Killing Monsters

by Gerard Jones

Book Overview

Children choose their heroes more carefully than we think. From Pokemon to the rapper Eminem, pop-culture icons are not simply commercial pied pipers who practice mass hypnosis on our youth. Indeed,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465036953
• ISBN13: 9780465036950
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Great discovery

I recently stumbled across this book while shopping at a bookstore, and it came at a perfect time. I have a 3-and-a-half year old son that enjoys some shows that some people feel are not appropriate for young children. Shows like Power Rangers (his all-time favorite), Pokemon, and a few others. My son goes to a Montessori School, and we have always been quite happy with him there. One day, the head of the school pulled my wife aside and said we have a problem with my son's behavior. She stated that he was showing "aggressive behavior" and that he was the ring leader of a handful of kids that had the same problem. Our first reaction was shock and a fear that we were bad parents. Coming from someone who deals with kids all the time, you feel they would know what's best. She said that the shows he was watching were causing the problem, and that we should not let him be involved in watching those shows. That's when I started thinking about it. I asked her the next time I saw her to define aggressive behavior. She said that my son and his friends would play fight and do karate on each other. I asked if he actually ever hit anyone, and she said no. I also asked if anyone was ever hurt or if they took the playing beyond just playing. She had no answer. I even asked if they took turns winning and she said yes, and that was part of the problem! This is when I found Killing Monsters, and I am so glad I did. The things it talks about directly related to me and my relationship with my son. I love when he watches Power Rangers, and puts on every article of clothing he owns to enhance his powerful character. He walks through the house as though he could conquer anything! He also wants us to hug and kiss him during the Barney song, and that shows another soft and incredibly gentle side that my wife and I love. Play fighting and toy swords are my son's favorite, and to have to take that away from him seemed so unnecessary. I loved this book and read it twice. I have also passed it on to friends with children that have loved it just as much. I am a young man, only 30 years old. There are a lot of parents like myself that were raised around video games and violent movies. Taking that away doesn't solve a problem. It's all about parental involvement and education. This book reinforced what I believe is the key to a healthy child.

But What Do The Kids See?

Adults look at Eminem, or Britney Spears, or Doom, and see horrific anti-social media that might corrupt their children.In this interesting and well-written book, Gerard Jones points out that children see something entirely different. Especially where children are not merely passive consumers, fantasy media, including violent shows and video games, are a tool that children use to very important ends -- learning to distinguish fantasy from reality, learning to organize reality, learning to overcome powerlessness and how to act when they are no longer powerless.Jones does not champion laissez-faire parenting and the surrendering of your child to Hulk Hogan and the Spice Girls. Throughout, he suggests an active, empathetic approach to your child's media consumption.The book is thought-provoking and a much-needed counterbalance to a great deal of hysteria.

An Enlightened View for all Citizens who Care about Kids

Killing Monster's offers educators, parents and anyone who cares about kids an important perspective that is often missing from the debate over the effects of media violence on child development: the child's. This expansive, scholarly critique of the debate asks us to put aside our automatic rejection of fantasy violence and ask: Why do kids like it so much? Are these fantasy scenarios of good and evil enabling young media enthusiasts to express their own fears and anxieties in ways that help them understand them better? At a time when the new media can alter the child's relationship to it by changing them from consumres to users, Gerard Jones encourages us to trust kids to use intense media fantasy to find and express the emotional meaning these stories have for them.In and era in which many adults are anxious about the uncertainties of the world our children are growing up in, this book reminds us of the powerful role storytelling has played throughout history as a teacher about the capacity of humans to help and hurt each other. My hope is that this book will persuade media creators to realize that they have underestimatedchildren's need and desire for complex narratives. As Jones suggests, stories about age-old conflicts that limit humankinds abilty to achieve harmony in a world of individual and cultural differences can help our future citizens understand the vicissitudes of the moral dilemnas and conflicts that surrounbd us today.Dr.Carla Seal-Wanner, a developmental psychologist and children's media developer and advocate, formerly Director of the Graduate Program in Instructional Technology and Media, Columbia University

This book changed my mind.

As a psychotherapist and medical school professor, I speak regularly with parents who worry about their kids' taste in entertainment. I have commiserated with them often. After all, weren't the Columbine shooters obsessed with "Doom" and similar fare? Don't images create possibilities? Gerard Jones argues against the prevailing belief that fantasy violence makes kids violent. Close study of the literature shows that teens who watch the most violent entertainment actually commit fewer serious crimes. And among the 18 boys who perpetrated school rampages in recent years, the majority showed no interest in games. Instead of asking the unanswerable: "How does violent entertainment affect kids?" Jones poses 2 more interesting questions: Why do they love what they love? and: What is the place of fantasy violence in a world that condemns it in reality? He uses his teaching experiences and 30 years of social science research to show how children use make believe to master fears and experiment with feeling strong. In "Girl Power" Jones contends that just as girls used to identify with male fantasy figures, boys are now identifying with Lara Croft and other super-heroines. In a culture in which the male imaginary has been standard--something to which girls and women needed to accomodate--this expanding set of possibilities for kids is no small triumph. While the book is targeted to parents, it's also a solid piece of scholarship, and the author is obviously as comfortable with Freud and Bettelheim as he is Batman and Mega Zords. A fine cultural critique informs his argument. ("We don't ask whether game shows predispose our children to greed or love songs to bad relationships." "Killing MOnsters" made me think of James Joyce's hearing the word "imagination" as "the magic nation" (in "Finnegan's Wake.") Gerard Jones reminds us that we're all permanent citizens of that vast and weird republic, sometimes for worse, but much more often for better.

A fascinating look at kids, violence and fantasy

As a forensic psychologist who specializes in youth violence, I found "Killing Monsters" a must for anyone in the mental health field. It gives a different perspective on how kids use violence to ward off feelings of powerlessness--one of the main causes of kids becoming violent in the first place. In a society that expells kids for drawing pictures of guns or writing violent essays, Mr. Jones is a lone voice in the quest for rational thought on the topic of media violence and its impact on youth. The book is fabulous and well worth the purchase price!