Oversensitive or Desensitized? The Generation Question

[badgersprite]

It's really hard to make any kind of gauge on sensitivity based on how people react to a movie, because they aren't real. Even when they're based on real events, we know the dramatisations are fake. How people react to something they know is being acted and how they react to something actually happening is not a good gauge at all.

I mean, I can watch gory disgusting movies all the time and not be bothered by it, but I can't watch ANY of those medical shows on TV where they have even the tiniest bit of footage of actual surgery because it makes me feel sick and nauseous and disgusted and I can't watch. What is physically on the screen may not be in any way different, or it may actually be far less graphic than what you'd see in a movie, but the psychological difference of seeing something real versus seeing actors and special effects is immeasurable.

So, no, I don't think it's anything to do with sensitivity so much as that generation just being generally more aware of and more subconsciously cynical about media and fiction. Or it could just be an age and maturity thing where if you'd shown that same video to '80s kids of the same age it would have had the same impact. I mean, my class used to laugh off those ridiculously overdramatic, badly acted, safety videos they played in schools with the intent of traumatising kids into being paranoid about safety, and I'm sure people in my parents generation were laughing off the ones they were shown in the exact same way. *shrug*

 

[SillyBear]

Another thought questions from my law class that I wanted to share.

My professor showed the class a clip from "Born Innocent" a made-for-TV movie about a 14 year old girl who gets thrown in a penitentiary for trouble girls. The clip showed the girl getting raped by her fellow inmates (if you want details, Google will help you), and before she showed it the professor explained what was going to happen and told the class that anyone who wanted to leave may do so. I had seen part of the scene in the past and it made me massively uncomfortable, so I left class for the three minutes the clip was being shown.

I was the only one who left and no one came out of the class to join me as the clip was played.

Now, I am +10 years older than anyone else in the class, so I thought "Well, it must be a generation thing. I guess, as an 80s Baby, I'm just oversensitive." But then I remembered most of these kids were born in the 90s, that's only ten years after me. Did the culture change THAT much?

What are your thoughts? Are the coming generations becoming 'desensitized' or were previous generations too 'oversensitive'?

My guess? It's got a lot less to do with what year you were born and a lot more to do with your personality and emotional compositions.

 

[loodmoney]

Alternate explanations:
The other people in your class were all sitting next to people their own age, and might have felt more need to show that they weren't conerned. Peer pressure and all that. Still happens at the university level.

Secondly, they have ten years less life experience than you. If they were fresh out of high school, there is a good chance that they have been sheltered from some of the shit that goes on in the real world. So whereas they were looking at something fictional, you understood the reality of it.

All entirely hypothetical of course. But the point is it might not be a matter of generational sensitivity.

 

[BonsaiK]

Are the coming generations becoming 'desensitized' or were previous generations too 'oversensitive'?

Neither. The entire question I consider void because I doubt very much that modern media really desensitises people, despite countless studies it's never been proven. Every gamer I've ever spoken to who ever went to war tells me that COD totally doesn't prepare you for it in any way, and even though I'd seen a ton of hardcore pornography long before my first sexual experience, that didn't stop me from being any less nervous as fuck during my first time in bed with a girl. I think some people are just more sensitive than others and it's got nothing to do with how much of whatever you watch.

Having said that, even though media clearly doesn't desensitise anybody to anything (except perhaps more of the same type of media), I wish it did. I'd like to be desensitised, to me it seems practical and sensible. If bad shit started happening all around me such as war, catastrophe etc and I could manage to react with a level, cool head because I've been sufficiently desensitised by violent TV, movies and computer games to not get too emotionally wound up to the point where I might make a stupid decision rather than a life-saving one, I would consider that a very good thing. If I was wise enough to see the drama coming, I'd be watching all the horror movies and rape porn now in order to train myself up to be mentally strong enough for the chaos, and I might even run "desensitisation camps" where I'd screen these films for others so they could grow into the mentally strong individuals that we'd need to rebuild society in harsh, post-apocalyptic times.

 

[Alorxico]

My professor loved the question but wasn't able to give me an answer as the class focuses mostly one how the First Amendment shapes what we read, see, hear and say. I was directed to one of the professors in the psychology department, but haven't gotten a chance to speak with him (stupid exam week ). When he gets back to me, I'll let you know what his thoughts are.

 

[Alorxico]

Amazing article. Thanks for sending it my way, and thanks for answering my questions.

 

[Veylon]

You think we're desensitized? People used to lynch, torture and rape people like it was a fucking walk in the park. Families used to gather around fucking public hangings with their children and chuckle in delight, we are not desensitized in the slightest.

Thank you! Even a couple generations back, people could look at someone of a different color and see not a person, but an animal. Anybody ever read Oliver Twist? Imagine how desensitized those children were.