Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes and Make-believe Violence - Gerard Jones

A controversial look at a controversial subject

In this book, author Gerard Jones looks at the role of violence in the play world of children and adolescents. Moving from story to story, and study to study, he shows that children use violence to make sense of their world, to help them deal with their own aggressive feelings, and to broaden the range of personality factors by using violence safely in a fantasy realm, rather than in reality. Looking at juvenile violence, he sees that it is societal and (even more so) family factors that produce the violence, and not the mass media.

Overall, I did find this book quite interesting. For the first several chapters, the author had me hooked, with his interesting and engaging take on violence in the fantasy world of young people. However, after a while I began to feel that the book was rather weighed down with too many anecdotes, especially (but not limited to) relative to analysis.

Also, the author is quite clear that he does not believe that violence in movies, games and music has much of a negative effect, quite the contrary. "Nearly all violent stories that kids love enact powerful lessons about courage, resiliency, and development. It doesn't matter who the good guys and bad guys are, who wins or loses, or what values are espoused by the characters in the course of the action." (Hardcover, P.221) It doesn't matter at all, not even a little bit?

So, let me say that this is a fascinating and thoughtful book, if a bit swollen, one that should be looked at when violence in the media is discussed. However, I do think that the author overstates his case, and I do have trouble with his conclusions.