Persuasive Essay On Banned Books

If books could kill. It has long been debated whether different types of media could influence someone to commit the heinous acts portrayed in books, movies, or video games. For centuries, people in power have oppressed others by controlling and limiting the media that can be accessed. Different authoritative organizations fight tooth and nail to censor books or movies and prohibit the distribution of them. Whether the reasoning behind these specific pieces of media being targeted is due to the violence in them or the showcasing of lifestyles that the organizations do not believe should be shown to their children or the public, censorship of media should never be practiced. Censorship is defined as the suppression or prohibition of any parts

Despite their efforts to embrace this freedom, books are still being banned in schools at an alarming rate. Many of the books being banned are stories featuring marginalized groups of people. “About 41 percent of the banned titles explicitly address LGBTQ themes, making these the biggest target of the bans. Books involving sexual content—such as stories about teen pregnancy, sexual assault and abortion—account for 22 percent of the titles. About 21 percent directly address race and racism, while 40 percent feature major characters of color” (Feldman). It is understandable for parents to prevent their young children from reading books involving adult content like sex or extreme violence, but with a large number of the banned books including stories and viewpoints from minorities, parents and the organizations banning these books seem to have a different agenda. Parents are stripping their children of the opportunity to continue learning about people who are different from them, potentially perpetuating racist, homophobic, or generally discriminatory ideals. Empathy is gained through exposure and experience, and parents sheltering their children according to their own prejudices and uninformed opinions limits their children’s ability to expand their intellectual capacity and become individuals who can

There is no evidence that watching a gruesome, morbid scene in a horror movie will lead a person to commit similar acts in real life. The movie could be considered to be a small factor in what motivates someone to commit heinous crimes, but the connection is always very weak and these are people who had it in their minds before they even watched the movie. It is difficult to find any evidence that violent movies even cause long-term increases in aggression for adults or children. Research does show that, regarding video games specifically, violence or intense action does cause aggression in people to increase, but for a short amount of time after exposure to the video game violence. Using this information to analyze the behaviors of people after watching violent movies, short-term aggression is an expected reaction. When one watches a sad movie, they are going to feel sad for some time after the viewing, the same goes for someone behaving a bit more aggressively right after watching a violent movie. “A 2011 study by the Center for European Economic Research found that although violent video games may promote aggressive behavior, they could actually reduce crime” (Morin). Violent media can be a way for people to let off steam and pent up aggression, reducing the chances those people