An Egyptian official, Ambassador Salah Abdel Sadek, recently attributed the rise of violent ideology across the Middle East to the children's cartoon Tom and Jerry, along with video games and "violent" films, Egyptian Streets reported.
Sadek, the head of Egypt's State Information Service (SIS) made the remarks during a speech at a conference called "The Media and the Culture of Violence" held at Cairo University, in which he said that Tom and Jerry led children to believe that violence is acceptable.
“[Tom and Jerry] portrays the violence in a funny manner and sends the message that, yes, I can hit him…and I can blow him up with explosives. It becomes set in [the viewer’s] mind that this is natural,” he said.
“Video games are spreading…[those] that came out recently with technological advancements. It has become very normal for a young man to spend long hours playing video games, killing and spilling blood and he’s happy and content,” continued the Ambassador, adding that young people may then be pushed to resort to violence by societal pressures.
The privately-owned newspaper Youm7 then published an article titled "Five Accusations Tom and Jerry Face in Egypt," alleging the cartoon teaches children negative habits, such as smoking, drinking, and stealing.
The Youm7 article also added that the cartoon encourages children to come up with revenge plans and encourages the use of knives, guns, and chainsaws.
Correlation between video games and physical violence is a topic of ongoing debate around the world. Although Tom and Jerry is generally considered harmless in the West, some episodes of the show - which was created in the 1940s - have been censored in the US and the UK for showing offensive racial stereotypes.
