Summer
1999 Update
to the Elect Hobie Homepage
Littleton: The
Best Culture Quotes: Media
"Violence is a serious public health issue
that claims the lives of more than 13 young people
in the United States every day." U.S.
Surgeon General David Sacher
Between movies and television, the typical American
child sees a stunning 40,000 dramatizations of killings by age 18.
"I am not saying that the movies don't have
an impact. I just don't know what it is." Jack Valenti, President
of Motion Picture Association of America, Columbus Dispatch 6/13/99
An ABC report found that up to one third of
young felons had consciously imitated crime techniques from television.
"Hundreds of studies done at the nation's
top universities in the last three decades have come to the same conclusion:
that there is at least some demonstrable link between watching violent
acts in movies or television shows and acting aggressively in life."
L. Mifflin, NYT 5/9/99
And while these studies have been criticized,
the evidence presented by the studies as a whole "is overwhelming.
To argue against it is like arguing against gravity." J. McIntyre,
Am. Psychological Association
"We want to tell parents that watching violence
is an unhealthy influence, just as eating candy is unhealthy if it's done
in excess." J. Cantor, Univ. Wisconsin in NYT 5/9/99
*********
"These are words they wouldn't use at their
country clubs, but they'll sell them to our children." Sen. Brownback,
Ks.
"Right before the Littleton shootings, Al Gore
was telling everyone he and Tipper just loved 'The Matrix....' At
one late show in Washington this week, the similarities [to the Littleton
shootings] were so striking to the audience that people began yelling out
'Columbine!' and cheering as Kwanu Reeves walks through a metal detector,
coolly pulls out his guns, and blows away a building full of cops."
M. Dowd, 4/28/99
"Interplay Productions makes the game Carmaggedon
in which virtual motorists rack up points by running down pedestrians,
a pursuit that a company ad said was 'as easy as killing babies with axes.'
An advertisement for its new game Kingpin, Life of Crime notes that players
can 'target specific body parts and see the damage done -- including exit
wounds.'" A. Pollack NYT 5/14/99
"After a tearful Tim Allen, the star of Home
Improvement told a joke for a cast and crew drenched in tears, they taped
a slightly maudlin story in which Mr. Allen's character reaffirms his love
for his wife and family, and his loyal sidekick finds the love that had
so long eluded him, lending the closing a poignant moral gravity. The episode
was touching and, many people in television believe, a historical relic....
'If that show was pitched to a network today, nobody would take it,' laments
Matt Williams, one of the creators of the show.... 'This show was created
to celebrate the American family, and I'm not sure you can do that in the
same way now.'" NYT 5/6/99
"The idea and delight we once took in celebrating
family and community seems to be vaporizing before us," said Norman Lear,
the creator of shows like All in the Family and The Jeffersons.
"It seems to me this is part of something profound. It's a disease
of our time. There's a television in every room and the family has
become splintered." NYT 5/6/99
"My industry (the movie business), in a pre-emptive
first strike, said the cause was guns. Gun lovers of course said
the cause was movies. Politicians, depending on their place in the
political spectrum, said the cause was one, the other, or both.... When
the local news leads its broadcast with a homicide three nights a week,
it is committing the very desensitization that it decries when it covers
a story like Littleton... It seems to be a vicious cycle. Since only
acceptance of personal responsibility can possibly break this deadlock,
let me start now. I will not defend the role of movies in the culture.
Despite my deep and abiding passion for the First Amendment, I will not
even defend our right to make them. Let me say that movies can contribute
to this desensitization. And let me promise that, on each screenplay,
I will ask myself what the ramifications are to the culture in which I
live and the children who may see these films." Gary Ross NYT
5/6/99
"I hate those movies where hundreds of people
get blown up and there are jokes afterward. They poison the soul.
Sure, kids are affected, but not enough to turn a loved, securely attached
child into a violent killer." Movie Director Rob Reiner quoted
by M. Dowd NYT 5/9/99
"Films that are extremely violent in a context
that the violence is fun is a very negative thing. People in the
film industry should take personal responsibility for what they're saying
and doing." George Lucas on the Today Show
"One reason Hollywood keeps reaching for ever-more-obscene
levels of killing is that it must compete with television which today routinely
airs violence once considered shocking in theaters.... 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 standard in which constitutional freedoms are employed mainly to safeguard
works that make no pretense of merit. 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." G. Easterbrook, New Republic
*********
"Why not blame the libraries? They're full
of violent books." D. Geffen Hollywood executive before holding a
$2 million Democratic fundraiser
"When children watch movies they see things
through the eyes of an adult; it is the director's interpretation
of violence and mayhem that is being projected. When children read
books, the scenes they visualize go only as far as their own development."
M. Hellman, Letters NYT 5/14/99
"Every one of us has a role to play in giving
our kids a safe future and those with greater influence have greater responsibility.
We should see movies and music, TV programs, video games and advertising
for them made by people who made them as if their own children were watching."
B. Clinton
"Everyone is
trying to do a 30 second commercial, produce a sound bite and move on.
Clinton believes if you say something it's done. He's always mistaken
talk for action." Top movie executive who insisted he not be identified
because he works closely with the White House. NYT 5/10/99
The White House conference was originally
intended to explore the link between youth violence and media influence.
But after sharp protests from the President's Hollywood patrons and the
increasingly powerful Internet lobby, the focus changed to a broader look
at society's responsibilities, including the role of school, family, and
religious institutions.
Lawsuits by families of shooting victims are
currently pending against the makers of 'The Basketball Diaries' and 'Natural
Born Killers.'
A $250 million lawsuit was filed against the
parents of the the 2 boys who killed 13 people and themselves in the Littleton
shootings to hold the parents responsible for the shootings.
Two networks devoted their news magazines
programs to the Littleton killings on Wednesday night and scored some of
their highest ratings of the television season. NYT 4/25/99
"The [Columbine] teenagers found eager listeners,
whether they were talking through their own fears or praising slain friends.
They also met show bookers, supermarket tabloids willing to pay the gunmen's
friends $10,000 for their 'personal stories' reporters offering $500 for
their yearbooks.... As reporters knocked on front doors and appeared
at funerals, and anyone thought to know anything about the gunmen was besieged
by phone, a backlash set in. "No Media' signs on front doors, left
'no media' messages on their answering machines, changed phone numbers."
Sara Rimer, NYT 5/22/99
"If the shooting had happened at Beverly Hills
rather than Columbine, then you might see some change in the industry."
Hollywood producer quoted by A. Huffington 5/13/99
And the worst part is we have allowed the
toxic influence of violent media to permeate our culture, not because of
high principles of free speech or artistic merit, but so a few people can
increase their already unimaginable personal wealth. Hobiedog
The problem isn't just insecure men who need a gun to feel whole;
but also insecure media moguls who need another billion dollars to feel
important; insecure politicians who pander to NRA in order to get reelected;
and too many citizens who don't take the time to be involved in the political
process. Hobiedog
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Culture: Kids
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