Culture Could Use A Little Restraint
Arguments about violence in movies and the rest of the popular culture often go off the rails right at the start. Someone is almost sure to say: “How can you prove that a movie or a rap song caused a violent act?” Answer: You can’t.
The better way to launch this kind of discussion is to admit that we are talking about “climate effects,” not direct causes. We know there is some connection between the general tone of popular culture and the way people in that culture behave, but the picture only becomes clear at the extreme.
If you create a popular image of Jews as treacherous and greedy, and if the popular culture is allowed to carry this stereotype long enough, you eventually will have pogroms. The Holocaust could not have happened without generations of “climate effects” preparing the way. And if you sustain an image of black Americans as incompetent and intellectually inferior - or simply permanently different from the rest of us in some way - this surely justifies and increases racism.
And if you keep putting out movies showing violence as a logical and inevitable solution to conflict, you can’t be surprised if the level of reallife violence goes up. Sustained messages in popular culture are eventually heard and incorporated into the psychic makeup of the people.
The conventional response to this - “I watched a lot of violent shows while I was growing up, and I didn’t become violent” - misses the point. This is a much different culture now. Violence is way up, restraint is down, and there is a lot of evidence that the level of anger and frustration in America is far higher than it was, making violent messages more dangerous.
The culture is in serious trouble, said John Silber, president of Boston University, in a commencement speech last month. He argued that as the influence of family and churches declines, the violence in our entertainment infects the sensibilities of all of us. “Revulsion and abhorrence, our natural reactions to violence, are suppressed,” he said. “We become reconciled to violence as though it were a normal part of life, as indeed it has become.”
The entertainment industry’s “why-me?” response contains a grain of truth. The industry didn’t create a high level of violence all by itself. But the industry’s social power is now so immense that it can’t escape responsibility for the rising level of violence. The simple truth is that the entertainment industry’s behavior will now either help lower the violence or keep increasing it. The innocent-bystander role is no longer available.
Silber quoted an elegant line from John Fletcher Moulton, an English judge: What is needed is “obedience to the unenforceable.” On the one hand we have law, which tells us what we can’t do. On the other hand, we have personal freedom to govern our own actions as we see fit. Lord Moulton’s point was that we must pay attention to “third domain” in the middle. Between those who want government to control and regulate everything, and those who want an anything-goes ethic of total freedom, Moulton saw the need for a strong middle ground of “self-imposed law.” Without it, society will tend to drift either toward chaos or authoritarianism.
Silber said he thought that the weakening of this “central domain” in America has inevitably undermined law, and that it is time for those in the entertainment industry to start demonstrating their obedience to the unenforceable.
Good idea. The campaign to clarify the social responsibility of media moguls is just beginning. This is a culture in crisis, and we need more from the entertainment industry than simple moneymaking and the continued trashing of our sensibilities.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Leo Universal Press Syndicate