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In contrast to belief, knowledge as it is “scientifically” and pragmatically defined in Freedman’s (2002) overview, is attributed to the authority of a corrigible and objectifiable method that can stand the test of verifiability; for example, the earth is not flat, but spherical. This can be “proven” by the repeatability of the results establishing a “causal” connection. In postmoder-nity, the representatives of such an authoritative method have become suspect for their ideological and contextual bias. Phenomenologically speak-ing the world “is” flat. It is experienced as bespeak-ing flat. Both perspectives can coexist with one another in a nonhierarchical relationship, each defining the specificity of its domain. Newtonian and Einsteinian physics can coexist with one another. There is no transcendental point that is not always already con-textualized. From the perspective of a decentered universe, the earth may indeed take on a dimensionality not as yet theorized. A single view from the Hubble telescope estimates that there are 40 billion new galaxies with count-less other solar systems. This has brought a new insignificance to the planet Earth, and added speculations on Black Hole space travel and the immense existence of antimatter that is unaccounted for. Currently, the earth’s shape is changing into a more rounded sphere as the ice caps melt causing weather disturbances, the consequences of which meteorologists are yet to fully ascertain. Simple Newtonian notions of causality have now been replaced with an updated scientific paradigm based on stochastic probability or warrantability, such as the study by Anderson and Dill (2000) mentioned

earlier. Who is most likely to be effected by media violence and desensitized to its effects is now presented in terms of a composite profile of the viewer/computer video user: age, class, gender, economic status, past crim-inal record, and so on to determine the probability of media violence effect.

Who is most likely to be behaviorally effected, emotionally affected, or ide-ologically influenced now becomes a composite profile. Such “at risk” chil-dren include those who have experienced violent traumas such as war, floods, disasters, or who have learning disabilities and suffer from deficit disorders.

This complexity, however, does not prevent those trained in behavioral psy-chology to continue to still believe in direct causal effects. Perhaps the born-again Christian zeal of former U.S. Lt. Col. and behavioral psychologist David Grossman (1995) is the most obvious high-profile case. Having trained sol-diers how to kill, Grossman’s crusade is to claim that violent video games lead to better marksmanship, techniques of sniping and using cover, above all, desensitization so that one could kill. When suicidal school shootings occur he blames violent video games for their enactment. The Columbine tragedy gave him a high-media profile as having been “right” all along, and an opportun-ity to say so to the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Hearings on “Marketing Violence to Children” (May 4, 1999) (see Kent 2001, 544–555). However, the Marine Corps have denied ever using games like Doom for desensitization purposes: sharp-shooting and team-work training, yes; desensitization—no. Ironically, the Marines, who were involved in the original modification of Doom, went on to form their own company and marketed their customized version (Manovich 2001, 278).

Nintendo also claimed that they never supplied the army a first-person shooter simulator as Grossman had testified.

Grossman’s reliance on the outdated and heavily critiqued theory of B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning, and his failure to recognize the obvious difference between a military war situation/training camp and a video games arcade makes his position sound rather ludicrous to those who have actually talked to youth about these games (especially Jones 2002, 166–167); or to psychologists who have abandoned behaviorism as a reductionist under-standing of human experience, but certainly not to educators and parents who want to be convinced by the sensational sell that violent video games lead directly to the psychosis of a killing spree. The forensic psychologist Helen Smith (2000), explicitly states that that there is no connection between violent video games and the violent kids she works with. Although we wonder whether profiling characteristics she uses, as determined from surveys, are the best way to ascertain who is likely to commit violent acts, Smith sees such games as a form of sublimation, a way for some violent youth to deal with their rage. Lower-income kids from impoverished homes who commit the majority of the violent crimes, as might be expected, aren’t able to afford such games. The U.S. secret service’s Threat Assessment Center investigated major incidents of school violence since the 1970s to see whether violent video games were involved. Of the 41 cases they investi-gated, only 5 involved such games. The report concluded that of these five

cases there was no direct evidence that they caused or led to the shooting (Benger 2002; see also Jenkins 2000).

It seems like the “evidence” is against Lt. Grossman from both the law enforcement community itself, that he so respects, as well as from psycholo-gists who have worked with murderous teens utilizing more complex set of premises than simple behaviorism. The prevailing generality is that imitating violence often leads to an identification with violence—rather than revulsion of it. It is then assumed that violence is incorporated to solve problems of everyday life; finally, violence is believed to be located unconsciously as a central activity that defines one’s subjectivity. From a Lacanian viewpoint, the jouissance of violence is unique to an individual’s biography, to the fam-ily situation, complexity of class, race, and sexual orientation. Yet, despite these probability statistics and profiling, no scientific account can completely explain the contingent event as to when a serial killer strikes, a mass murder acts out, or a pedophile molests. Such an event belongs to the Lacanian impossible Real. To eliminate such a contingency of a violent act would be to foretell the future as in Phillip Dick’s sci-fi, “The Minority Report.”

In distinction to this objectivized knowledge, belief is tied to the Symbolic Order, which itself is a virtual fiction, an ontological belief system in which people must necessarily buy into but not necessarily place their faith in. They must feel bound to some symbolic commitment, yet they need not trust it.

As Freedman (2002) points out, the prestigious psychological and medical institutions seem to blindly quote one another and follow each other’s exag-gerated claims and overstated assertions concerning media violence, such as

“more than a 1000 scientific studies and reviews conclude that . . . 3500 sci-entific studies reached this conclusion . . . .” Faith in the Symbolic Order, that the big Other is providing the fundament of symbolic “trust” is what enables the system to maintain and reproduce itself. Once such authority is shaken, paranoia can set in.

