Moral Responsibility In Dante's Canto V, The Inferno

In Canto V, The Inferno, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta were reading a romantic book that brought out their emotions and love for each other that made them passionate. Dante (the poet) condemned them to hell together to be punished for committing adultery. It leaves one to think who is more responsible for moral responsibility. I feel the creators and vehicles of the messages that are promoting unacceptable attitudes and behaviors aren’t more responsible and accountable than that of the consumers. The content that is created generally has fans and detractors. Also if consumers didn’t watch these types of works they wouldn’t exist and disappear.
Creators have creative freedom and can alter or shape a persons opinion with their works.

Although the media may have influence upon a persons thoughts, ultimately it’s the consumers who buy the content and allow it to play a role on their personality. Take Francesca and Paolo for example, they read a book about love and they couldn’t resist committing adultery. The book played a role on their emotions, but if they didn’t have those emotions deep down inside of them to begin with then the book wouldn’t have an effect on them. The story itself played on their deep attraction for each other. The author wasn’t aware about the feelings they had for each other when creating the book, then the book can’t be blamed for their actions. Although Paolo and Francesca had resemblance to Lancelot and Guinevere love story, they didn’t need to act on it. Lancelot and Guinevere acted no more than a ploy to Francesca and Paolo to commit adultery. You wouldn’t kill the creator of the story, you would kill the people who committed the act. Ultimately they had a moral responsibility not to carry out those acts.
Generally people don’t ask for the content to be made however content wouldn’t be made if it wasn’t watched or read. Just like back when there was a mass school shooting multiple news outlets blamed violent video games for that careless behavior. Millions of people play violent video games but I don’t see everyone shooting up schools or movie theaters. Although some video games have some influence on people it’s up to the consumer to decide if they want to purchase the video game and pretend to live in a pretend world or reality. If the video games didn’t have fans then they wouldn’t be producing games with such violence. After all Francesca and Paolo chose to read the story and just because the story reflected their own love for each other it was their decision that lead them to imitate Lancelot and Guinevere adultery to resolve their own conflict.
The effect that the media and video games have on people may have some power in influencing on peoples choices, essentially the power is in the individual’s hands. They are responsible for making moral responsibility conscious choices. Although people don’t ask for the