The Influence of Entertainment

If I watch Superbad will I become dirtier and more sexual? If I listen to Marilyn Manson regularly, will I become more dark and sinister? If I read a lot of romance novels, will I start to see the world like one big serendipitous love story? How easily affected are we as humans? Are some people simply stronger than others? Is there a need to guard my eyes from certain images, my ears from certain sounds? Or it such resolve the result of needless and restrictive fear? I really wanna know, 'cause there's definitely a lot of crap out there and I don't wanna become a piece of it.



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After reading these articles, I realized that it is obvious we're influence by music, movies, and all kinds of entertainment. We steal jokes, lines, looks, clothes, cars, from movies. Movie stars are the people everyone knows. Its like that one friend that we all have. They're the great connectors. So we all look at them, and notice the words they use, the clothes they wear, the way they live their lives. I've even found myself disliking certain actors because they always play bad guys. At some point I started to believe that's the type of person they were. We buy into movies. That's the point. We're supposed to suspend reality for a moment, and be taken into a story. We want to be taken away, to see people do extraordinary things. When they do, something in us stirs. We want to be them, to look like them, to act like them. So if a guy in a movie is really funny and makes the audience laugh a lot, wouldn't we want to use the same jokes? What if those jokes are demeaning to women, racist, or in some way offensive? Sure the guy or the writer may just be poking fun, but is that worth the hurt that someone may receive? What if a racist joke from the movie spreads and kids around the country start using it in school? What if a black kid starts hearing the joke? What about what he feels? Maybe I'm taking it too far. But words, pictures, sounds do move us and change our habits from time to time. Its worth thinking about.