I wasn’t questioning whether films or games can stimulate our flight or fight reflex, which is fairly testable by just one person, but whether there’s any evidence that it causes any long term changes. The bit you describe with “The part that is still being debated is how much such exposures change our brain wiring and whether there is a cause-and-effect correlation with other behavior”

“it’s obvious that one film or one video game won’t make a huge difference”

Agreed

“But when you’re exposed to a constant barrage of video games and video games disguised as films or TV shows, as we are today, our brains can and do get rewired.”

This I’m not so sure about. I’ll withhold judgement until I come accross some evidence that this rewiring affects people’s behavior.

“That does not mean that gory spectacles are the only (proximal or distal) reason for violence, or that everyone’s reactions will be identical

It doesn’t mean that gory spectacles are a reason for violence at all. Just that they potentially could be a reason.

Thanks for the link I think I read that last time I was here, but I can’t remember much about it, I’ll wander over and have a look.

Bundling all that, it’s obvious that one film or one video game won’t make a huge difference. But when you’re exposed to a constant barrage of video games and video games disguised as films or TV shows, as we are today, our brains can and do get rewired. To give an overlapping but distinct example, it’s becoming obvious (and backed up by multiple studies) that internet surfing changes the way we think/feel, react and act.

That does not mean that gory spectacles are the only (proximal or distal) reason for violence, or that everyone’s reactions will be identical. But bear in mind that this method is routinely used by armies and secret services to desensitize their operatives and bypass their rational/emotional decision filters. I haven’t seen any Beat Takeshi films, so I cannot answer that question.

Finally, if you’re interested, I wrote a coda to the cultural portion of this equation: The Andreadis Unibrow Theory of Art

Great blog, and interesting post. You make this point in the OP, but you don’t give any justification or links. What studies show that films can stimulate the fight or flight reflex enough to change a person, or what other evidence are you drawing this conclusion? How much film do you have to watch to experience this effect? Would it be ameliorated by watching slow contemplative films?
In your schema where would films by Beat Takeshi fall? They’re slow, meditative pieces interspersed with ultra-fast brutal violence. Would one counteract the other or is there some sort of critical-mass the violence and speed has to reach before you start degenerating?

If all action movies did was stir up adrenaline and cortisol with no catharsis then no one would ever go to them. What’s truly insidious is the form that catharsis takes.

I think what a good, not merely well-executed, action movie teaches us is the opposite of what you’re saying. That violence and chaos doesn’t have to reduce us to gibbering mass of fear and hate, that we can maintain poise and -yes- even critical thought with our emotions running in high-gear.

I think I may not have expressed my thoughts entirely clearly in the paragraph you discuss. For one, I obviously don’t think that every single person will turn into a mindless killing machine the moment s/he sees a film that engages the fight-or-flight response. That would be patently silly. At the same time, people’s memory is notoriously unreliable, particularly what they recall after a shock that engaged the reflex.

Please understand, I have nothing against gaming. I myself have played just about every quest/adventure game that was available in UNIX or Mac. The old TADS/Inform text-only adventures, Nethack, all the Mysts, Zork Nemesis (but not the other members of that family), Gabriel Knight, Syberia, Eschalon are among my favorites. But I don’t play arcade or most puzzle games because they make me jittery and irritable — which is the fight-or-flight reaction when it has nowhere to go, so to speak. Incidentally, I don’t think that books can trigger this reflex. Reading is never visceral enough to do so. In our cultural context, the reaction comes from films, video games or music. In other cultures, it comes from living in a war zone or under occupation (whether by foreign troops or a native military or religious dictatorship).

The emotions evoked by this reflex bypass the cerebral cortex. When we are in their grip, we don’t think about what we do. We think about it after the fact, and explain/justify our thoughts and actions accordingly. And constant triggering of the reflex does change brain wiring. You must have heard of the outcome of quasi-regular triggering of the response: PTSD doesn’t just happen to soldiers who were caught in a bomb explosion. If you’re intellectually engaged in a film or game and making educated guesses about the characters’ motivations and deeds, you are de facto not experiencing fight-or-flight. Ditto for acting in a crisis: you force yourself past the panic and into thinking appropriately, as you so well put it. And you can strategize even in a twitch game because it’s not a one-time experience: you’ll live to replay it.

