page
2 “The demon clutched a sleeping thane . . . .” From the edition my mother used to read to me, which I found years later on her shelf: Charles W. Kennedy, trans., Beowulf, in The Literature of England, ed. George B. Woods, Homer A.Watt, and George K. Anderson (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1953), p. 34.
6 Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment:The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Random House, 1976).
7 “In March 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics . . . .” Advice included in “The Role of the Pediatrician in Youth Violence Prevention in Clinical Practice and at the Community Level,” a policy statement published in Pediatrics (January 1999); it was reiterated in an AAP press release (March 7, 2000) that received considerably more media attention.
10 “My words are like a dagger . . . .” Lyrics by Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), Uni/Interscope Records.
11 “Anthropologists and psychologists who study play . . . .” The richest and most insightful of the resources on this topic are the works of Brian Sutton-Smith, the most recent and comprehensive being The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997). See also his The Psychology of Play (North Stratford, N.H.:Ayer, 1976) and Play and Learning (New York: John Wiley, 1979).
11 “Soon after the terrorist attacks . . . .” Anne D’Innocenzio, “Toy Firms Downplay Violence,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 28, 2001.
12 “Many of us worried . . . .” This was supported by a Rand study that found that during the week after the attacks, 90 percent of people over eighteen years old suffered stress reactions while only 35 percent of those five through seventeen years old did so. Mark A. Schuster et al., “A National Survey of Stress Reactions after the September 11, 2001,Terrorist Attacks,” New England Journal of Medicine (November 2001).
19 “Many forces have been shown to . . . .” Russell G. Geen, Human Aggression (Pacific Grove, Calif.: McGraw-Hill, 1990); David H. Crowell, Ian M. Evans, and Clifford R. O’Donnell, eds., Childhood Aggression and Violence (New York: Plenum, 1987); and Leonard Berkowitz, Aggression: Its Causes, Consequences, and Control (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993). See also Craig A. Anderson et al., “Hot Temperatures, Hostile Affect, Hostile Cognition, and Arousal:Tests of a General Model of Affective Aggression,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21 (1995).
19 “‘Narrative deals with the vicissitudes . . . .’” Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 16.
23 Stanford study described in Thomas N. Robinson, Marta L.Wilde, Lisa C. Navracruz, K. Farish Haydel, and Ann Varady, “Effects of Reducing Children’s Television and Video Game Use on Aggressive Behavior,” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (January 2001).
23 “The San Francisco Chronicle . . . .”“Kids Less Violent after Watching Less TV,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2001. I should note that the full Associated Press article, which many newspapers trimmed, “Less TV Time May Cut Aggression in Children,” acknowledged the absence of correlation with media content and quoted Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel of Northwestern University on the possibility of too much media time limiting children’s opportunities to develop their social skills.
24 “In fact, in 1999, Dr. Robinson . . . .”Thomas N. Robinson,“Reducing Children’s Television Viewing to Prevent Obesity,” Journal of the American Medical Association (October 1999).
25 Regarding changing medical views of sexuality and psychopathology, see, among many other works, Lawrence Birken, Sexual Science and the Emergence of a Culture of Abundance, 1871–1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); John D’Emilio and Estelle Friedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); and Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualities (London: Routledge, 2000).
26 Regarding changing views of autism and other developmental problems, see Uta Frith, ed., Autism and Asperger Syndrome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
26 “People only see what they are prepared . . . .” Merton Sealts, ed., Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 138.
26 “On July 26, 2000 . . . .” Joint Statement on the Effects of Entertainment Violence on Children, Congressional Public Health Summit, July 26, 2000.
28 Stuart Fischoff, “Psychology’s Quixotic Quest for the Media-Violence Connection,” invited address to American Psychological Association Convention, Boston, 1999.
28 For more on Helen Smith’s data, see her The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill (Knoxville, Tenn.: Callisto, 2000).
28 quotes from Drs. Edwin Cook and Lynn Ponton, like all unannotated quotes henceforth, are from interviews conducted by the author. For more on the views of Lynn Ponton, see The Romance of Risk:Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do (New York: Basic Books, 1997); andThe Sex Lives of Teenagers (New York: Dutton, 2000).
