Television Violence Gets the Chair

"Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!" This infamous chant comes from the TV "talk show" Jerry Springer. The Jerry Springer show is popular because it projects itself to be a circus side show instead of an actual TV talk show. At the peak of the show one would almost always tune in to witness a raging war among the guests, usually involving chairs. Chairs would be hurled across the set accompanied by atrocious punching, scratching and the occasional martial arts move that would leave a guest topless. However, this kind of behavior was later banned from the show. Viewers of the Jerry Springer show will no longer observe outrageously violent stunts. The absence of such acts is due to the popular belief that TV is becoming too violent and the increasing bans that accompany this belief. However, there are critics who believe violence seen on shows such as Jerry Springer should not be pinpointed as a problem in our society. In the essays written by Mike Oppenheim, Richard Rhodes, and Holman W. Jenkins Jr. the authors express their views on why television violence is not a major problem in our society.

Mike Oppenheim, in the first essay, "TV Isn't Violent Enough" argues that television violence is not gruesome enough to be considered "too" violent for the mainstreams of television. As a doctor, Openheim first states that violence on television is so over exaggerated that it comes off as fake, and therefore is not a problem. Secondly, Oppenheim argues that children will not learn anything from violence if they are quarantined from it. Oppenheim

believes that shielding children away from violence is bound to do more harm than good. Finally, Oppenheim states that if society is so worried about protecting children, they need to find other ways besides cleaning up TV, because TV is already too "antiseptic".