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Exercises
Watch and Learn
by Gregg Easterbrook
In
the days after the Colorado slaughter, discussion of violent
images in American culture was dominated by the canned positions
of the anti-Hollywood right and the -is-our-God
film lobby. The debate missed three vital points:
the distinction between what adults should be allowed to see
(anything) and what the inchoate minds of children and adolescents
should see; the way in which important liberal battles to
win free expression in art and literature have been perverted
into an excuse for antisocial video brutality produced by
cynical capitalists; and the difference between censorship
and voluntary acts of responsibility.
The
day after the Colorado shooting, Mike De Luca, an executive
of New Line Cinema, told USA Today that when kids kill, "bad
home life, bad parenting, having guns in the home" are "more
of a factor than what we put out there for entertainment."
Setting aside the disclosure that Hollywood now categorizes
scenes of movie stars gunning down the innocent as
"entertainment," De Luca is correct; studies do show that upbringing is more
determinant of violent behavior than any other factor. But
research also clearly shows that the viewing of violence can
cause aggression and crime. So the question is: In a society
already plagued by poor parenting and only slightly limited
gun sales, why does the entertainment industry feel privileged
to make violence even more prevalent?
Even when researchers factor out other influences
such as parental attention, many peer-reviewed studies have
found casual links between viewing phony violence and engaging
in actual violence. A 1971 surgeon general's report asserted
a broad relationship between the two. Studies by Brandon Centerwall,
an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin, have shown
that the post war murder rise in the United States began roughly
a decade after TV viewing became common. Centerwall also found
that in South Africa, where television was not generally available
until 1975, national murder rates started rising about a decade
later.
Leonard Eron, a psychologist at the University
of Michigan, has been tracking video violence and actual violence
for almost four decades. His initial studies in 1960 found
that even the occa sional violence depicted in 1950s television─to which every parent would gladly return today
─ caused
increased aggression among eight-year-olds. By the adult years, Eron's studies find, those who watched the most TV and movies
in childhood were much more likely to have been arrested for,
or convicted of, violent felonies. Eron believes that 10 percent
of U.S. violent crime is caused by exposure to images of violence,
meaning that 90 percent is not, but that a 10 percent national
reduction in violence might be achieved merely by moderating
the content of television and movies.
"Kids learn by observation," Eron says.
"If
what they observe is violent, that's what they learn." To
cite a minor but telling example, the introduction of vulgar
language into American public discourse traces, Eron thinks,
largely to the point at which stars like Clark Gable began
to swear onscreen, and kids then imitated swearing as normative.
Defenders
of bloodshed in film, television, and writing often argue
that depictions of killing don't incite real violence because
no one is really affected by what they see or read; it's all
just . At heart, this is an argument
against free expression. The whole reason to have a First
Amendment is that people are influenced by what they see and
hear; words and images do change minds, so there must be free
competition among them. If what we say, write, or show has
no consequences, why bother to have free speech?
Trends in gun availability do not appear to
explain the murder rise that has coincided with television
and violent films. Research by John Lott, Jr., of the University
of Chicago Law School shows that the percentage of homes with
guns has changed little throughout the postwar era. What appears
to have changed is the willingness of people to fire their
guns at one another. Are adolescents now willing to use guns
because violent images make killing seem acceptable or even
cool?
Following the Colorado slaughter, The New
York Times ran a recounting of other postwar mass murders
staged by the young, such as the 1966 Texas tower killings,
and noted that they all happened before the advent of the
Internet or shock rock, which seemed to the Times to absolve
the modern media. But all the mass killings by the young occurred
after 1950—after it became common to watch violence on television.
When horrific murders occur, the film and
television industries routinely attempt to transfer criticism
to the weapons used. Just after the Colorado shootings, for
instance, TV talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell called for a constitutional
amendment banning all firearms. How strange that O'Donnell
didn't call instead for a boycott of Sony or its production
company, Columbia Tristar─a film studio from which she has
received generous paychecks and whose recent offerings include
8MM, which glamorizes the sexual murder of young women, and
The Replacement Killers, whose hero is a hit man and which
depicts dozens of gun murders. Handguns should be licensed,
but that hardly excuses the convenient sanctimony of blaming
the crime on the weapon, rather than on what resides in the
human mind.
And when it comes to promoting adoration of
guns, Hollywood might as well be the NRA's marketing arm.
An ever-increasing share of film and television depicts the
firearm as something the virile must have and use, if not
an outright sexual aid.
But doesn't video violence merely depict a
stark reality against which the young need to be warned? American
society is far too violent, yet the forms of brutality highlighted
in the movies and on television─prominently "thrill" killings
and serial murders─are pure distortion. Nearly 99 percent
of real murders result from robberies, drug deals, and domestic
disputes; figures from research affiliated with the FBI's
behavioral sciences division show an average of only about
30 serial or "thrill" murders nationally per year. Thirty
is plenty horrifying enough, but at this point, each of the
major networks and movie studios alone depicts more "thrill"
and serial murders annually than that. By endlessly exploiting
the notion of the "thrill" murder, Hollywood and television
present to the young an entirely imaginary image of a society
in which killing for pleasure is a common event. The publishing
industry also distorts for profit the frequency of "thrill"
murders.
The profitability of violent cinema is broadly
dependent on the "down-rating" of films─movies containing
extreme violence being rated only R instead of NC-17 (the
new name for X)─and the lax enforcement of age restrictions
regarding movies. Teens are the best market segment for Hollywood;
when moviemakers claim their violent movies are not meant
to appeal to teens, they are simply lying. The millionaire
status of actors, directors, and studio heads─and the returns
on the mutual funds that invest in movie companies─depends
on not restricting teen access to theaters or film rentals.
