Ebert nails it.

The higher the ratings, the higher the income.

Flags across the nation at half mast after all of these shootings - but what is the number to warrent that? It does become a circus until the next freak show garners more attention.

and goes much further than news channels covering these events.

It includes movies and tv shows glorifying violence... it's also the video games that people play.

Be the change you want to see in the world. That includes not engaging in violence habitually.

And for anyone who says playing violent games has no effect... all I can say is you have no understanding of what our Collective Consciousness is. Nor how our Subconscious works. Our Subconscious sees no distinction between real or imaginary violence. And habitually engaging in violent gameplay adds to the violent currents rippling through our Collective Consciousness.

Collectively we absorb the violence and some re-enact what the program was......add assault weapons and the NRA saying its our right to own these and we have a recipe for disasters just like we experienced recently.

"Collective Consciousness," "Subconscious" (at least in the context you're using it)...Pop psychology, Freud, Jung. Most of it has already been discredited by psychologists. The ONLY people affected by violent media are those who would have gone on killing sprees even without the video games, though perhaps not as quickly. In fact, it's possible that even more killings like this would occur if we didn't have such games. Some potential killers seek an outlet for their frustrations and video games can be that outlet. As opposed to, you know, shooting up actual schools.

I play plenty of violent games but, amazingly, I was as heart-broken by the Newtown killings as most everyone else. I am able to distinguish reality from fantasy. As for my "subconscious" (the place where information is stored to be retrieved later - not the "Superego" as your pal Freud would say,) it records the info I'm seeing but does not control what I do. It rarely affects my moral center. At least, not without my conscious mind actively sorting things out.

No, the man who committed these crimes wanted to be remembered. He wanted attention which, apparently, he felt he didn't get enough of. After he killed his mother (which he had his own reasons for,) he realized that going to prison and rotting there would leave him forgotten by most everyone. So, he did something that would grab the media's attention for weeks, months, years...He killed children, and then himself.

Ebert got it right.

Also, you even got Jung wrong - it was originally "Collective UNconsciousness," not consciousness. If it were the latter, then we'd all be hearing each other's thoughts in our own heads constantly (in Jung's view,) rather than just being connected by our evolutionary history, overall mood, dreams, etc.

You might try actually studying psychology before you go launching your own Hollywood-based assumptions about it. Makes us psych students look bad.

A 23-year-old man was shot dead and three others injured early this morning, according to Sumner Police.

Police say the men, construction workers from California, were smoking in the parking lot of the Sumner Motor Inn on Main Street at 12:30 a.m. Two men drove up, opened fire and sped off.

Police say the victims did not know the suspects

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/12/one-dead-three-wounded-outside-sumner-motel/

says a lot. Especially he part where interview was never aired. Our media is just as guilty as the shooters.

"the kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me."

that one

stands out

the 'messing with me'

that one 'also' must be addressed 'somehow'

but how?

and when?

The basic formula that everything is going to be okay as soon as the evil antagonist is killed, and the person who does the killing is a hero is embedded in our society. When it comes to antagonists, they are defined by us and can be anything. Shooting alarm clocks and television sets is a clever comedic device.

How anyone would disbelieve that in American culture shooting and killing is not widely understood as an appropriate way to end a bad situation is beyond me. It can make a person a hero in their own mind or in the eyes of the person they rescue.

It's a feedback loop: the violence --- the sickness --- violence ---- sickness, etc

We think one is 'causing' the other but they are simply reinforcing each other. Add other factors and you get a very complex interaction with different people picking *one* of the effectors and not realizing they are all connected.

Glorification of guns in movies would have been the place to start.

There is no denying that a single gunshot can make a movie end happily. I don't see how it is difficult to rethink that.

lack of Mental Health Care! He was bullied/abandoned/drunk!

Maybe it's just us, we as a whole. Not our "gun" culture, just our culture. If anything is bad wrong, it is us.

I personally don't think Ebert is correct. What I am hearing from him is that kids are motivated by a desire for fame and attention. Though that might be a component in some events it isn't really THE motive. There are plenty or more attractive ways to become famous and to kill yourself at the end takes away the opportunity to enjoy your fame.
I do think that a culture of violence contributes to an increased acceptance of turning to violence when things go bad but for only a handful of individuals and those are the people that commit these violent acts we are presently experiencing.

Mom, Don't watch the news...It is hyped for ratings.

In fact, during the 4th hour when the news broke over the latest awful thing, I tuned my car radio to the local NPR station. The program at 3 PM was pre-empted IN THE SAME VEIN. No one knew anything.... No names were divulged, there really wasn't any more than breaking semi-unsubstantiated news, yet NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, which follows more and more marketing, than what pubic discussion could have taken place, followed the "If it bleeds..." format.

Then, when calling my brother the next day, even he, who doesn't indulge in this, WAS watching nothing BUT this on TV.

As consumers of news, I feel were have become little more than fragments of a ship searching for a lost rudder. What we get is dribble.

Thanks for the interview I couldn't read or hear, Roger.

The reason for this policy is because they don't want to encourage other fans doing the same thing.

We glamorize violence in our pop culture then sensationalize it when it happens for real.

Maybe the Columbine killers didn't see the Basketball Diaries. But to use the box office total for one movie with one scene to discredit the cultural influence of violence in our society when so many of the movies made have extreme violence in them is a pretty thin argument, in my opinion.

It's a bit of a chicken or the egg, does our popular culture produce entertainment steeped in violence because we are enamored with it or are we as a society obsessed with it because of the currents in our popular culture?

Our popular culture has always had a love affair with criminality, whether its the penny novels of the 19th century glamorizing the Billy the Kids of the world or the huge profits that have been made from mafia movies.

Criminality usually involves violence. I enjoy the Godfather and Goodfellas so I'm not trying to stand on some pedestal of moral righteousness, by the way. I'm not above being affected by the culture I grew up in.

All societies have insane people, generally insanity manifests itself based on the culture the insane person lives in. In our culture inflicting violence seems to be a choice that is made by mentally deranged individuals often.

Then once it happens the sensationalizing Ebert describes above ensues. Incidentally, movies have been made about this aspect of our media as well (natural born killers comes to mind) and the beast is fed some more.

A society so obsessed with violence should at the very least implement some kind of restrictions on the kind of weaponry available for general consumption and the kind of people who can acquire them.

The two worst shootings this year in Colorado and Connecticut were perpetrated by individuals who were clearly and repeatedly identified by those around them as mentally disturbed, it's a huge problem they both had access to high grade weaponry.

We have a huge problem, beyond both the movies and the media. It's time we all as a nation do some serious soul searching because (in my opinion) this tragic problem has many causes. It's too complex to pin it on one thing.

But let's wait for the facts to come out before we jump to any conclusions.

They are a little older but for real modern story telling movies are about a century old now.

Men have been killing each other for no good reason since the beginning of men.

Anyone who blames the movies is a fucking idiot. Period.

So all the DUers who agree with Rush can maybe change their view...

ignorance. It gives me the creeps thinking some here agree with Rush...on anything!

I can't think of one thing that douchebag has ever said that I agreed with.

I don't know who you would find that would be more an expert on Hollywood than Roger Ebert. The M$M has always been part of the problem and it is obvious they will keep ignoring expert advice and continue to glorify violence.