Basketball Diaries,” Leonardo DiCaprio plays a teenager who is ridiculed at school and who gets heavily addicted to heroin and cocaine. In one scene, he is tripped out in the bathtub and he has a dream: he is dressed in a long, black trenchcoat and he goes into his school and opens fire on all of the classmates that have ridiculed him and the teacher that gave him a hard time and who never really liked him. In this dream, his friends are just sitting in their seats watching as others get their heads blown off. When young children see this film, they sometimes cannot distinguish between what is real or fiction. Many kids think that violence such as this is “cool,” and such behavior is acceptable. I think that it School Violence 7is important to note that in the Columbine shooting, the boys were wearing long, black trenchcoats, carrying big machine guns, and only shooting the people that ridiculed them. Watching this film and thinking about what those children went through at Columbine and thinking about what the survivors saw is heartbreaking and extremely horrifying. Television causes another connection between children and violence. If children are exposed to various amounts of violence on television, then there is a likelihood that they will begin to be desensitized to violent acts and possibly become more likely to be involved in violence. In an article by Henry Mietkiewicz, he states that “ . . . [t]he more TV violence a youngster watch[es] in a given year, the more likely he or she . . . [is] to display an increased aggression during subsequent years” (article 79). Music is also an outlet for children getting ideas for violence. Eminem, a rap singer, has extremely violent lyrics in his songs. In one song, he sings, “Hi kids, do you like violence? Wanna see me stick nine inch nails through each one of my eyelids? Wanna copy me and do exactly what I did? . . . By the way, when you se...