29 “Even the Surgeon General’s . . . .” Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General,Department of Health and Human Services, January 2001. 29 “According to Dr. Jonathan Freedman . . . .” Quoted by Jonathan Storm, “Foes of TV Violence Turn Up Volume,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 28, 1994.
29 “According to every meta-analysis of the research . . . .” Jonathan L. Freedman, Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). See also Haejung Paik and George Comstock, “The Effects of Television Violence on Anti- Social Behavior: A Meta-Analysis,” Communication Research 28 (1994); and Russell G. Geen and Edward Donnerstein, eds., Human Aggression:Theories, Research, and Implications for Social Policy (New York: Academic Press, 1998).
The degree to which preconception has eclipsed research in the debate is shown by the continuing inflation of the imagined number of studies. A little more than a year after the American Academy of Pediatrics coauthored the Joint Statement, the same body issued a policy statement asserting that its conclusions were based on “over 3,500 studies” (“Media Aggression,” Pediatrics, November 2001). This prompted an open letter from a group of psychologists, culture critics, and criminologists asking the AAP to reconsider the statement’s “many misstatements . . . overall distortions and failure to acknowledge many serious questions about the interpretation of media violence studies.” National Coalition Against Censorship Web site (http://www.ncac.org), December 5, 2001.
29 “AMA spokesman Edward Hill . . . .” Bruce Rolston, “The Skeptic,” Adrenaline Vault, December 22, 2000.
30 “Since that time . . . .” For views on new methodologies, see, among many others, David Gauntlett, Moving Experiences: Understanding Television’s Influences and Effects (London: J. Libbey, 1995); and Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, Media Effects:Advances in Theory and Research (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994).
31 “Aggressive kids may be more drawn to . . . .” See Allan Fenigstein, “Does Aggression Cause a Preference for Viewing Media Violence?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979); and Barrie Gunter, “Do Aggressive People Prefer Violent Television?” Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 36 (1983).
31 William A. Belson, Television Violence and the Adolescent Boy (London: Saxon House, 1978). Similar findings are discussed in Ann Hagell and Tim Newburn, Young Offenders and the Media:Viewing Habits and Preferences (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1994).
31 “The one correlative study that has . . . .” Leonard D. Eron, L. Rowell Huesmann, Monroe M. Lefkowitz, and Leopold O.Walder, “Does Television Violence Cause Aggression?” American Psychologist 27 (1972); L. Rowell Huesmann and Leonard D. Eron,Television and the Aggressive Child: A Cross-National Comparison (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986).
32 “However, in the thirty years . . . .” Counterpoints to the Eron studies include Jonathan L. Freedman, “Violence in the Mass Media and Violence in Society: The Link Is Unproven,” Harvard Mental Health Letter (May 1996); Jib Fowles, The Case for Television Violence (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999); and Guy Cumberhatch and Dennis Howitt, A Measure of Uncertainty:The Effects of the Mass Media (London: J. Libbey, 1989).
33 “‘It’s in the laboratory . . . .’” Quoted by Storm, “Foes of TV Violence Turn Up Volume.”
33 “Selected as a subject . . . .” Fowles, The Case for Television Violence, pp. 26–27.
34 “A child choosing to watch Dragonball Z . . . .” See, for example, David Buckingham, Children Talking Television:The Making of Television Literacy (London: Falmer, 1993).
35 “That may explain the results . . . .” Brian Coates, H. Ellison Pusser, and Irene Goodman, “The Influence of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on Children’s Social Behavior in the Preschool,” Child Development 47 (1976).
35 Paik and Comstock, “The Effects of Television Violence on Anti- Social Behavior: A Meta-Analysis.” See also Fowles, The Case for Television Violence.
35 “Some have supported . . . .” Seymour Feshback and Robert D. Singer, Television and Aggression: An Experimental Field Study (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1971).
