2009-05-21
It's nice when science takes the
time to confirm one's own sneaking (or even not so
sneaking) suspicions. In this case: that TV crime
shows are driving us crazy with fear.
In a report titled "CSI: Mayo
Clinic Researchers Find Two Popular Television Shows
Inaccurately Portray Realities of Violent Crime,"
Mayo psychiatrist Timothy Lineberry and his team
studied two sets of data. One was a list of crimes,
victims and circumstances as seen on "CSI" and "CSI:
Miami" over the course of two years. The other was a
list of crimes, victims and circumstances in real
life, as compiled by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention over the course of two years.
You may think the stories on
crime shows are "ripped from the headlines," but
Lineberry found that the shows usually forget to rip
the ones involving minorities, for starters. (For
that matter, so does TV news. But if the victim is
young and white, you soon will see more of her
family than you will see of your own.)
Meanwhile, TV crime shows also
forget to mention how often alcohol is involved,
probably because a drunk guy with a gun is not
nearly as compelling as, say, a charming psychopath.
Or criminal mastermind. Or, as I saw on "Law &
Order" the other day, a Serbian war criminal roaming
the streets in search of a young girl — any girl —
to drag off and rape.
That's not going to affect
whether you let your daughter walk home from school,
is it?
Most significant of all in
terms of warping our perceptions is that the shows
forget to tell us that most homicide victims
know
their killers. Most violence
is not random. Most of the time, murderers are not
hiding in the bushes — or mall parking lots — just
waiting to pounce. But on TV, the guy with the
machete/chain saw/van is usually some fiend out to
nab the next sucker walking by.
That one little fact has had a
huge impact on the way we live.
It wouldn't, of course, if we
were better at separating perception from reality.
But seeing crime after crime on TV, it's hard not to
feel at least a little nervous. After all, our
brains are hard-wired to react to dangerous
situations. It would be nice if they filed dramas
under "Don't worry!" and TV news under "Tabloid
hooey (and weather)!" But in fact, it all is thrown
in the hopper and stays there a very long time.
(Anybody have a hard time picturing Hannibal Lecter?)
So when we ask ourselves, "Is it
safe for me to take a little walk tonight?" we end
up flashing on a pile of maggot-covered bodies,
courtesy of "CSI." Bodies of people murdered by
strangers. Result? "Maybe I'll just stay in."
Parents are even more affected.
Never mind the fact that while there are about 50
children kidnapped and killed by strangers every
year (according to numbers from the Crimes Against
Children Research Center), there are about 1,000
killed by family members or acquaintances. Because
most of us aren't exposed to crime in our real lives
very much (thank goodness), all we have to go on is
what we see on TV.
And so we think: "It's a jungle
out there! Strangers are hiding everywhere, with
duct tape. I will not let them kill my kid!"
In we yank our offspring. (And
dare I suggest that at least a few of the older ones
will end up watching "CSI" because they're not out
playing kickball?)
The only way to regain
perspective (read: sanity) is to counterbalance the
crime shows with more and more reality. More walks
in the neighborhood. More chats with friends
outside. Even more chats with strangers.
After all, the real crime data
show that most of them are not walking around with
machetes. Or even duct tape.
Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at Advertising Age.
She is the founder of FreeRangeKids.com and the
author of the upcoming book "Free-Range Kids: Giving
Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts
with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy
(lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit
the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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