On the drive to work this morning, I listened to a radio commercial for a fire ant treatment that made me cringe. In a typically ironic way, the voice was warning fire ants to prepare for excruciating pain, horrifying deaths, mass murder, and violence beyond compare. Now I’m no friend of fire ants, but something about this commercial offended me greatly. It seemed the emotional appeal of the commercial was to a violent, sadistic pleasure that someone believes is common enough among people to sell their product.
Then I remembered a report in March on a French documentary called Le Jeu De La Mort (The Game of Death) that explored the same idea. Eighty participants were recruited for what they believed to be a TV game show. With gala décor and typically sexy host and hostesses, these “contestants” were asked to inflict electrical shocks to another contestant when a wrong answer was given. The intensity of the shocks increased until the tortured contestant quit screaming and simply went limp—died—maybe. The tortured contestant was an actor and no real shocks were administered, but the eighty contestants did not know this until afterwards.
Of the eighty contestants, only sixteen refused to inflict pain. The others followed the instructions given them and inflicted pain on the victim to the point of death. Unbelievable!
I wanted to dismiss this as filmmaking—smoke and mirrors—but then I had a flashback to psychology classes at Harding, and with the miracle of internet, I found reference to the Milgram Obedience Experiment in the 1960s, which in a more controlled environment and with a more scientific protocol performed the same experiment in the same manner. The only real difference was that instead of a TV host telling a “contestant” what they should do, it was a “scientist” in a white jacket giving the orders at Yale.
In the 60s, sixty-two percent of the people administered electrical shocks to the victim. In 2010, over 8o percent complied. The frightening fact is that we live in a world de-sensitized to torture and horrific violence through every form of mass media that we experience. From Jack Bauer to anime to computer gaming to WWF, inflicting pain and suffering is as common as . . . turning on TV.
If we laugh at an innocuous commercial about insecticide, how far are we from pulling the torture switch ourselves?
Mark's Blog 
I’ve been concerned about such things for a long time. We don’t own any video games except what we very selectively purchase for her DS. I have considered getting rid of my tv, partly because of what Darin said. I can monitor the programming we watch, but not the commercials they chose to show during it. Even programs rated PG or better may have a lot of violent acts in their content . Research I’ve countered in education has borne out the correlation between the amount violence viewed, listened to or acted out in video games and the amount that is acted out in young lives. What’s happening in today’s classrooms often bears witness to that also.
Maybe some of it is that some of us grew up in a different time when they could advertise a treatment for fire ants or anything else without graphically violent images being conjured up. And by the way, I’m impressed you can remember a specific report from your psychology course at Harding. If that was brought up in my pshychology course there, it has long since left my memory.
Mark, it’s interesting that you post this. Amanda (my wife, an LPC-trained counselor) has pretty strong feelings about our young boys not being exposed to graphic, violent video games and television programs. She tells me that in her experience as a counselor of children and teens, she’s seen a clear and definite correlation between violent video games/tv programs and destructive behavior and attitudes.
I know that I always cringe when I’m watching a sporting event on tv and a graphic, violent movie preview comes on while Brady’s in the room. I wish the tv networks would realize that sports on TV in the middle of the day are family viewing events.
Good food for thought. Thanks for sharing this.