36 “All of this research . . . .” The cigarette-smoking analogy is laid out in Sissela Bok, Mayhem:Violence as Public Entertainment (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1998). For views that I find more humanistic, see Henry Jenkins, “Lessons from Littleton: What Congress Doesn’t Want to Hear about Youth and Media,” Independent School (Winter 2000); and David Gauntlett, “Ten Things Wrong with the ‘Effects Model,’” in Approaches to Audiences:A Reader, ed. Roger Dickinson et al. (London: Arnold, 1998), revised for the Web at http://www.newmediastudies.com (Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, 1999).
36 “If we believed that kissing . . .” Morton Hunt, The Story of Psychology (New York: Anchor, 1994).
37 “It may be that John McCain . . . .” A fuller picture can be found in John McCain, Faith of My Fathers (New York: Random House, 1999).
37 “The cornerstone of all . . . .” Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Shiela A. Ross, “Imitation of Film-Mediated Aggressive Models,” Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology 3 (1963).
39 Richard J. Borden, “Witnessed Aggression: Influence of an Observer’s Sex and Values on Aggressive Responding,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31 (1975).
39 “Still others have attempted a physiological . . . .” See Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman, “Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior:A Meta-Analytic Review of Scientific Literature,” Psychological Science 12 (2001); and Freedman, Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression.
39 “All emotions are intensified . . . .” For more on media and general arousal, see Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, eds., Responding to the Screen: Reception and Reaction Processes (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991).
40 Penny Holland, “War Play in the Nursery: Zero Tolerance May Harm Both Boys and Girls,” New Therapist (Winter 2000), London: European Therapy Studies Institute.
41 “By failing to consider the meaning of . . . .” A good overview of the preconceptions and misinterpretations through which viewer reactions are commonly described is Martin Barker and Julian Petley, eds., Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate (London: Routledge, 1997).
41 “In the late 1960s, . . . .” See Geoffrey Cowan, See No Evil: The Backstage War over Sex and Violence on Television (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).
43 Joint Statement on the Effects of Entertainment Violence on Children.
48 “Childhood gun play is . . . .” See, for example, Laurence R. Goldman, Child’s Play: Myth, Mimesis, and Make-Believe (Oxford: Berg, 1997); and N. Blurton Jones, ed., Ethological Studies of Child Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
49 J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (New York: Scholastic, 1997) and its sequels.
49 “The ‘gun’ of the young child’s imagination . . . .” See also Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
51 The Donald Roberts quotes are from an interview by the author, but more on his ideas can be found in Donald F. Roberts, “Media Templates,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 42 (1999). See also Dolf Zillmann, Jennings Bryant, and Aletha C. Houston, eds., Media, Children, and the Family: Social Scientific, Psychodynamic, and Clinical Perspectives (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994).
54 “A 1998 UCLA study . . . .” Jeffery Cole, The UCLA Television Violence Monitoring Report (Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles, 1996).
54 “When children’s viewing habits . . . .” This subject has not been systematically analyzed, but see data in Donald F. Roberts et al., Kids and Media at the New Millennium (Menlo Park, Calif.: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 1999); National Television Violence Study, 3 vols. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996, 1997, 1998); and demographic data supplied by the various TV networks and cable channels.
55 “Similarly, a 2001 Harvard study . . . .” Kimberley M. Thompson and Kevin Haninger, “Violence in E-Rated Video Games,” Journal of the American Medical Association (August 2001).
55 “Studies reveal that the vast majority . . . .” See, for example, Youth Violence:A Report of the Surgeon General,Department of Health and Human Services, January 2001; and David Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., Juvenile Crime (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1997).
55 “When the story of the first-grader . . . .” Detroit Free Press, March 1, 2, 3, and 9, 2000.
56–57 “That’s why Isaac Bashevis Singer . . . .” This quote is from a source I’ve lost. I copied it down from an interview with him on the release of Stories for Children (1991). I would appreciate any reader’s help in tracking it down.
57 “Every toy marketer knows . . . .” This comment springs from my own experiences with entertainment and toy marketers, but the ideas are explored in Daniel S. Acuff and Robert H. Reiher, What Kids Buy and Why:The Psychology of Marketing to Kids (New York: Free Press, 1997).