The ultimate paradox of belief is that there is “no hard proof.” The typi-cal reaction to Freedman’s analysis by a true believer in the media violence hypothesis, is to state that any research can be picked apart and criticized if one wants to do so, as if it is forbidden to question received authority. In such a defensive move, Freedman is said to have merely displayed his own overwhelming bias that he believes that desensitization and media violence hypothesis are false by picking the existing research apart and interpreting the evidence his way. In this view, we arrive at a deadlock that enables the existing belief to continue to mystify, maintain, and reproduce the Symbolic Order. Freedman’s claim can be dismissed as merely a ploy to dislodge the facts by interpreting them differently. His facts are then accused of being just another fiction, which then leads us toward relativism. Who are we going to believe: a psychology professor with an analytical bias or a slough of presti-gious scientific and medical institutes who say otherwise? Or, in another his-torical context: who do you believe, Galileo or the Church Fathers who refused even to look through the telescope to confirm or deny his claim? On what grounds do you decide who has a more supportable and ethical claim?

What kind of knowledge does Freedman offer, which makes a believer of the media violence hypothesis feel uneasy? The answer is hysterical knowl-edge. A refusal to fully accept the master signifiers that keep the symbolic belief system in place. His hystericized position is exemplified in the opening chapter through his enactment of a taunting and almost jeering style when exposing and accusing prestigious institutions for their failure to live up to their scientific claims when they have set the rules. This is his hysterical symp-tom, his dramatization, and his linguistic quirk. In an earlier historical period of Church rule, he would have been branded a heretic, muzzled, and per-haps put to death. Freedman is someone who introduces doubt concerning the accepted master signifiers “media violence” and “desensitization” by inverting the scientific “causal” game; by showing that the numbers that are being played with fail to add up. On the very last page of his study Freedman shifts the entire debate by placing the fulcrum under “real” violence, rather than its fictional simulacra equivalent.

Indeed, I think it is likely that real violence and the coverage of real violence do affect aggression and crime. Children may imitate violence they observe directly. Both children and adults may be influenced by their knowledge that their society or their neighbourhood has a lot of violence. Moreover, it seems likely that repeated exposure to real violence, either directly or in the media [e.g., murder on the front page of the newspaper, or as a lead story on televi-sion news], causes desensitization to subsequent real violence. . . . Thus both the causal hypothesis and the desensitization hypothesis may be correct with respect to real violence or media coverage of real violence, and perhaps that is what people should be worrying about. (210)

For Freedman, ultimately the distinction rests between “real” and fictional vio-lence. If they remain apart, then his argument retains its hysterical force in unnerving supporters of the causality hypothesis. Indeed, it does seem obvious that nonfictional violence is more difficult to cope with, regardless of age.

However, youth find specific strategies of coping when it comes to both fictional and nonfictional material. Having had negative experiences each individual soon identifies genres that are immediately to be avoided because they are so disturbing. Some are just unable to watch “real” (RL) medical oper-ations on television where scalpel cuts are made explicit and human insides are exposed. The sight of blood is too much to bear. For a devout Catholic a film such as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) may bring about many sleepless nights. The presence of evil is just “too” close to the unconscious core subjec-tivity that identifies him or her as a Catholic. Yet this same film may be ana-lyzed for its spectacular special effects. How did they manage to make Linda Blair’s head swivel around 360 degrees? What sort of make-up was applied to make her so bleak looking? How did the special effects crew make the bed tremble? And so on. Such “objective” knowledge enables a psychic distance to be maintained from the belief that such events actually do happen. Ultimately, the plausibility of the event depends on the belief system of the person watch-ing, and that is more of a psychoanalytic question than a cognitive one.

There are many other “containment” strategies to make the anxiety of watching “scary” movies possible, ranging from direct to partial abstinence where only the non-scary scenes are watched. The rest of the time eyes are closed and fingers cover the ears. Watching a questionable movie or televi-sion program with a group of friends also transfers and disperses the anxiety onto the group. Another strategy is simply to wait for the video of the

“scary” movie to come out so as to change the viewing context in the famil-iarity of one’s own home, or to then replay a particularly frightening scene over and over again so that its impact is lessened. (This strategy is not unlike Aztec rituals of progressively shortening and then chanting the name of a devilish spirit until only a single phoneme of the spirit remains. Once that is repetitively chanted away the spirit has been psychologically and completely overcome.) Video games based on horror film (and vice versa) can likewise further the psychic distance (e.g., House of the Dead, The Mummy Returns, Jurassic Park III). Then there are the proverbial fans of horror who know their genre so well that they can laugh at the quotes, citations, ironic and cynical references that the director throws in for those “in the know,” like Keenen Wayans’s hilarious film, Scary Movie (2000). Intimately knowing a genre provides a great deal of control over the form, and hence achieving a distance that remains pleasurable.

Despite all this, parents, especially middle-class parents, worry that their children will suffer from nightmares and recurrent anxieties and fears when exposed to certain media violence. The psychic life of the youth becomes critical. The effects of media violence can thus range from behavioral responses (aggressivity), to emotional ones (pleasure as well as repulsion), from being outright ideological and attitudinal, to being totally abject (Buckingham 1996). Translated into the language of Lacanian psychoanalysis, all such effects raise the place of jouissance in the life of the viewer/user.

How is libidinal life regulated in reference to the Law, in terms of prohibi-tions and allowances in cyberspace? This is the underlying question of sub-sequent chapters.