Over a nine-month period, twelve year old Jesse Harding Pomeroy tortured and mutilated several young boys in South Boston. He was sent to a juvenile detention centre and once released (seventeen months later) he immediately mutilated and killed two more children. The authorities blamed the media that he most enjoyed.

That was in 1871. He read violent dime novels.* **

Demon possession and witchcraft was to blame prior to mass media. Or perhaps a person’s humours were out of sorts–too much black bile and you’ve got yourself a psychopath on your hands.

And now we have rock music, rap music, video games^, violent films and all sorts of other things to blame. Blame, blame. blame. That’s how you take control of the problem. Make it something that could have been fixed, noticed, stopped.

Nero, Tiberius and Caligula didn’t need to be told how to kill people. Genghis Kahn would probably enjoy a Tarantino flick or two but he had no problem working out how to be violent on his own.

One thing that all serial killers have in common is that they like hardcore pornography. Anti-pornography people point at that and say: See! It makes people evil!!

Except that by the time a psychopath (not a psychotic, that’s a completely different monster) gets around to finding pornography, he’s already been fantasizing about violence towards women for months, if not years. The pornography is a good sign that they’re already into violence–it doesn’t make them violent.

The other common denominator of all serial killers, most drug users and other people Western society like to hold in superior contempt is an abusive childhood. And I don’t mean the, ‘Daddy hits me with a belt sometimes,’ of the current crop of misery memoirs. I mean things most humans couldn’t even invent. If you bring a child up to feel alienated, abnormal and horrible then they will become just that. Children look to their parents to find out what they’re supposed to be. Daddy’s little princess acts like a princess. Mommy’s little strong man tries to be that for mom. Mummy and Daddy’s evil little bastard who was a waste of oxygen? He ends up on the news wearing a woman-suit.

The parents of the kids who went apeshit at Columbine will say: You blame us?! Yes, I do. Here’s why: those kids were working on their plans for months. No one was talking to them: Hey son, what’ve you been up to? How’s school? Your classmates treat you like shit? Well, let’s figure out a way to constructively deal with that. Even if you didn’t abuse your kids, you weren’t there when they needed you.

This is not to say that all people who listen to death metal and wear black are plotting their revenge on all of society. But if your kid is listening to death metal, wearing all black, never seems happy and has no friends it’s time to step in. Let them know you’re there. If you think they’re being bullied or are depressed, freakin’ say something. Yes, they’ll think you’re an ignorant asshole, but they already think that, so you’ll not ruin your credibility.

What I’m saying is: Quit blaming the media for your embarrassment at not knowing how to talk to your own kids. If someone is going to do evil, they’re going to do evil no matter what they see or hear. Unless the thing they see or hear is a parent saying, “Hey, you know, you seem to be upset a lot. Anything going on? I had a crap time in school, too…”

[The preceding post is not a defense of violence in films–I dislike graphic violence in films but not because I believe it encourages violent behaviour. I dislike it because it inures people to things they should find horrifying. Photos of real war aren’t too bothersome because Oliver Stone did it better. If a person sees enough gratuitous violence he or she will simply shrug–it’s all part of a normal day.]

* Schechter, H. (2003). The Serial Killer Files. New York: Ballantine Books.
** Ramsland, K. (2005). The Human Predator. Penguin.

^ If you think Grand Theft Auto is bad, check out some of these games from the 80s: Harvester, Custer’s Revenge and Chiller. Useful link to video here