ModDir

Violence and Death As Entertainment

The other day I was sitting in McDonalds having my usual fruit&yogert when I couldn't help but overhear a rather loud conversation at a nearby table.

A man was describing a video to his friend which consisted of a collection of actual death scenes. As this man recounted in detail the people dying he was laughing, as if it was all great fun.

As he was describing one man dying, I was temped to say (just as loudly), "I bet his wife and kids thought that was pretty funny too."

However, considering the type of person he was, I figured he would immediately get in my face with a "let's take this outside" invitation.

Instead, I wondered what kind of society we're fostering where seeing violence and death is a major form of our entertainment.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

-Kurt Vonnegut

I put a bit of the blame on the MPAA film rating system that lumps together ever-more grotesque and graphic violence with films that have redeeming social value but contain four-letter words or adult consensual sex.

The two most recent examples of films on each side of this issue are The King's Speech, which won the Academy Award for best picture in 2010, and Saw 3D, the seventh installment of that torture-porn horror film series.

Although in my opinion the films are worlds apart in their possible affect on 17 year-olds (or, for that matter, any audience), the MPAA gave them the same "R" rating.

If the MPAA judges put scientific findings before existing personal and social biases, they would know that, based on a preponderance of studies, they seem to have the whole thing backwards. Major studies showing the relative harm of media violence and sex are covered in two articles here: TV and Film Violence, and Sex Research, Censorship and the Law.

I think MPAA ratings approach, which the industry has long thought of being somewhat arbitrary and capricious, needs to be replaced by a sociologically educated cross-section panel of people that is insulated from studio financial interests, and who, at the same time, have a firm grasp on today's social responsibilities and realities.**

This responsibility would not include greater and greater profits for the media conglomerates and largely foreign-owned studios that have little concern for the social consequences of what they produce .

In referring to the effects of the ever-increasing violence in our media a well-known film and television producer, said, "We are destroying ourselves."

However, when money is to be made by a further debasing the audiences' interests and tastes, saying this is like shouting into the wind.

Unfortunately, we'll probably only "get it" when this country's social epitaph is written.

-Ron Whittaker

** Although the aim of the well intended MPPA is to represent "the typical parent" in their judgments, I doubt if many parents who knew the content of the popular (and money-making) R-rated torture porn films would want their 17-year olds see them.

The man's reaction cited in McDonalds is hardly an isolated example. When a class was taken to see the widely-acclaimed Oscar-winning film, Schindler's List, depicting World War II Holocaust events, many students, possibly assuming that all films were designed as entertainment, laughed at the true, nightmarish events.

Although the decisions of ratings boards will invariably end up being difficult and controversial, especially with millions of dollars in box office revenue typically existing between PG, PG-13 and R ratings, we now seem to have a system that leaves producers only able to guess at how their work will be rated by the MPPA.

Nor are producers given any explanation as to why the NPPA rated their film R instead of PG-13, for example. They can only guess as to what needs to be done in re-editing to get a more favorable rating.

To Index