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The protectors of society are at it again, using their usual excuse that we need to save the children.
This time around, the enemy is the entertainment
industry,
and the current discussion results from the
massacre at Columbine High School in Jefferson County on
April 19, 1999.
Since the two people actually responsible for the murders killed themselves that day, it was impossible to follow the proper method of trying them for their crimes and holding them responsible for their actions.
Yet, modern American social theory holds that somebody has to be held responsible, and if the actual responsible party isn't available, then look elsewhere.
The Lisl Auman case is an excellent example. A police officer was killed, and so somebody had to pay. The young man who pulled the trigger was dead, so he wasn't available. So the prosecutors went after Auman, even though she was in police custody at the time of the murder.
In the Columbine case, prosecutors sought and got a long sentence for someone who sold a gun to the murderers. And there began a political push to add more gun laws, even though plenty of existing gun laws had been broken.
Off in Washington, President Bill Clinton decided to look for another potentially responsible party. On June 1, 1999, he ordered the Federal Trade Commission to study the marketing of violent entertainment to children under 17.
The report was issued last week, with excellent timing. The Senate Commerce Committee, headed by John McCain of Arizona, could hold hearings. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic nominee for vice-president, and Lynn Cheney, wife of the Republican nominee for vice-president, could both speak to the issue.
Naturally, they're all against marketing violent content to children, and naturally, they found that the entertainment industry has been doing that.
There are ratings systems, of course, which indicate that certain material has been deemed unsuitable for children. But according to the FTC, the industry (film, music, internet sites) promotes this material before youthful audiences, thereby creating a demand that circumvents any restrictions imposed by the ratings systems.
That is, you've got this moronic movie called Guts
and Cuts,
tied in with a soundtrack CD of grisly music
and a gruesome video game. No one under 17 should see or
hear this stuff, and yet no one with a mental age over 10
would be interested in this stuff. So you advertise it in
places that kids will see the ads, and then trust that
they'll find a way to buy your wares.
Is this a greedy and cynical way to do business?
Of course. Should it be further regulated, assuming that there is some constitutional way to do it?
It seems based on a dubious premise, that exposure to
violent entertainment encourages children to be violent.
Even the FTC report weaseled around this: Although
scholars and observers generally have agreed that exposure
to violence in entertainment media alone does not cause a
child to commit a violent act, there is widespread
agreement that it is, nonetheless, a cause for
concern.
One problem with this cause for concern
is that
violence is a staple of human interest. The Old Testament
reeks with violence, starting with Abel's murder and
continuing through Noah's flood and the destruction of
Sodom -- to go no further than Genesis. The Iliad of Homer
is soaked in blood, and William Shakespeare's plays were so
violent that the 19th-century English essayist Charles Lamb
felt compelled to purify them for children.
Also note that my Baby Boom generation was raised on
incessant media violence, from Saturday morning Tom and
Jerry
cartoons and formula gunplay Westerns to World
War II documentaries with whole cities going up in
smoke.
And the major complaint about us, as we came of age, was that we were draft-dodging scum who didn't properly cherish violence like good Americans -- that we paid more attention to the enduring works of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Ghandi, which promoted non-violence, than to the lies of Robert Strange McNamara and the other architects of the war in Vietnam.
In other words, there doesn't seem to be any way to predict the result of exposing youngsters to violence, and beyond that, humans have always found violence to be an integral part of the stories we continue to tell.
The protectors really ought to find something else to worry about. But then again, this is an election year, and it's important to find someone to blame.
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