“You Can’t Hide from Your Shadow” - Should Natural Born...

â€Å"You Can’t Hide From Your Shadow† Should Natural Born Killers be Banned? In 1994 a film was released that sent religious groups, politicians and the sensationalist media into a fever; Natural Born Killers was â€Å"a bold new film that takes a look at a country seduced by fame, obsessed by crime and consumed by the media.† through the tale of two young murderers. In the years that followed the film was blamed for scores of tragedies in America, including but not limited to the case of a boy who decapitated a schoolmate, an 18 year old man who strangled his girlfriend whilst watching the movie and several high school shootings (including the now-infamous Columbine massacre). The Daily Mail was quick to import US-fear mongering and†¦show more content†¦And it is this that stands out as the single most unifying factor in all the killings supposedly linked to Natural Born Killers; the sheer number of stimuli that are alleged to have been to blame. One perfect example is the Heath High School shooting, during which a 14 year old boy killed thre e students and injured another five, Natural Born Killers was again blamed but this time in a multi-million dollar lawsuit that targeted film studios and video game developers across America; it was even suggested that the video game Doom was to blame for the gunman’s accuracy.[3] What we must consider is how we can quantify the ‘blame’ for an incident. It is obviously very hard to tell the reason why someone would act in such a randomly destructive way as to conduct a killing spree of innocents or a massacre of fellow children, but from a purely logical standpoint it seems unlikely that the main reason would be a film that had been enjoyed by 99.9% of it’s viewers without awakening in them a desire to conduct a series of murders. But then the same can be said for Marilyn Manson albums and Doom 3 so we seem to have a problem with the idea that these completely external influences can create murderers. Stone himself likens this to the famous ‘Twinkie defence’ adopted by the homophobic murderer Dan White, acknowledging that whilst films (and twinkies) can of course affectShow MoreRelatedLogical Reasoning189930 Words   |  760 PagesAttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. That is, you are free to share, copy, dis tribute, store, and transmit all or any part of the work under the following conditions: (1) Attribution You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author, namely by citing his name, the book title, and the relevant page numbers (but not in any way that suggests that the book Logical Reasoning or its author endorse you or your use of the work). (2) Noncommercial You may not use this work for commercial purposesRead MoreIgbo Dictionary129408 Words   |  518 PagesRoger Blench Roger Blench Mallam Dendo 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/ Fax. 0044-(0)1223-560687 Mobile worldwide (00-44)-(0)7967-696804 E-mail R.Blench@odi.org.uk http://www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm To whom all correspondence should be addressed. This printout: November 16, 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations: ................................................................................................................................................. 2 Editor’s Preface