58 “Decades ago . . . .” Anna Freud, Research at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic and Other Papers, 1956–1965 (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1969).
59 “The philosopher . . . .” Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973).
59 Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (New York: Ballantine, 1994).
60 “This is why . . . .” Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment:The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Random House, 1976). A more thorough argument, which appears to have been Bettelheim’s primary source, was Julius Heuscher, A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales: Their Origin, Meaning, and Usefulness (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C.Thomas, 1963).
61 Vivian Gussin Paley, Boys and Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 73–74, 80.
66 Lenore Terr, Beyond Love and Work:Why Adults Need to Play (New York: Scribner, 1999), pp. 206–208. For more on the functions of play, see Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Brian Sutton-Smith, ed., Play and Learning (New York: John Wiley, 1979); and Iona Opie, The People in the Playground (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
67 “Wrestling, roughhousing, . . . .”See A.D. Pelligrini, “Boys’ Rough and Tumble Play and Social Competence,” in The Future of Play Theory, ed. A.D. Pelligrini (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
70 “TV shows, movies, video games, and toys . . . .” For a more elaborate look at the play/media relationship, see Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
71 Vivian Gussin Paley, Boys and Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 70–71, 108.
72 “There are dangers to . . . .” Kinder, Playing with Power.
74 “Far too early we tell children to . . . .”Terr, Beyond Love and Work; and R. E. Herron and Brian Sutton-Smith, eds., Child’s Play (New York: John Wiley, 1971).
75 “Interestingly, wrestling has had . . . .” See Sharon Mazer, Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1998).
77 Vivian Gussin Paley, Boys and Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. ix.
77 “Even the girls of the San . . . .” Melvin Konner, “Aspects of the Developmental Ethology of a Foraging People,” in Ethological Studies of Child Behaviour, ed. N. Blurton Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
77–78 “Authorities offer various possible . . . .” Peter J. Smith and Kevin J. Connolly, The Ecology of Preschool Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); and Lenore Terr, Beyond Love and Work:Why Adults Need to Play (New York: Scribner, 1999).
78 “In one study, the great play researcher . . . .” K. Conner, “Aggression: Is It in the Eye of the Beholder?” Play and Culture 2 (1989).
78 “From the end of preschool onward . . . .” See Barrie Thorne, Gender Play: Boys and Girls in School (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994); and Brian Sutton-Smith, “The Play of Girls,” in On Becoming Female, ed. C. B. Knopp and M. Kirkpatrick (New York: Plenum, 1979).
80 “The popular culture of girls . . . .” See Sharon R. Mazzarella and Norma Odom Pecora, eds., Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999); and Mary F.Rogers, Barbie Culture (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2000).
82 “Girls have long shown . . . .” See Mazzarella and Pecora, Growing Up Girls; and Sherrie Inness, Tough Girls:Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
84 “Girls show a greater flexibility and complexity . . . .” See Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, eds., From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).
88 “An old saw of . . . .” For a fuller look at Hollywood preconceptions and the female audience’s complex relationship with them, see Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women (Middle-field, Conn.:Wesleyan University Press, 1995).
89 “Japanese culture stresses traditional . . . .” For more thoughts on Japanese popular culture, see Frederick L. Schodt, Inside the Robot Kingdom (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998); and Frederick L. Schodt, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983). Also see (or listen to) Joseph Campbell, The Eastern Way, recorded lectures on audio tape (St. Paul: HighBridge, 1997).
94 “The woman who invented the Barbie doll . . . .” Ruth Handler and Jacqueline Shannon, Dream Doll:The Ruth Handler Story (Ann Arbor: Borders Press, 1994).
96 “As girlhood changes . . . .” See Cassell and Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat; and Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey, and June Melody, Growing Up Girl: Psychosocial Explorations of Gender and Class (New York: New York University Press, 2001).
97 “The late 1920s saw a rise in crime . . . .” See David E. Ruth, Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American History, 1918–1934 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
99 “Shooter video games like . . . .” Data from the International Digital Software Association (http://www.idsa.org).
