NPR: Pop Culture Happy Hour re-aired their episode on John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and it’s causing me to revisit my cognitive dissonance about these movies (and violent media in general).

Over the last few months, I feel like I’ve seen an uptick in people referencing studies that indicate “violent media does not make viewers [or gamers] more violent.”

In the past, though, the studies seem to be looking at a specific viewing or gaming session – take a survey, watch a movie or clip or play a video game, take the survey again. And in that level of dosage, their evidence indicates that the media do not affect the subjects’ propensity for violence.

I keep wondering, though, whether this is applicable to being steeped in violent media throughout an American lifetime. It’s much harder for me to believe that when almost every Marvel hero wins through violence, when Star Wars makes politics a boring interstitial to the fight scenes, when our fantasy books are about using magic in exciting combat sequences… doesn’t that teach us on a subconscious level that violence is an appropriate or preferable solution to problems? That peaceful resolution is boring and impotent and you need a (usually white male) hero to kill someone to make a “real” difference?

I don’t have a resolution or settled position on this, but I keep thinking about it.