E-Mail This Article to a Friend BEYOND GOOD & EVIL: CHILDREN, MEDIA AND VIOLENT TIMES

Violence in movies has long been a scapegoat for violent behavior in society. Back around the turn of the century, a young hoodlum blamed a viewing of "The Great Train Robbery" for his misdeeds (it turned out he never saw the film). The government agencies responsible for controlling violence also tend to blame the movies (or comic books, or TV, or video games) for their failures. In their short video "Beyond Good & Evil," filmmakers Miguel Picker and Chyng F. Sun take this issue a fascinating step farther. What if the government were employing the media to promote its own violence against countries like Iraq? Using montages of images from cable news, recent movies, and violent computer and video games as well as comments from authoritative talking heads and seemingly brainwashed children, they make a scary if circumstantial and sometimes repetitious case. A key to their argument is the current administration’s insistence on simplifying the complexities of world events into a battle between Good (Us, and maybe Tony Blair) and Evil (terrorists, the French, people who disagree with us), thus allowing children of all ages to dehumanize our adversaries into figments from a real-world game of Doom. (39 minutes)