Oversensitive or Desensitized? The Generation Question

[steevee]

I'm definatley desensitized. There is literally nothing I can't sit through.

I've watched Salo, A Serbian Film and August Underground Mordum without flinching. I've also seen my fair share of gore and that sort of stuff. The only thing that can affect me is animals sometimes, but even then, it's only the odd thing.

 

[KiraTaureLor]

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'?

I think it's to do with the fact that we are not exposed to real life violence as much as other generations that witnessed wars, therefore we don't take it as seriously. There is also the fact that our generation grew up with everything violence, and horror in movies games, comics, and blah blah blah...

although if one of us was put in an actual saw scenario, and one of your generation was put in a saw scenario, I wonder who will handle it better. Just a thought.

 

[Dexiro]

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.

 

[Alorxico]

...although if one of us was put in an actual saw scenario, and one of your generation was put in a saw scenario, I wonder who will handle it better. Just a thought.

I have never seen Saw or its many sequels, I'm not big on "horror" or "suspense" films. I have a short attention span and too active an imagination to be interested in either. All I know about Saw is that it involves a guy locking people in a tiny room they cannot leave until they remove a body part; whether or not the people in the room are victims or "criminals" being punished for being a**holes appears to be under some debate, at least between the few friends I have who like horror films.

You make an interesting point, though. I'm not certain if being oversensitive or desensitized to the pain of others, be it real of imaginative, is a good indicator of your own threshold for pain and torture done to yourself. It might indicate your own awareness, on some level, of how you would fair in the instance or it might not.

Hmm ... well, now I have a question for my professor tomorrow. Thanks.

 

[Johanthemonster666]

Complacent people who've never suffered abuse, violence, or destruction of their house/property might be unaffected by films, games and other media depicting or capturing these things.

But let me tell you, people who've actually seen others getting killed, their friends or family being shot, raped or hurt will tell you it was the worst experience(s) of their life and will probably never get over it. Even worse if the person was on the receiving end.

There was a guy at my sister-in-law's church service, he was a Sundanese refugee living in the U.S talked about how he had seen and experience the horrors of war and massacre and wondered why people in developed countries find violence (all kinds, including rape) to be a mundane and detached experiences in their entertainment.

 

[Alorxico]

If you wanted to weep every time someone died you wouldn't have much time to do anything else.

True, and to be fair us 80s babies have been desensitized to blood, gore and physical violence (to a degree) so we're not THAT reserved, but that raises an interesting question. If you are only saving your energy and emotions to use on something important, what constitutes 'important'? How close to you does it have to be before you are moved to do or say something against it?

Now, Hollywood is just flash and mirrors and the news is ... well ... quickly becoming a BRANCH of Hollywood, so I'm not surprised people don't react to it, but if both of those media outlets constantly assaulted (no pun intended) the younger generations with the "horrors" or reality, how horrible or monstrous would something need to be to make them react?

That's something the older generations (the 60s and 70s babies, our parents) are starting to wonder; 'Are you feeling anything? This is a horrible, terrible crime that must be stopped and you are brushing it off', thus giving the nut-balls in Washington another fear to play on to get themselves elected into office.

And I'm not asking this in a mean / accusational way, I'm actually curious. Blame Socrates, ancient Athenian philosopher who encouraged his students to ask questions (NOT question everything, but ask questions about everything) to better yourself.

 

[KiraTaureLor]

...although if one of us was put in an actual saw scenario, and one of your generation was put in a saw scenario, I wonder who will handle it better. Just a thought.

I have never seen Saw or its many sequels, I'm not big on "horror" or "suspense" films. I have a short attention span and too active an imagination to be interested in either. All I know about Saw is that it involves a guy locking people in a tiny room they cannot leave until they remove a body part; whether or not the people in the room are victims or "criminals" being punished for being a**holes appears to be under some debate, at least between the few friends I have who like horror films.

You make an interesting point, though. I'm not certain if being oversensitive or desensitized to the pain of others, be it real of imaginative, is a good indicator of your own threshold for pain and torture done to yourself. It might indicate your own awareness, on some level, of how you would fair in the instance or it might not.

Hmm ... well, now I have a question for my professor tomorrow. Thanks.

I'm not so much interested in the physical pain threshold, just how it will be handled Psychologically, Let me know what his answer will be though please.

 

[Lukirre]

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.

This. I quite thoroughly agree with this.

I'd argue, though, that in terms of violent and sexually aggressive behaviour, the upcoming generation is, in fact, more desensitized than the previous one. But, since we're not going around acting on this, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a bad thing.

 

[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.