The Fear of Everything

Imagine sitting and watching a film clip showing a locomotive leaving a train station.  Now imagine everyone jumping back in their seats as the train comes into the station.  It's an unusual site; we are used to the site in this day in age, but this was the scene of one of the first motion picture screenings in 1895.  Could you imagine a simple video popping up on the screen of a locomotive as it leaves station?  We are so used to images such as this that it is just written off as something that is normal.  However in the 1895, this was not a normal image, to them it was scary to see this image of a locomotive leaving the train station, they thought the train was going to jump out of the screen at them.  To them, this simple film envoked fear, because they had no idea what to expect.

This is similar to how we currently are with video games.  Violent video games are especially scary for an older breed of people who grew up prior to the 1990s and the first real violent video game (Mortal Kombat).  Violent video games to the older breed envokes a fear simlar to the fear of the first motion picture because this older breed has no idea what to expect.  Will I see someone's head ripped off?  Will they actually teach me how to kill someone?  These questions burst in and out of their heads because they never played these games growing up, how are they to know that they are not as bad as they seem.  This is the culture we are currently in.

This culture, is the same type of culture from 1895 when there was a fear with the motion picture.  It was also the same culture when adults had a fear of music lyrics in the 1980s and 1990s.  This culture seems to be repeating itself over and over.  It is because the majority of the people have no idea to expect when a new piece of technology comes out, so naturally they fear it.  In this day in age, motion pictures are not seen as scary, neither are provokative lyrics, but still back then, this was the way it was. 

Unfortunately not enough research has been done on this topic to really gain a clear-cut answer, however look at who had the fear of motion pictures, song lyrics, and now violent video games.  For the most part it has been adults in their respective eras.  Adults never grew up with motion pictures in 1895, nor did they grow up with provokative music in the mid-1900s and in this day in age there are not many adults who can say they grew up playing violent video games.  Kids on the other hand were born into the age of these, so to them motion pictures, bad song lyrics, and violent video games are just another way of life, something that is not scary and should not be feared.  Adults though are scared because they have no idea what to expect, and I bet in thirty years when the first "reality" video games comes out, the same culture that grew up watching movies, listening to provokative lyrics, and playing violent video games will have the same fear.