VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

	September 24 ,1999
	Media correspondent Terence Smith leads a discussion on how Hollywood is responding to calls to moderate violent content on TV and in movies.

TERENCE SMITH: In the past year, the nation's airwaves have been filled with scenes of horrific violence, from Columbine High School to offices in Atlanta, Georgia, to a church in Fort Worth, Texas just last week. SPOKESPERSON: She got shot! TERENCE SMITH: In the wake of these incidents, Americans have been questioning themselves about whether the violence on our streets has any relationship to the violence on our screens. Hollywood immediately found itself on the defensive. Two violent episodes of ongoing television series were pulled, and a handful of others reworked. Now comes an ambitious new study out this week that asserts that the volume of violence on television and movie screens continues at very high levels. ROBERT LICHTER, Center for Media & Public Affairs: Hollywood is selling and glamorizing violence, and it may, in the process, be making American kids more violent. TERENCE SMITH: Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, billed the study as the most comprehensive look at a broad range of media to date. The study found that, on average, television and movie viewers encounter an act of serious violence once every four minutes, serious violence being defined as murder, rape, kidnapping, and assault with a deadly weapon. The study also analyzes how violence is portrayed in the media. ROBERT LICHTER: It's remarkable the degree to which violence in entertainment is presented as relatively harmless, necessary, and even laudable way of solving problems. We found that good guys commit violence almost as often as bad guys in both television and movies. TERENCE SMITH: Among the top ten most violent TV series cited by the study: CBS' long-running and highly rated "Walker, Texas Ranger," HBO's "Oz," an award- winning series about life behind bars. And the syndicated show, "Mortal Kombat," which was spawned by a controversial video game. Among the top ten most violent movies, Warner Brothers' "Lethal Weapon 4," "The Mask of Zorro," and topping the list, the Oscar- winning "Saving Private Ryan." ROBERT LICHTER: You don't want to get rid of the "Private Ryans." You don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. But that bath water is getting pretty toxic at this point. If we don't get rid of some of it, it's going to start to harm the baby. TERENCE SMITH: Shortly after the Columbine incident, Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, urged the entertainment industry to use restraint and to excise any gratuitous violence. This week, his organization criticized the Lichter study, saying it fails to reflect the more recent self-policing actions of the industry. Attending the press conference in support of the study was Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. SEN. SAM BROWNBACK, (R) Kansas: This is something we need to examine and discuss, not legislate. I think it's very important that we do this in an atmosphere where we're saying to people, "we're not trying to pass any laws or trying to censor anybody, but we are trying to examine the totality of the impacts of where the American culture has gone." TERENCE SMITH: Nonetheless, Senator Brownback has introduced legislation that would create a Senate task force to address what he called the country's cultural crisis. TERENCE SMITH: Joining us now for a discussion on violence in mass media are Robert Lichter, an author of the study whom you saw on tape few moments ago; E.J. Dionne, a "Washington Post" columnist and scholar of government at the Brookings Institution; and Rupert Wainwright, the director of "Stigmata," which debuted as the number-one grossing film two weeks ago. He has also directed advertisements and award-winning music videos. Welcome to you all. Mr. Wainwright, let me ask you, the study essentially argues that the entertainment industry is filling its products with more and more gratuitous violence. Is it true? RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: I think that violence is inherently attractive. And I think that we live in a very violent society. And I think that there's been violence in entertainment from the Iliad, through the Bible, through Shakespeare. I don't think violence in entertainment is going away. And I think from my own point of view, I'm much more concerned with the access that people have to the tools of violence, than I am about them seeing violence on the screen. I'm much, much more concerned about government protecting individuals by gun laws than I am protecting individuals from watching what goes on the screen. TERENCE SMITH: Robert Lichter, what is the evidence that violence on the screen engenders violence in life? ROBERT LICHTER: Well, this is the sort of thing that is consensus now in the scientific community. Everybody from the Surgeon General to the American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded after looking at all the research that violence in the media does contribute to violent behavior among kids, also makes people become desensitized to violence -- in the case of some kids, scares kids. But I'm always struck when Hollywood people say it's not us; it's the guns out there. Yet you look at the product and what the product does is to glamorize good guys who use guns. So we may need gun control laws, maybe Hollywood needs to control the way that it glamorizes