101 “Those are some of the essential . . . .” See Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Brian Sutton-Smith, ed., Play and Learning (New York: John Wiley, 1979); and Lenore Terr, Beyond Love and Work:Why Adults Need to Play (New York: Scribner, 1999).
102 “In addition to asserting . . . .” Joint Statement on the Effects of Entertainment Violence on Children, Congressional Public Health Summit, July 26, 2000.
102 “Those words are taken almost verbatim . . . .” See George Gerbner, “Desensitization Toward Violence in Our Society as a Result of Violence in the Media,” paper presented at the International Conference on Violence in the Media, New York, 1994; and George Gerbner, Michael Morgan, and Nancy Signorelli, “Violence on Television: The Cultural Indicators Project,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 39 (1995).
102 “Subsequent studies have . . . .” Paul Hirsch, “A Reanalysis of Gerbner et al.’s Findings on Cultivation Research,” Communication Research (1980 and 1981); Jib Fowles, The Case for Television Violence (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999); and Marilyn Jackson-Beeck and Jeff Sobal, “The Social World of Heavy Television Viewers,” Journal of Broadcasting 24 (1980). See also Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Television and the Quality of Life (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990).
103 “The evidence shows, however, that . . . .” Fowles, The Case for Television Violence.
105 Joint Statement on the Effects of Entertainment Violence on Children.
105 “In 1964, in a placid . . . .”A.M. Rosenthal, Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
106 “Later studies of the Genovese case . . . .” Bibb Latané and John M. Darley, The Unresponsive Bystander:Why Doesn’t He Help? (New York: Appleton- Century Crofts, 1970); and Rosenthal, Thirty-Eight Witnesses.
106 “In the most recent of these . . . .” Fred Molitor and Kenneth William Hirsch, “Children’s Toleration of Real-Life Aggression after Exposure to Media Violence: A Replication of the Drabman and Thomas Studies,” Child Study Journal 24 (1994).
107 “If we apply some empathy . . . .” Other readings of such data can be found in Fowles, The Case for Television Violence;David Gauntlett, Moving Experiences: Understanding Television’s Influences and Effects (London: J. Libbey, 1995); and Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, eds., Responding to the Screen: Reception and Reaction Processes (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991).
117 “‘Violence in our house . . . .’” Frontline:The Killer at Thurston High, documentary televised on Public Broadcasting System, January 2000.
118 “Every report of . . . .” See “Tragedy Hits Home,” Eugene Register-Guard, May 24-June 2, 1998; and “Bound for Violence,” Eugene Register-Guard,November 27, 1998.
125 Mike A. Males, Framing Youth: 10 Myths about the Next Generation (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999), pp. 280–281.
125 “Studies in other parts . . . .”Youth Vision, Adult Attitudes Toward Youth (Chicago:Youth Vision, 1995); L. Dorfman, K.Woodruff, V. Chavez, and L.Wallack, “Youth and Violence on Local Television News in California,” American Journal of Public Health 87 (1997); Males, Framing Youth; and Uniform Crime Reports for the United States (Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice, 1997, 1998, 1999).
125 Mike A. Males, The Scapegoat Generation:America’s War on Adolescents (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1996); Uniform Crime Reports for the United States (Washington, D.C.:Department of Justice, 2000); and Elizabeth Donohue, Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, School House Hype: School Shootings and the Real Risk Kids Face in America (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 1998).
126 “Even youth advocates . . . .” “The Costs of Youth Violence,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 4, 2001.
126 “What gets lost between . . . .” David Bender and Bruno Leone, eds., Juvenile Crime (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1997); Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (New York: Crown, 1995); U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, A Nation’s Shame: Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress, 1995); Donohue et al., School House Hype; and Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1999, 2000.
129 “The keynote of Classical . . . .” See Harold Bloom, Homer’s Iliad (New York: Chelsea House, 1996).
