In Response to a Professor
This is totally a loaded question.
The rapid growth of violence in media (movies, TV, music, video games) is directly related to a few things, but it all comes down to money. The producers of the above media forms are going to push the boundaries of what the censors will allow in order to increase their profits. The censors will allow more and more drugs, sex, and violence as the society that they’re tasked with “protecting” becomes more and more desensitized. The society will become more and more desensitized as the producers of mass media push the envelope of what’s allowed. It’s a gigantic, money driven circle.
As for violence in sport, there is no way anyone can say that Americans are more obsessed with violence – be it a hard tackle, a vicious punch, a drop kick, or even just physical play – as any other human society since the dawn of time. Yes, we all cite the ancient Romans and their gladiators, but we’re forgetting the Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians, and other much older societies. I’m sure that the Mesopotamians played games, and I’m sure their crowds went wild when someone got bloody.
To say that “the game is so violent that it cannot now be played by human beings…we’ve designed a sport too violent for our bodies…” is completely glossing over the fact that humans now, especially Americans, are much larger than they were even one hundred years ago when the first football games were breaking out. The violence that is inherent in the sport – remember, the object of defense in football is to stop your opponent from reaching his goal by tackling him, aka: hitting him with your body – has increased over the years as humans have gotten larger and faster (that’s simple Newtonian physics: as the speed of two colliding bodies increases so does the force of their impact) and can only be slowed by rule and equipment changes until the human body stops evolving.
And let’s not forget the advances in technology that have led to a more violent football game. We’ve all seen photos of the “helmets” that football players wore in the good old days, and they are a far cry from the aerodynamically enhanced, radio equipped armor that modern players don. Shoulder, chest, and leg padding has also dramatically improved, all of which allows for a more hard hitting, “violent” game.
But, again, we’ve not broached the topic of why players are getting so much bigger, faster, stronger, and meaner: the almighty dollar. Even as I type this, the NFL Combine is taking place in Indianapolis, where the nation’s next generation of pro football players are getting poked, prodded and tested just to prove their value. They are performing tests like the 40-yard dash, the bench press, the squat, the standing high-jump and many others so that a dollar value can be placed on their physicality. The team that has the most valuable players will (in theory) win the most games and therefore be crowned champion of the league, which leads to increased paychecks for everyone.
Big, nasty, hard-hitting football players equate, very simply, to the most important thing an NFL owner can have: dollars.
On a side note: I detest American football.