the use of guns. TERENCE SMITH: E.J. Dionne... I'm sorry, Rupert. RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: Yes. I was going to ask you a question. Obviously I'm sensitive to the points you make here, but the entertainment that Hollywood makes... by the way I'm not here to defend Hollywood ...but the entertainment that Hollywood makes goes to all over the world. And if you look, for example, at the violence in Canada or England or Australia or New Zealand and see substantially the same programming, you see very radically different rates of violence, especially lethal violence, than you do in the United States of America. TERENCE SMITH: Well, that actually touches on a point that E.J. Dionne raised in a column earlier this week. You raise the question, is there a link between the gun culture in this country and the violence that we see on our entertainment? E. J. DIONNE: Yes. I think the problem with the argument we've had since Columbine and through all these other dreadful events is that each side throws up the issue of culture or guns as a shield against the part of the argument they don't like. If you want to defend violence on television, you say the problem lies entirely with guns. In the meantime, gun control opponents keep saying no, no, no, it's not guns, it's the culture. I think the fact is it's both and they may be intertwined. Doing something more serious about gun control ought not to block you from asking Hollywood, asking film producers to be more socially responsible. When you look at what the entertainment industry has done toward attitudes about race, about gender, about gays and lesbians, they have tried to engender a more tolerant atmosphere in our country. And that's good. If they can do that about prejudice, certainly they can think about the impact of what they put on our screens and televisions, especially on kids, and think about doing something about that. It's not censorship; it's corporate responsibility. TERENCE SMITH: Is there a sentiment to do that, Mr. Wainwright in Hollywood, in the community that you're familiar with? RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: Well, I'm very familiar with my own personal sense of responsibility in terms of what I want to show in films. I would say that a lot of people share that awareness but at the same time you have to remember Hollywood is not an organization. Hollywood is a town with a lot of competing corporate entities that are all trying to get a larger market share. And essentially what you've got is a capitalist system that is putting up entertainment, not even that it particularly cares for but is just trying to get viewers. I'm sad to say that time and time and time again, that the people who own those corporations make more money when they put out violent programming than they do when they put out family fare that everybody asks for the whole time. Yet very few people go and watch. TERENCE SMITH: Yes. I think that's a point. Robert Lichter, let me ask you this. You mentioned in the study the effective ratings and there are ratings on television and in film. Are they effective? Do they work? ROBERT LICHTER: This is something that really struck me that we did not expect to find. We just matched up our ten most violent TV shows and ten most violent movies against the ratings. And found that a majority of both had ratings that said these are fit for kids. The majority of the top ten violent movies were PG-13. "Private Ryan" is an "R" but a kid can see "Rush Hour," "Private Marshals." And the TV shows were TV-PG. So, in theory, even if we say, look, this is a price we pay for a free society, for a capitalist society, in which anything there's a market for goes, there is supposed to be a mechanism to help parents protect their kids from this stuff. That's not working. TERENCE SMITH: Go ahead. E. J. DIONNE: What I wanted to say to what Mr. Wainwright said earlier is first of all I agree with rates of lethal violence in America being worse because of our gun laws. So, we are not arguing about gun control here. I think what people are asking of the capitalist institutions in Hollywood is that they exercise some corporate responsibility like others do. There was an appeal issued earlier this year signed not only by conservatives like Bill Bennett or Sen. Brownback, but by Jimmy Carter, Mario Cuomo, Gerald Ford. And they said, look, we don't want censorship; we do think we should back to some standards in the movies, it ought to be possible to reduce the overall level of violence, especially the level of violence at times of day on television when kids are going to see it. It ought to be possible to ask the industry not to market these films to people who aren't adults. I think one of our conflicts as a country is we respect the right of adults to see whatever they want. Yet people are also parents as well as being just simply adults and they want to protect their kids. What we're trying to do, and I don't think we've found it, is to find a reasonable balance that will protect the rights of artists but also say we do have a problem in the country and, yes, part of it is a cultural problem. TERENCE SMITH: Rupert Wainwright, you told us today that voluntarily you changed a scene in the film "Stigmata" even after it had been approved and gotten its rating. Tell us about that and why you did it. Were you feeling some pressure to do that? RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: No pressure whatsoever, actually. Not from the ratings board not from