130 “The rise of science . . . .” This is a shorthand description of a long, complex shift in the relationships of the individual, violence, and society. It is placed in broader perspectives in Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, 2 vols. (New York: Pantheon, 1978, 1982); and Eric A. Johnson and Eric H. Monkonnen, eds., The Civilizing of Crime (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996).
131 “Plato, in imagining his . . . .” See Robert Mayhew, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Republic (London: Rouman and Littlefield, 1997).
131 “Although crime rates weren’t yet . . . .”Ted Robert Gurr, ed., Violence in America, vol. 1, The History of Crime (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1989).
131 Michael Lesy, Wisconsin Death Trip (New York: Pantheon, 1973).
131 “During the buildup to . . . .” Anecdote taken from the displays of the Forbes Galleries in New York.
132 “A few years later . . . .” Charles Musser and Carol Nelson, High-Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880–1920 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 266.
132 “And as we removed violence . . . .” See Jeffrey Goldstein, ed., Why We Watch:The Attractions of Violent Entertainment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
133 “In fact, Hollywood’s action movies . . . .” Data from Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com).
133 “Nintendo and Play Station . . . .” Data from International Digital Software Association (http://www.idsa.org).
133 “The result has been an ideological . . . .”A less glamorous analogy than “war” was offered to me by Jeffrey Goldstein (see above), who compared the two camps of the media-aggression debate to an old married couple who have been having the same argument for so many decades that one is finally forced to think that they are invested not in the truth but in the argument itself.
134 “The first great modern conflict . . . .” Regarding dime novels in general, see J. Randolph Cox, The Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000); Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America (New York:Verso, 1987). Regarding the furor against the novels, see Lydia C. Shurman, “Anthony Comstock and His Crusade Against ‘Vampire Literature,’” paper submitted to the Popular Culture Association Conference, Toronto, 1990; Evelyn Geller, Forbidden Books in America’s Public Libraries, 1876–1939 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984); and Marjorie Heins, Not in Front of the Children: Indecency, Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001).
136 “This was a medium dramatically unlike . . . .” See Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America (New York:Vintage, 1994).
136 “As the film historian . . . .” Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960 (Middlefield, Conn.:Wesleyan University Press, 1995).
137 “Organizations such as . . . .” Leonard J. Leff and Jerrold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990); Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000); and Garth S. Jowett, Ian C. Jarvie, and Kathryn H. Fuller, Children and the Movies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
137 “Many of the claims . . . .” Henry James Forman, Our Movie-Made Children (New York: Macmillan, 1934); Arthur Kellogg, “Minds Made by the Movies,” Survey Graphic (May 1933).
139 “‘It is apparent that children . . . .’” Kellogg, “Minds Made by the Movies,” pp. 246–247.
139 “People who feel more invested in . . . .” For further developments of these ideas, see also Todd Gitlin’s, “The Symbolic Crusade Against Media Violence Is a Confession of Despair,” Chronicle of Higher Education (February 1994); and Heins, Not in Front of the Children.
141 “In 1982, Surgeon General . . . .” Quoted in “Surgeon General Sees Danger in Video Games,” New York Times, November 10, 1982.
141 Joint Statement on the Effects of Entertainment Violence on Children, Congressional Public Health Summit, July 26, 2000.
141 “Some studies do suggest that . . . .” Craig A. Anderson, Violent Video Games Increase Aggression and Violence, testimony at U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on “The Impact of Interactive Violence on Children,” April 9, 2001. For the Inverness study, see Derek Scott, “The Effect of Video Games on Feelings of Aggression,” Journal of Psychology 129 (July 1994).
143 “Entertainment relying on . . . .” Data from International Digital Software Association (http://www.idsa.org).
143 “In The Uses of Enchantment . . . .” Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment:The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Random House, 1976).
143 “Once a group of parents . . . .” Richard Pollak, The Creation of Dr. B:A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).
144 “At the peak of the dime novel . . . .”Denning, Mechanic Accents, p. 9.
146 “During the early 1930s . . . .” Michael E. Parrish,Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920–1941 (New York:W.W. Norton, 1994); and Mike A. Males, Framing Youth: 10 Myths about the Next Generation (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999).
