Violence And American Culture
John Dow
Violence and American Culture
The name of text I will be reviewing is Violence and American Culture from Chapter 14, by Brandon Centerwall. He holds a Medical degree and Masters in Public Health from American universities; he also has a background in Psychiatry and has testified before congress regarding the subject of his article. Brandon Centerwall argues that some of the first perceptions about life that a child adopts, are those obtain by watching Television; and that later in life, serious violence is most likely to erupt when that individual is exposed to severe stress.
His work can be categorized as a subtle persuasive argument. Centerwall uses research studies and statistics as the primary support for his article. The fact the uses these studies and researches makes it seem that this is an informative article but in fact, all the statistics and information he presents here are in support of his position, by the fact the he spends 8 out of 9 pages in his article basically providing supporting information and only in about three paragraph he discusses the opposing point of view. The structure Centerwall uses for building his argument was to present his information in chronological order. First he uses a research based on observations of children living in two Canadian communities, this study was done by Tannis Williams and her associates at the University of British Columbia 1986. This research investigated the effect of television on children of a community in Canada that received television for the first time late in 1973 and it was compared with two other towns that already had television. The subjects in this study were forty-five first- and second-graders from all three towns in other to measure the rate of aggression that seemed inappropriate before television was introduced. The longitudinal strategy behind the research demonstrated that the rate of aggression among kids from the two control towns did not...
Please login to view the full essay...