the studio, not from anybody. TERENCE SMITH: Or from the climate at large? RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: You know what? What I did feel was that I didn't want the movie to be focusing on the most violent moment in the movie and the explicit showing of that. I didn't want people to focus entirely on that rather than the movie as a whole. It's not a very violent film as it happens but there was one very violent incident in it. And I didn't want that to become the only important point in the movie, so I trimmed it down so that people could, you know, imagine it happening, rather than see it more explicitly. And to be honest, it was a very cynical point of view. I didn't want people, you know, attacking the film for a totally irrelevant aspect. Coming back to the point about how individual producers and directors and writers and actors feel in Hollywood, a lot of them are parents. I, myself, am a parent. And I think that if you ask them, are you interested in helping increase a higher sense of responsibility in the arts, every single one of them would say yes, we absolutely are. I don't think there is any resistance in Hollywood towards an increased sense of responsibility in films and in television. I think there is a welcoming for that. TERENCE SMITH: Well, there may be but Robert Lichter did, you find any of that? ROBERT LICHTER: If the welcome mat is out, I don't see anybody crossing over it. When we found that on all different genres, music videos, cable TV, broadcast TV, movies and theaters, you get similar rates of serious violence, say about one every four minutes, and a lot of that violence is in the top ten in any category. It's clear violence has become a commodity like widgets. TERENCE SMITH: So violence is popular. ROBERT LICHTER: Yeah. It's being sold as pure sensational -- I think Mr. Wainwright is getting to something here. He excised a scene because he had a sense of narrative and moral responsibility and gratuitous violence means you are selling the sensation instead of advancing a narrative. TERENCE SMITH: You were trying to say? RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: You know, I completely forgot what I was going to say. Coming back to that, let me just ask something here. One of the points you make when you're talking about me exercising responsibility about narrative and graphic and "Private Ryan" is sort of good violence and other programs are not necessarily good violence, I personally completely agree with you about that. I'm working on a film now that the approach to violence is similar to that of "Saving Private Ryan." What I'm worried about is some kind of, you know, some kind of group of big brothers who go, good violence, bad violence. Good violence yes, bad violence no -- not because I'm worried about... not because I think there isn't a distinction, but I'm just not sure I want anybody telling me or other people what that is. TERENCE SMITH: Especially anyone from the government which, let me ask you is there a constructive role for government to play in this? RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: Yes. It smacks of Russian censorship. TERENCE SMITH: Which, let me ask you, E.J. Dionne, I mean, is there a constructive role for government to play in this? E. J. DIONNE: I think there is a narrow role in terms of giving parents some tools. I think the V-chip is a reasonable alternative to censorship. I agree with Mr. Wainwright, I don't want censorship; I don't want the government setting up people sitting there in Hollywood. I think V-chips and things like that where parents have control over the television to make sure, they might keep certain things away from kids are useful. Mr. Wainwright, first of all good for him for cutting the scene. But secondly what he is showing is that in fact this movement to pressure Hollywood, it's not big brothers sort of ramming them with the hammer. It's a lot of people in the country saying look, you guys make all this entertainment. You guys make a lot of money out of it. You ought to think twice about certain things you might put in the movie that may well be gratuitous and in fact not artistically very interesting or creative either. I think he responded to that and it suggests that there is change happening without the big brother of government setting up shop in Hollywood. RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: May I say something? TERENCE SMITH: Yes. RUPERT WAINWRIGHT: Three times, four, five times about all aspects of violence -- personally I'm very, very strongly agree that violence without the result of violence is basically pornography. I am shocked and horrified by it. But I really don't want... I don't want to be the person who decides what pornography is and what's erotic literature, you know. So at the same time I don't want to be the person, nor do I want anybody else telling me good violence, bad violence. TERENCE SMITH: All right. Just a few seconds left, Robert Lichter. Isn't the ultimate weapon of the consumer, the box office? Too violent. Don't go see it. ROBERT LICHTER: Well, as a civilized society there have been social prohibitions in which people don't go and those prohibitions are being moved rapidly. The other point is it's not big brother. There is an industry board, Jack Valenti sits on, made up of parents but these ratings are not eliminating the violent shows from kids. TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Thank you all very much. We're out of time. I appreciate it.