Studios, in effect, control the movie ratings
board and endlessly lobby it not to label extreme violence
with an NC-17, the only form of rating that is actually enforced.
Natural Born Killers, for example, received an R following
Time-Warner
lobbying, despite its repeated close-up murders and one charming
scene in which the stars kidnap a high-school girl and argue
about whether it would be more fun to kill her before or after
raping her. Since its inception, the movie ratings board has
put its most restrictive rating on any realistic representation
of lovemaking, while sanctioning ever-more-graphic depictions
of murder and torture. In economic terms, the board's pro-violence
bias gives studios an incentive to present more death mayhem,
confident that ratings officials will smile with approval.
When R-and-X battles were first fought, intellectual
sentiment regarded the ratings system as a way of blocking
the young from seeing films with political content, such as
Easy Rider, or discouraging depictions of sexuality; ratings
were perceived as the rubes' counterattack against cinematic
sophistication. But in the 1960s, murder after murder was
not standard cinema fare. The most controversial violent film
of that era, A
Clockwork Orange, depicted a total of one killing,
which was heard, but not on-camera. In an era of runaway screen
violence, the ‘60s ideal that the young should be allowed
to see what they want has been corrupted. In this, trends
in video generally mirror the misuse of liberal ideals.
Anti-censorship battles of this century were
fought on firm ground, advocating the right of films to tackle
social and sexual issues (the 1930s Hays
office forbade, among other things, cinematic mention
of cohabitation) and free access to works of literature such
as Ulysses, Story of O, and the original version of Norman
Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. Struggles against
censors established that suppression of film or writing is
wrong.
But to say nothing should be censored is very
different from saying that everything should be shown. Today,
Hollywood and television have twisted the First Amendment
concept that occasional repulsive or worthless expression
must be protected, so as to guarantee freedom for works of
genuine political content or artistic merit, into a new standard
in which constitutional freedoms are employed mainly to safeguard
works that make no pretense of merit. In the new standard,
the bulk of what's being protected is repulsive or worthless,
with the meritorious work the rare exception.
Not only is there profit for the performers,
producers, management, and shareholders of firms that glorify
violence, so, too, is there profit for politicians. Many conservatives
or Republican politicians who denounce Hollywood eagerly accept
its lucre. Bob Dole's 1995 anti-Hollywood speech was not followed
up by any anti-Hollywood legislation or campaign-funds strategy.
After the Colorado murders, President Clinton declared, "Parents
should take this moment to ask what else they can do to shield
children from violent images and experiences that warp young
perceptions." But Clinton was careful to avoid criticizing
Hollywood, one of the top sources of public backing and campaign
contributions for him and his would-be successor, Vice President
Al Gore. The president had nothing specific to propose on
film violence─only that parents should try to figure out
what to do.
When television producers say it is the parents' obligation
to keep children away from the tube, they reach the self-satire
point of warning that their own product is unsuitable for
consumption. The situation will improve somewhat beginning
2000, by which time all new TVs must be sold with the "V chip"─supported by Clinton and Gore─which will allow parents
to block violent shows. But it will be at least a decade before
the majority of the nation's sets include the chip, and who
knows how adept young minds will prove at defeating it? Rather
than rely on a technical fix that will take many years to
achieve an effect, TV producers could simply stop churning
out the gratuitous violence. Television could dramatically
reduce its output of scenes of killing and still depict violence
in news broadcasts, documentaries,
and the occasional show
in which the horrible is genuinely relevant. Reduction in
violence is not censorship; it is placing social responsibility
before profit.
The movie industry could practice the same
kind of restraint without sacrificing profitability. In this
regard, the big Hollywood studios, including Disney, look
craven and exploitative compared to, of all things, the porn-video
industry. Repulsive material occurs in underground porn, but
in the products sold by the mainstream triple-X
distributors such as Vivid Video (
of the erotic business), violence is never, ever, ever depicted─because that would be irresponsible. Women and men perform
every conceivable explicit act in today's mainstream porn,
but what is shown is always consensual and almost sunnily
friendly. Scenes of rape or sexual menace never occur, and
scenes of sexual murder are an absolute taboo.
It is beyond irony that today, Sony and Time-Warner
eagerly market explicit depictions of women being raped, sexually
assaulted, and sexually murdered, while the mainstream porn
industry would never dream of doing so. But if money is all
that matters, the point here is that mainstream porn is violence-free,
yet risqu and highly profitable. Surely this shows that Hollywood
could voluntarily step back from the abyss of glorifying violence
and still retain its edge and its income.
Following the Colorado massacre, Republican
presidential candidate Gary Bauer declared to a campaign audience,
"In the America I want, all of these producers and directors,
they would not be able to show their faces in public" because
fingers "would be pointing at them and saying, ‘Shame, shame.'"
The statement sent chills through anyone fearing right-wing
thought control. But Bauer's final clause is correct─ Hollywood
and television do need to hear the words "shame, shame." The
cause of the shame should be removed voluntarily, not to stave
off censorship, but because it is the responsible thing to
do.
Put
it this way. The day after a teenager guns
down the sons and daughters of studio executives
in a high school in the tony Los Angeles suburbs Bel
Air or Westwood, California, Disney and Time-Warner
will stop glamorizing murder. Do we have to wait until that
day?
(2191 words)
(From The Saturday Evening Post, Sept/Oct
1999 )
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