GMAT Essays (AWA)

Prompt:
"As violence in movies increases, so do crime rates in our cities. To combat this problem we must establish a board to censor certain movies, or we must limit admission to persons over 21 years of age. Apparently our legislators are not concerned about this issue since a bill calling for such actions recently failed to receive a majority vote."

RESPONSE:

The author argues that the increase in violent movies is the reason why crimes rate is increasing in cities. In addition, the author states that legislators show little concern about the issue since a bill, promoting solution as establishing a board of censor and limiting the admission to persons over 21, was not passed. This argument is flawed for many reasons. The most relevant reasons are explained below.

First, the author assumes that crime rate is solely correlated to violent movies and that nothing else is explaining the rise of crime rate. Hence, we could extend this by assuming that criminal's profile is only the young individual under 21 who goes to the cinema. This is very unlikely to be the only type of criminals and violent scenes to be the only motive to commit crimes.

Second, the argument is based on unsubstantiated facts since we don't have any information about the evolution of violent movie and the evolution of crime rate. As the authors fails to provide a holistic view of the situation, the readers cannot be convinced that the number of violent movies explains the increase in the number of crimes.

Third, stating that legislators are not interested in the issue as the bill didn't get a majority of votes is narrow minded. Indeed, a very good reason why the bill wasn't passed could be because the solutions supported by the bill are too weak to result in a significant decrease in the crime rate.

The argument could be strengthen by providing precise information of the evolution of violent movies and by giving quantitative information about the evolution of the crime rate during a same period.

For all the reasons cited above, the author's argument is flawed.