he has listened to children and teens who love scary games and movies. He has run storytelling workshops with girls who idolize Buffy the Vampire Slayer and boys who play Doom. In Killing Monsters, he helps us discover the power and the magic that our children see in violent superheroes. He also helps us ask questions about the risks, the real risks. When do these “games” make our children more violent? Which children are at risk?
And–most important–what, if anything, can and should be done about that risk?
Gerard Jones’s reassuring book offers all of us–parents, teachers, policymakers, and media critics–new ways to understand the challenges and rewards of fantasy violence in the modern imagination.
Lynn Ponton, M.D.,
Author of The Romance of Risk:
Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do