Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for August 20, 2023

Calvin is too lazy to be desensitized.

Those TV shows have no influence whatsoever…..

It’s a sickness that people make money off of.

good luck at the shooting the monetizers, Calvin, when you don’t have a gun

Yup.

A future NRA follower.

I went through a subreddit dedicated to various real life disturbing images and videos yesterday, and it genuinely left me anxious and not feeling well for the rest of the night.

The one that stuck with me most was the video of a dentist casually and calmly torturing a screaming three year-old strapped to a chair with no anesthetic.

You know how violent the shows are when the TV is jumping around like that!

and the news is no different.

All sorts of bogeymen have been blamed for causing violence. It used to be dime novels. Then it was comic books. Then TV. Then video games. People seem eager to not assign personal responsibility.

I don’t really think we can blame TV for people wanting to shoot each other (at least in most cases).

He would love internet.

How else one can be prepared for real life?

Dang, I also want one of them Hover TV™ things!

Monkey see, monkey do…..

It’s interesting to watch Hobbes in the background. In the first panel, he has one eye closed so he may have been napping and has just opened one eye. In the remaining panels, he has both eyes open. In the last panel, he is speaking to Calvin and has moved slightly. All of this is lost on Calvin who is in front of Hobbes and has his eyes focused on the TV screen.

Japan, since 1945, has been a relatively non-violent country especially when compared to the United States. They have extremely violent “Samurai Westerns” on TV and even their cartoons are fatal. Unlike Wyle E. Coyote, characters die and do not come back in the next episode: sorry Kenny,

So either this refutes the theory that watching violence desensitizes the audience or some other factors are at work.

Also many video game feature violence. Does this encourage it or does it allow people to “get it out of their system?”

I literally do not have the data to make a conclusion.

Remember, the first 10 years of one’s life are specifically geared to ‘learning.’

The very young spend hours ‘destroying’ something or other on their unneeded cells or watching murder and mayhem on tv for even longer. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when, a few years later, youth apply those same actions to their perceived problems.

“I hate violent people. Violent people should be shot in the street, like dogs.” Ira Blue.

Frighteningly prophetic.

All that vicarious violence and death on TV and yet we didn’t take rifles and pistols to school and kill kids. I wonder what’s up with the Teletubbies?

And just how do you make them profitable, Cal ?

Most people are able to get through life in this violence-soaked culture of ours without doing more than maybe punching a hole in a wall. A few wind up buying a gun and punching holes in people. A few more achieve similar effects without the gun using knives, blunt objects, bare hands, etc. What if we changed the culture?

You tell ’em, Calvin.

The jumping TV image might not work as well with a large flatscreen. Technology is robbing cartoonists of their funny props. When everything is black and silver rectangles with full screens, it’s just the same prop in different sizes.

I feel like such a dinosaur nowadays because I can’t handle shows like Game of Thrones or Walking Dead. I tell people ‘I don’t like violence’ and they look at me as if to say ‘You DON’T?!’

Point made. Garbage in, garbage out.

I’ve seen enough violence on TV to be bored by it and no longer entertained

Too sad to be funny.

Sadly, some do.

Calvin, King of Slouch in the first panel. It seems to be his favorite TV watching position.

Heh, it’s funny how a six-year-old like Calvin actually enjoys watching violent adult programming on TV. That last bit also reminds me of when the violence of “Itchy and Scratchy” was desensitizing Bart and Lisa Simpson.

I once read an anecdote about someone calling the studio behind Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to complain about a scene where two women kissed each other, declaring that it would “mess up their kids”. The associate producer who answered asked if it would be better if the two women shot each other instead, to which the caller replied “yes”.

.

Said the producer: “I don’t think we’re the ones messing up your kids.”

i never watched violence growing up, im over 30 now and i still dont!

And yet some people insist that video games are the problem…

Our society allows this horrible violence on network TV, but heaven forbid there’s any nudity. We sure have things backwards.

Oh NO… NEVER… violence in TV programming and video games for young teen boys does not foster future violence ! Removing that would negatively impact profits ;-)

He’s watching a peaceful protest.

Attack of the Killer tomatoes, 1978 desensitized me to horror movies.