>Well, yes. But cartoon violence elicits guffaws from American youngsters
>while real, true-life violence elicits horror. I'd be surprised if the
>average Russian child was horrified by a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and I'd be
>surprised if the average American 4-year old wasn't shocked by the Roger and
>Me clip. (I'm not trying to suggest that cartoon violence isn't bad,
>rather, I'm just saying that your anecdote doesn't seem to show what you
>think it shows.)
In my experience they are. The problem with that clip in Roger and Me is that college students I've shown it to don't quite get the point. I assume Moore's point is to show what capitalism turns us into: people who would sell rabbits for pets in February but once that venture fails, start selling them for meat a few months later. Not to mention the fact that the consumers were probably "forced" to eat rabbit meat (mighty tasty, actually) because they couldn't afford London Broil any more. Moore's point is that it isn't the particular people in Flint who are savages; it's that they become so under the conditions in which they live.
My students, though, tend to blame individuals, feeling that _they_ would never do such a thing. Somehow, they believe others are subject to structural forces but them and they do so because they see themselves as able to resist whereas the "Rabbit Lady" is scarred by some irredeemable pathology. Hell, they sound a lot like people on this list who feels that everyone else is warped by capitalism but somehow they escape unscathed and able to shed light on the problems for the unwashed masses.
Kelley