A recent online article by the New York
Post that questions the "the media made
em do it" studies floating around.
Jeff
New York Post
---entertainment---
WHY CENSORING VIOLENT FILMS MAKES NO
SENSE By JONATHAN FOREMAN
FROM the Red Scare hearings of the 1940s
to the Clinton administration's
post-Littleton probe into the
entertainment industry announced this
Tuesday, government intrusion in the
entertainment industry is an ill wind
that has never blown anyone any good -
in this country or anywhere else.
Following a recommendation in last
month's Senate crime bill, the president
has ordered the Federal Trade Commission
and the Justice Department to
investigate the marketing practices of
the film, recording and videogame
industries.
This probe is not due to release its
findings until December 2000. But while
it may give Al Gore ammunition to
counter GOP charges that the Clinton
administration is too close to
Hollywood, it will only serve as a
distraction from real efforts to explain
the societal sickness - or plain evil -
behind the Littleton massacre. And if
anything practical should come out of
the probe, it is as likely to damage the
American entertainment industry and
imperil liberty as all previous efforts
by government bodies to influence media
content have. It's not just a matter of
over-regulation of private enterprise,
or the danger that our society will
slide down the slope of state censorship
of the arts.
This kind of interference also tends to
corrupt the politicians who are tempted
by an all-too-easy target - and the
glamour it affords (in a subliminal way)
even to its critics. In a society
obsessed with celebrity, what
legislator, governor or president can
resist a trip to the coast to pose with
sympathetic stars while sternly
lecturing the industry on its moral
failings?
While there are studies that suggest
links between viewing images of
simulated violence and the commission of
violent acts, common sense and
historical experience would suggest that
those links are pretty weak. As
Professor Fredric Smoler of Sarah
Lawrence College points out, 'Strong
historical evidence suggests that there
is an inverse correlation between the
proliferation of violent images and a
society's readiness to employ real
violence.''
In other words, societies that have
severely limited the depiction of
violence have been at least as violent
and cruel as our own, if not more so.
Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
placed severe restrictions on violent or
sexual imagery in film. In apartheid
South Africa, the Afrikaner regime
banned dozens of 'unwholesome'' movies
without the slightest effect on the
nightmarish atrocities in the townships.
Even in ancient Athens, a society that
forbade the on-stage depiction of
violence in its tragedies, slaves were
treated with a savagery that would
sicken all but the most psychopathically
brutal American. To the extent that the
administration really hopes to 'do
something'' about schoolyard massacres
by heavily armed teens, there is a kind
of magical thinking at work in the
Clinton initiative: namely, the idea
that you can control violence by
controlling its representation. There
are serious problems with the way the
entertainment industry regulates itself.
The Motion Picture Association of
America's rating system is far too
concerned with whether a buttock can be
seen on screen and insufficiently
worried about the promotion of a
antisocial messages, like the
glorification of sadism and cruelty that
has become a staple of so many black
comedies aimed at teen-agers. In some
other countries, the state does play a
much greater role in deciding what the
public may watch or listen to. In
France, for example, legislators have
successfully fought to limit the
exhibition of American movies on the
grounds that French culture is
vulnerable to pollution by the crass
sensationalism of Hollywood. This
oblique censorship has combined with
government subsidy of elitist cinema to
cripple a once-great indigenous
industry. A similar process achieved the
same end in Mexico and Brazil, countries
that once had flourishing movie
industries of their own. Not a good
model to follow at all.
Post that questions the "the media made
em do it" studies floating around.
Jeff
New York Post
---entertainment---
WHY CENSORING VIOLENT FILMS MAKES NO
SENSE By JONATHAN FOREMAN
FROM the Red Scare hearings of the 1940s
to the Clinton administration's
post-Littleton probe into the
entertainment industry announced this
Tuesday, government intrusion in the
entertainment industry is an ill wind
that has never blown anyone any good -
in this country or anywhere else.
Following a recommendation in last
month's Senate crime bill, the president
has ordered the Federal Trade Commission
and the Justice Department to
investigate the marketing practices of
the film, recording and videogame
industries.
This probe is not due to release its
findings until December 2000. But while
it may give Al Gore ammunition to
counter GOP charges that the Clinton
administration is too close to
Hollywood, it will only serve as a
distraction from real efforts to explain
the societal sickness - or plain evil -
behind the Littleton massacre. And if
anything practical should come out of
the probe, it is as likely to damage the
American entertainment industry and
imperil liberty as all previous efforts
by government bodies to influence media
content have. It's not just a matter of
over-regulation of private enterprise,
or the danger that our society will
slide down the slope of state censorship
of the arts.
This kind of interference also tends to
corrupt the politicians who are tempted
by an all-too-easy target - and the
glamour it affords (in a subliminal way)
even to its critics. In a society
obsessed with celebrity, what
legislator, governor or president can
resist a trip to the coast to pose with
sympathetic stars while sternly
lecturing the industry on its moral
failings?
While there are studies that suggest
links between viewing images of
simulated violence and the commission of
violent acts, common sense and
historical experience would suggest that
those links are pretty weak. As
Professor Fredric Smoler of Sarah
Lawrence College points out, 'Strong
historical evidence suggests that there
is an inverse correlation between the
proliferation of violent images and a
society's readiness to employ real
violence.''
In other words, societies that have
severely limited the depiction of
violence have been at least as violent
and cruel as our own, if not more so.
Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
placed severe restrictions on violent or
sexual imagery in film. In apartheid
South Africa, the Afrikaner regime
banned dozens of 'unwholesome'' movies
without the slightest effect on the
nightmarish atrocities in the townships.
Even in ancient Athens, a society that
forbade the on-stage depiction of
violence in its tragedies, slaves were
treated with a savagery that would
sicken all but the most psychopathically
brutal American. To the extent that the
administration really hopes to 'do
something'' about schoolyard massacres
by heavily armed teens, there is a kind
of magical thinking at work in the
Clinton initiative: namely, the idea
that you can control violence by
controlling its representation. There
are serious problems with the way the
entertainment industry regulates itself.
The Motion Picture Association of
America's rating system is far too
concerned with whether a buttock can be
seen on screen and insufficiently
worried about the promotion of a
antisocial messages, like the
glorification of sadism and cruelty that
has become a staple of so many black
comedies aimed at teen-agers. In some
other countries, the state does play a
much greater role in deciding what the
public may watch or listen to. In
France, for example, legislators have
successfully fought to limit the
exhibition of American movies on the
grounds that French culture is
vulnerable to pollution by the crass
sensationalism of Hollywood. This
oblique censorship has combined with
government subsidy of elitist cinema to
cripple a once-great indigenous
industry. A similar process achieved the
same end in Mexico and Brazil, countries
that once had flourishing movie
industries of their own. Not a good
model to follow at all.