149 “Traditionally, women in action stories . . . .” See Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Yvonne Tasker, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998).
150 “The Tomb Raider game . . . .” Data from International Digital Software Association (http://www.idsa.org). See also Heather Gilmour, “What Girls Want:The Intersections of Leisure and Power in Female Computer Game Play,” in Kids’ Media Culture, ed. Marsha Kinder (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999); and Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, eds., From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).
155 “These kids know about . . . .” See also Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex:The Shaping of Adolescence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey, and June Melody, Growing Up Girl: Psychosocial Explorations of Gender and Class (New York: New York University Press, 2001); and Lynn E. Ponton, The Sex Lives of Teenagers (New York: Dutton, 2000).
156 “Vampires have been overtly . . . .” See Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
157 “If Buffy were a parent’s dream . . . .” See also Sharon R. Mazzarella and Norma Odom Pecora, eds., Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999).
158 “The arrival of sexuality is . . . .” See also Daniel J. Kindlon and Michael Thompson, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys (New York: Ballantine, 1999).
159 “And, as many a culture critic . . . .” See, for example, Haskell, From Reverence to Rape.
160 “They envy girl power . . . .” See also Sherrie Inness, Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); and Cassell and Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat.
163 “Watching a teenage boy . . . .” For more about the complexities of identification with a game-self, see Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York:Touchstone, 1997).
166 “It’s understandable that . . . .” Joint Statement on the Effects of Entertainment Violence on Children, Congressional Public Health Summit, July 26, 2000.
166 “In a powerful book . . . .” Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).
166 “Effective conditioning requires . . . .”B. F. Skinner, About Behaviorism (New York: Random House, 1976).
167 “Games have always been a part . . . .” See J. Huizinga, Homo Lu-dens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949).
167 “After a decade of these games . . . .” See Jonathan L. Freedman, Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).
167 “‘The research on video games . . . .’” For more on Helen Smith’s data, see her The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill (Knoxville, Tenn.: Callisto, 2000).
167 “The contemporary style of the . . . .” Steven Poole, Trigger Happy: Video Games and Entertainment Revolution (London: Fourth Estate, 2000); and data from International Digital Software Association (http://www.idsa.org).
168 “A few studies of adolescents . . . .” Craig A. Anderson, Violent Video Games Increase Aggression and Violence, testimony at U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on “The Impact of Interactive Violence on Children,” April 9, 2001; and Freedman, Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression.
168 “The planned, systematic way . . . .” E. Pooley, “Portrait of a Deadly Bond,” Time (May 10, 1999).
168 “Based on the data of . . . .” James P. McGee, “The Classroom Avenger,” Forensics Journal 4 (1999); and Caren D.DeBernardo and James P. McGee, “Preventing the Classroom Avenger’s Next Attack,” Center for School Mental Health Assistance Newsletter (Fall 1999).
170 “‘In video arcades . . . .’” Grossman, On Killing, p. 314.
170 “The games are becoming remarkably . . . .” See also Poole, Trigger Happy; and J. C. Herz, Joystick Nation: How Video Games Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997).
170 “According to . . . .” Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1990); and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly and Reed Larson, Being Adolescent (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
171 “Gaming is becoming an increasingly . . . .” Poole, Trigger Happy; Steve L. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games (Rocklin, Calif.: Prima, 2001); and data from International Digital Software Association (http://www.idsa.org).
172 “Not surprisingly, then, gaming . . . .” See Jeanne B. Funk, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” paper submitted to Playing by the Rules:The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games, conference at the University of Chicago, 2001 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, in press). See also Heather Gilmour, “What Girls Want: The Intersections of Leisure and Power in Female Computer Game Play,” in Kids’ Media Culture, ed. Marsha Kinder (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999).
172 “Studies show that if . . . .” Poole, Trigger Happy; Herz, Joystick Nation; and data from International Digital Software Association (http://www.idsa.org).
