Can Movies Kill

775 Words4 Pages
Can Movies Kill The ability to identify logical fallacies in the arguments of others and to avoid them in our own arguments is valuable and rare. Some logical fallacies are more common than others. The fallacies Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, Hasty Generalization, and Causal Oversimplification are all errors of reasoning. In the article Natural Born Killers by John Grisham, Sarah Edmondson and her boyfriend Benjamin Darras commit a murder and severely injure another. The two want to say they did such horrible things because of a movie they had seen, Natural Born Killers. Of course it would be easier to blame the movie for their actions instead of facing the consequences for what they have done. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc is a fallacy in which two events occurred in a succession, and the former event is believed to have caused the later event to happen. Such as the rooster crows before sunrise, therefore the crowing of the rooster caused the sun to rise. “Ben and Sarah had no history of violence. Grisham believes their crime spree was totally out of character. They were confused, disturbed, shiftless, mindless--the adjectives can be heaped on with shovels -- but they had never hurt anyone before. Before, that is, they saw the movie. A horrific movie that glamorized casual mayhem and bloodlust. A movie made with the intent of glorifying random murder”. Therefore Grisham thinks because Ben and Sarah watched Natural Born Killers that they then went and committed a murder, along with causing Patsy Byers to be a quadriplegic for life. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc is a fallacy that would define his belifes. Drawing a conclusion based on a small sample size, rather than looking at statistics that are much more in line with the
Open Document