Vigilante Justice

“Suppose, your ten-year-old daughter is raped, and you’re a Vietnam vet, very familiar with an M-16, and you get your hands on one while your daughter is lying in the hospital fighting for her life. Suppose the rapist is caught, and six days later you manage to maneuver to within five feet of him as he leaves court. And you’ve got the M-16. What do you do?” (Grisham 613). In John Grisham’s fictional book A Time to Kill, this is the dilemma that is presented. To use vigilante justice to right the wrong, as does the character in Grisham’s book, is a tempting measure to take. Throughout media today the use of the vigilante justice in popular movies and books promotes incorrect ideas that are harmful to their audiences. An incorrect idea that

First, it shows the police as very ineffective and incapable of performing their job. This is shown by criminals escaping from facilities or going unobstructed through cities terrorizing the citizens, while the police futilely try to stop them. With problems like this, other people need to protect the the populous. This is what would seem a harmless example of people standing up for others, but it shows that trained professionals are incapable of handling incidents themselves. A perfect example of this is in the DC Universe is Gotham, the place where Batman resides. “In Gotham, corporate crime is widespread, police corruption is rampant, and deviant subcultures rule the streets of the inner cities” (Wonser 2). Batman is forced to protect the citizens because the police force can’t do their job, partly because many of the police are corrupt. Gotham, and its multi-million dollar media, provides interesting insights because it is completely based around the fact that law enforcement cannot be trusted. Also, when characters get out on technicalities or loopholes through manipulating the judicial system than it shows the limitations of the courts system.

All plots of books and movies of vigilantes use violence. The antagonist is harming them in some way, so they must be stopped. Oftentimes extreme measures are taken and the violence shown differs in the source of the material. Stories of vigilantes and the violence used differs from media to media, but one overarching theme is that violence is used to solve a conflict. Especially where force is used in children’s programs it “trivializes” violence. Shockingly, Judith Van Evra also found, in her book Television and Child Development, that there was violence in “97% of the superhero programs”. This correlation between superhero programs and vigilante justice is strong because most of what superheroes do is what is defined as vigilante justice. Thus with so much violence in these programs targeted to younger audiences, there will be effects. Huesman et al. in an article published by the American Psychological Association showed, “The results of [their] study revealed that early childhood exposure to TV violence predicted aggressive behavior for both males and females in adulthood.” Thus when vigilantes in media openly employ the use of force and violence to accomplish their self-proclaimed tasks, then it negatively impacts children and growing youth by encouraging aggressive