James Walsh also states that, "the movie, already outlawed in Ireland, has become a tinder for a spreading international debate over how much of Hollywood's gore galore can be stomached in the name of creativity (2)." How much violence can the world community handle? There is a certain amount of violence that society can tolerate in a film or television series, and once Hollywood exceeds that amount individual viewers and society as a whole becomes affected by the harmful messages.
Even though numerous studies have tried to find links between real life violence and onscreen mayhem, no solid results have been confirmed. Walsh describes a situation where a scruffy pair of Parisian lovers attacked a police garage and made off with an array of weapons. They ended up in a blazing shootout that took four lives. A search of their premises turned up a handbill for Natural Born Killers, yet the police found no evidence that the couple had even seen the movie. It could just have been a coincidence. Still, in the words of James Walsh, " the idea that entertainment has little effect on private behavior strikes more and more people as absurd(2)." The problem of media violence is becoming a more difficult issue to ignore and there is as Senator Margaret Reynolds of Australia points out, "a worldwide feeling that Hollywood should clean up its act," and the violent images that Hollywood displays on television will not be tolerated any longer.
The main reason television violence has become such an international issue .
is because the violent images that children are exposed to cause them to .
become more aggressive. For example, in "Honey, I warped the kids", Carl .
Cannon reports that, "In the 1956 study, one dozen 4-year-olds watched a "Woody Woodpecker" cartoon that was full of violent images. Twelve other preschoolers watched "Little Red Horn," a peaceful cartoon. Afterward, the children who watched "Woody Woodpecker" were more likely to hit other children, verbally abuse their classmates, break toys, be disruptive, and engage in destructive behavior during free play (Cannon 95).