174 Craig Anderson’s revelations were made at Playing by the Rules: The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games. My suspicion is that the emails were empty threats, a badly modulated form of fantasy violence; but they do suggest the tendency of some gamers to get lost in their own heads, for there could be no more ridiculous way to defend their games than to assault a prominent critic of entertainment violence with their hostility.
178 “Gory violence has many . . . .” See also Marsha Kinder, ed., Kids’ Media Culture: Console-ing Passions (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); and Henry Jenkins, “Lessons from Littleton: What Congress Doesn’t Want to Hear about Youth and Media,” Independent School (Winter 2000).
180–181 “‘It’s true that crime rates . . . .’” Fox News Channel, August 4, 2000.
181 “The 1924 Leopold and Loeb . . . .” Michael E. Parrish, Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920–1941 (New York:W.W. Norton, 1994).
183 “Senator Joe Lieberman . . . .” Quoted in “Protecting Children, Tempting Pandora,” New York Times, June 27, 2001.
184 “Every bit of research . . . .” See, for example, D. J. Flannery and C. R. Huff, eds., Youth Violence: Prevention, Intervention, and Social Policy (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, 1998); Monroe M. Lefkowitz, Leonard D. Eron, Leopold O.Walder, and L. Rowell Huesmann, Growing Up to Be Violent: A Longitudinal Study of the Development of Aggression (New York: Pergamon Press, 1977).
184 “Similar patterns hold true . . . .” See Ralph J. DiClementi, William B. Hansen, and Lynn E. Ponton, Handbook of Adolescent Health Risk Behavior (New York: Plenum, 1996).
186 “Mirroring is one of the basic tools . . . .”The therapeutic sense of mirroring was described by Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child (New York: Basic Books, 1981). I’m using the word here also to include some other related processes. See also Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
188 “The key, she said . . . .” Dr. Ponton’s suggestions are developed further in her The Romance of Risk:Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do (New York: Basic Books, 1997) and The Sex Lives of Teenagers (New York: Dutton, 2000).
189 “In the 1970s, some spotty research . . . .” Mark L.Wolraich, D. B. Wilson, and J.Wade White, “The Effect of Sugar on Behavior or Cognition in Children: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of the American Medical Association 274 (1995).
194 “The limits of the media’s instructive powers . . . .” Daniel S. Acuff and Robert H. Reiher, What Kids Buy and Why:The Psychology of Marketing to Kids (New York: Free Press, 1997).
195 “Of course, if a child’s real world . . . .” See M. Hogben, “Factors Moderating the Effect of Television Aggression on Viewer Behavior,” Communication Research 25 (1998).
195 “According to Stanford’s . . . .” See Donald F. Roberts, “Media Templates,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 42 (1999).
196 “Jib Fowles of . . . .” See also his The Case for Television Violence (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999).
200 “He has pointed out . . . .” See Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csik-szentmihaly, Television and the Quality of Life (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erl-baum, 1990); and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).
202 “Lynn Ponton told a story . . . .” Lynn Ponton, The Romance of Risk:Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do (New York: Basic Books, 1997).
206 “In her nationwide survey . . . .” See Helen Smith, The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill (Knoxville, Tenn.: Callisto, 2000).
207 “Forensic psychologist . . . .” James P. McGee, “The Classroom Avenger,” Forensics Journal 4 (1999).
207 “The late Dr. . . . .” Rachel Lauer, “Coercion in Schools: Depression and Violence in Youth,” presentation at conference of New York City School Psychologists, Social Workers, and Educational Evaluators, Pace University, 1998.
208 “They may feel that their lives . . . .” See also William Damon, Greater Expectations (New York: Free Press, 1996).
210 “Music historian . . . .” Ricky Vincent, Funk:The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000).
210 “Ice-T recorded a rap . . . .” Lyrics by Ice-T, Home Invasion (1993), Emd/Priority Records.
210 “Both of those raps . . . .” Lyrics by Ice-T, Home Invasion.
227 “They were an artist and a writer of . . . .” See also Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs, The Comic Book Heroes, rev. ed. (Rocklin, Calif.: Prima, 1996).
228–229 “It also includes some passionate arguments. . . .” Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (New York: Random House, 2000).