Lawyer-turned-novelist John Grisham makes the case that Hollywood films such as Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers play a significant role in shaping cultural attitudes toward violence and, in some extreme cases, in providing some killers with either justification for their actions or role models (324). Not everyone agrees with Grisham's position. The debate over the effects of media violence on the behavior of children, adolescents, and adults has been ongoing for many decades. Richard Rhodes believes that social science research has failed to demonstrate a "direct, causal link between exposure to mock violence in the media and subsequent violent behavior" (327). Nevertheless, Grisham does suggest that it is possible to identify a direct causal link between Hollywood films and a killing spree on which two Oklahoma teens embarked -- directly imitating Stone's couple in Natural Born Killers and not-so-coincidentally, beginning after the couple viewed the film (325).
Grisham makes a compelling case in describing how Stone's film helped to shape the behavior of Sarah Edmondson and Ben Darras, the Oklahoma couple who robbed and killed a Mississippi man and then robbed and shot a Louisiana woman who was left a quadriplegic by the assault (324). While both of these young people had a history of drug abuse before embarking on their crime spree, they had no history of violence. As Grisham puts it, "they were confused, disturbed, shiftless, mindlessa, but they had never hurt anyone before" (324). It is therefore important to recognize, said Grisham, that what may well have triggered their crime spree was the fact that they saw Stone's film, "a horrific movie that glamorized casual mayhem and blood lust. A movie made with the intent of glorifying random murder"(324).
There is no doubt that Grisham considers Hollywood media moguls to be responsible, at least in part, for much of the violence that occurs in Ameri
...