Media and Hysteria

Just adding to the conversation started so enthusiastically in the previous posts. I wanted to pick up on what Emily has been pointing out about earlier forms of media and the ways in which they have been targeted as harmful. In particular, I cannot help but think of the ways in which novel-reading was for so often seen as detrimental to women. Think of course of "The Yellow Wallpaper," in which a woman is treated for "hysteria" (alternately "neurasthenia," which interestingly was also the diagnosis for soldiers in World War One, a form of "shell shock"); in her treatment she is denied any form of literature, since it will over-excite her. Earlier (especially in the late 18th and throughout the 19th centuries) women were warned by doctors and religious figures about the ways in which novel-reading would harm them, both leaving them confused and over-stimulated but also "unnatural" and "deviant." All that literature (specifically that naughty Gothic literature, with all its lascivious Counts and ravished young women) would corrupt their morals and even prevent them from having children. Or, on the lesser side, would simply confuse them (think of the protagonist in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, whose excessive reading of novels makes her imagine intrigue and violence everywhere and almost costs her a good marriage).

That women were in need of protection from all that fiction and its titillating effects is not so different from the current obsession with protecting our children (usually young women) from the predators of the Internet. Now, I am not saying that there aren't predators online, but studies show that these risks are greatly exaggerated in the media and that most predators announce their interest in sexual encounters to the teens they are chatting with, and the teens respond in kind. [Listen to The Online Predator Myth for more information.] The panic in the media is always about how the Internet corrupts young people (usually girls) and leaves them vulnerable because they do not understand how the Internet works. Yes, there are problems when your 8 year-old wants to look up something about Brittney Spears and is left to do that on an open machine without guidance (like what happened to my niece years ago), or if someone wants to look up "water sports." Yes, you will likely get undesired results. But to constantly delpoy this argument that young people are unsophisticated users ("readers") of the Web who need "our" protection from its corrupting influences smacks too much of the earlier anxiety (and control) about fiction and its (usually female) readers. We know the root of the word hysteria locates the dis-ease in the uterus and womb--I think we should be more aware of the ways in which our (justified) fears about the Web target young women and attempt to protect (confine) them to a more innocent (asexual) form of entertainment. Like novels.