Essay by 謝振禮老師 Jeenn Lee Hsieh

TWE Topic>

真題還原

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Movies and television have more negative effects than positive effects on young people's behavior. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

范文:

Do movies and television influence the way people behave? Certainly they do, and who will argue otherwise? Here, refuting two common fallacies, our logical claims intend to focus on the assumption that there are more good effects than ill effects on the audience, including children and teenagers, of course.

Fallacy No. 1: Myths about Evils. Largely being fiction about myths for entertainment, most films and television programs are meant to influence people in the positive context. Some are designed to make the audience think; others are designed primarily to amuse; and probably none are designed to encourage evil-doing. Besides the emotional impacts, reducing stress and killing free time, there is something deeper about them that shape our minds and hence change our behaviors. In light of this, our participation in that kind of popular media may help alter the consciousness of society, either for good or ill, depending on the myths portrayed. Accordingly, it is groundless to think that we are always exploited negatively by the entertainment seen on the screen.

Fallacy No. 2 about Rising Crime Rates. Because of cinema's persuasive power, it is easy to blame movies and television (along with other media outlets) for imprudently showing violent scenes against a landscape of rising crime rates. At this point, we should consider, for a moment, that the like of many of those criminal minds had existed long long before cinema was ever invented. This means that the message of cinema today is far from leading the average person, young or old, to commit a crime, and that a good film or TV program usually has a unique ability to influence the popular culture with a "moral" ending (like poetic justice) tinkering around inside our brains that are supposed to be able to distinguish right from wrong. In fact, there are no evidence to prove the direct relationships between crime rates and cinema consumption. Is anybody so naive as to believe that most criminals may enjoy watching television more often or, on the contrary, most innocent people may not go to movies as often? Who is kidding who?

On the whole, it makes sense to think that the impacts of movies and television should be considered as more positive than negative on the audience of all ages, young people in particular. To paraphrase Walt Disney: "Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood". Therefore, the bottom line is how to incorporate logical behaviors in all our films and TV series.