Citlali Fernanda Briones Tristan CIDEB August 27, 2016

Teacher: Lic. Anett Julia Pendás Fernández Group: Proficiency “B” Classroom: 24

PG-13 movies: A threat to our young people.

Do you remember the last time that you saw a blockbuster movie that did not include any violence? I
think it is hard to remember one movie with that characteristic. According to a recent study, ninety-four
percent of the most popular movies since 1985 contain at least one violent scene, and half of those
involve a character carrying a gun with the intention of harming or killing someone. Numerous
researchers show that there is an increase of violent content in movies since 1950. In addition, gun
violence in PG-13 films has tripled since 1985, even higher than the amount found in R-rated films. PG-
13 movies only disguise the violence and remove all the blood, then that allows them to show more
killing that in R-rated movies. Moreover, the best sellers most of the time are PG-13 films. At the same
time, violence occurs at an alarming rate in the United States. In fact, two of the top three causes of
death in Americans between fifteen to thirty-four years are homicide and suicide. During a given year,
a great amount of U.S. children will die from gunfire instead of dying from serious sickness such as
cancer, pneumonia, asthma, influenza, and HIV/AIDS combined. Do you still think that it is just a
coincidence that the number of violence has increased both in movies and in real life? According to a
growing amount of researchers, there is a strong link between the violent actions committed by our
society and the exposure of violence through media. There are various effects that exposure to media
violence can have especially on children and teenagers such as an increment in aggressive behavior,
desensitization to violence, and an increment of injuries when they try to imitate what they see.
Therefore, PG-13 movies should not sugarcoat violence.

First of all, it is irresponsible to portray violent actions without its gory consequences in PG-13 movies
because in this way they are not capturing how violence affects life. PG-13 films do not display what
actually happens if you are hit with a bullet, they do not show the pain and the suffering of getting a
catastrophic injury, in other words, they do not capture the real consequences of violence. Therefore,
children will see that nothing will happen if they try to recreate a violent scene. For example, a ten-year-
old boy died in 2008 after imitating “Naruto” in a sandbox. According to KOMO-TV, the ABC affiliate in
Seattle, Codey Porter died after suffering a respiratory failure when he was buried, headfirst, in a
sandbox. He had asked his playmates to bury him in order to recreate the ninja’s attacks from the Naruto
anime's fictional Village Hidden in the Sand.1 As this unfortunate case, many more children have died
trying to imitate their favorite superheroes or cartoon characters.

Secondly, PG-13 movies should not sugarcoat violence because people may become desensitized to
violence. Nowadays we are used to see in movies thousands of innocent civilians dying in a big

1
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-03-10/boy-dies-after-imitating-naruto-in-sandbox
Citlali Fernanda Briones Tristan CIDEB August 27, 2016
Teacher: Lic. Anett Julia Pendás Fernández Group: Proficiency “B” Classroom: 24

explosion, or in the middle of a big battle between the protagonists and the antagonists, and we do not
show any surprise or shock, we continue seeing the movie as nothing had happened. Thus, frequent
moviegoers may become desensitized to the violence we have in our real world because they see it on
the screen very often. There will come a day in which we see violence as something that is not bad?

Lastly, the most important reason of why it is irresponsible to depict violence without its consequences
is that kids imitate violent behavior. A great amount of children constantly sees PG-13 movies, in fact,
a typical American child sees more than 200, 000 acts of violence, including more than 16,000 murders.
In addition, studies have shown that watching a lot of violent content increases the probabilities that a
child will act in aggressive way, especially if other risk factors are present in that child's life, such as
domestic violence or mental illness. Aside from this, the article “Gun Violence Trends in Movies” points
out several studies that measured elevated aggression levels after watching violent media. This is
because children learn how to behave by watching the people around them, and if they see their favorite
superheroes harming someone or having a violent behavior without any repercussion on their actions
kids are more likely to imitate it.

On the other hand, many people believe that if children watch violence on media they will learn more
about the world. They think that if a child is accustomed to violence, he or she may face the reality of
our world more easily. This, however, is not entirely true. According to the Academic of Pediatrics, more
than one thousand scientific studies conclude that exposure to media violence makes children believe
that the world is a crueler and scarier place than it is. Thus, children may become afraid of the world
that surrounds them.

To sum up, it is irresponsible to portray conflict without its gory consequences because if movies do not
include gory consequences they will be rated as PG-13 movies, which are films that have a great amount
of violence and are more accessible. These flicks can have serious effects, especially in children or
youth. Among these effects are an increment on number of deaths or injuries as PG-13 movies do not
show the real consequences of violent actions, the desensitization of people to violence, and an
increment of aggressive behavior. We must take care of children because they are the most affected by
this kind of movies. If children are the future of our world, what kind of world awaits us with violent
children?

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