My point was that people who crave this kind of entertainment are likely to eventually crave the same return (and act so as to get it) in other compartments of their lives. As I kept saying on that other blog, it’s biology; it has nothing to do with cultural value judgments. Your statement that most game players are in essence mild cubicleers is only partly true. I have rarely encountered people who are more hair-trigger verbally aggressive than titular couch potatoes. Just look at the flame wars on the Net and the unthinking rah-rah libertarianism from people who are ostensibly educated and smart.

This reply is not necessarily well-organized, I just riffed on your points. But we may have more discussions either in this section or after I post my low-versus-high art article. In the meantime, you can see my objections to Avatar (which are far more numerous than just triggering the reflex) here: Jar Jar Binks Meets Pocahontas.

It seems like you’re saying that watching violent (where ‘violent’ means ‘fight or flight triggering’) movies and playing violent video-games changes us for the worse: make us more likely to act as mobs, less rational, more violent, etc.

I am not certain that this is always the case. I think that films, books and movies can trigger that surge of adrenaline and swell of uncontrollable emotion in more ways than just through loud noises and cheap tricks–some of my favorite moments in some of my favorite films give me the same family of feeling I get when I pull off a head-shot in an FPS, or when a really cool explosion happens in a movie. I’m talking about films like Blade Runner, Naked Lunch and Stalker here, as well as The Prestige. I’m not a biologist, so if I’m wrong, please correct me, but I think that at that moment where you realize, intellectually, that a character is about to double-cross another character, or that some emotional event of incredible magnitude is about to occur, that can trigger this kind of fight-or-flight response.

Further, I don’t experience video-gamers to be, on the average, duller or more boorish or more violent. I would classify myself as an adrenaline junkie, but I read Nietzsche for fun and have, at the ripe old age of 24, with many an adventure into foreign lands and states of consciousness, never gotten into a fight in my life.

There is an artistry in well choreographed and executed sensory overload that one can appreciate on an intellectual as well as emotional level. I haven’t seen Avatar yet–it didn’t seem that interesting, and got bad reviews from my friends. But, pacing aside, I love Big Trouble in Little China unreservedly, and things like Warren Ellis’ recent cartoon, GI JOE: RESOLUTE, in which a creator I know can deliver quality material delivered ninjas fighting gunmen and Cobra Commander screaming about having ALL THE MONEY and ALL THE POWER are hilarious fun: they aren’t made of high quality materials, so to speak, but the things that are there have been polished to a very high intensity. They were written with a sledgehammer, but not without finesse, if that makes any sense. I think Orwell called it ‘good bad art’ when he was defending Kipling. Anyway.

I revel in the sensory overload, but I never deactivate my critical functions. I realize, or at least hope, that this separates me from the mass culture you’re decrying above, but is there actually a biological mechanism through which enjoying adrenaline-inducing hobbies makes me dumber and more violent? Can you point to evidence of this? It seems to run counter to my experience.

Also, can’t experiencing fight-or-flight reactions frequently help us to reason through them? It seems that even twitch games require us to reason tactics and strategies, observe and plan, while we’re trying to chainsaw each other in half. Certainly, something like Battlezone II, where as a player you are simultaneously planning and directing an entire war effort and fighting for your life, would seem to exercise the capacity for crisis reasoning rather than dull it. I know that at the times in my life where crises have occurred (car accidents, kitchen fires and the like) I have been one of the most clear-headed and rational people present, despite my panic/shock, because I was able to push through it to find appropriate, rational actions.

This got a bit longer than I meant it to, and is probably less organized than it could be. I’m procrastinating. I look forward to learning from your response.