The morality police

And why wouldn't they? What do senators, what do the most vocal media critics for that matter, know about video games, rock 'n' roll, current movies and television? Joe Lieberman admitted to "Entertainment Weekly" last week that he hasn't seen a movie since going to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" just before the Oscars. Think he had a chance to see many during last year's campaign? Think that will keep him from opening his yap about the sinister effects of media violence during debate over his new bill (sponsored by three other Democratic senators, Herb Kohl, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Robert Byrd), which would allow the Federal Trade Commission to fine companies that promote adult material in markets with an audience that consists substantially of kids?

I have never come across one -- not one -- critic protesting the perniciousness of media sex and violence who had any sense of irony, or any substantial or direct experience with the way audiences experience sex and violence and the different ways they're portrayed. I know a 16-year-old girl who has seen "The Faculty" 14 times. Now, I can imagine what Lieberman or Henry Hyde would do with that tidbit -- turn it into the story of a teenager obsessed with a movie in which students take up arms against their teachers. The fact is, my friend has seen it repeatedly for the same reason she went to an opening night IMAX screening of "Pearl Harbor": because she thinks Josh Hartnett is adorable.

Why we resist facing the facts in this debate is understandable. People don't have to be stupid or corrupt to look at school shootings, or violence in America in general, and feel that something has to be responsible. And as someone who spends much of his time looking at pop culture, I won't deny being disturbed by some of the more mindless violence out there, of having felt cut off from an audience that was grooving on mayhem. People feel so overwhelmed by violence that they think there simply must be a connection between media bloodshed and the real thing. But the truth is that violent crime is down in America, and it has been going down for some years now.

Just because I think extreme protectionism is misguided doesn't mean that I think children should be exposed to anything and everything. Parents have to make those decisions for their own kids. And while I sympathize with their frustration over the proliferation of outlets like the Internet, video and cable that makes those decisions more demanding, parents' frustration isn't a good enough reason to limit the First Amendment. It sickened me when I heard stories about parents dragging along their young kids to see "Hannibal." But we see that kind of idiocy even with a damaging movie ratings system in place. Teenagers may be better able to handle material than their younger siblings are, but they too are the target of obscenity laws that don't distinguish between a 6- or 8-year-old and a 14- or 16-year-old.

Some will insist that there have been findings indicating a causal link between violent entertainment and violent behavior. But those studies have profound flaws. Is it really that surprising that toddlers become markedly more rambunctious after being kept in a room watching "The Three Stooges" for five hours? I have some faith in science, and it seems to me that if there really were a cause-and-effect link between real violence and media violence, then it would have been proven by now. At the least, people who believe in that link should work the flaws out of their methodology.

Would-be censors are often aided in their mission by the news media. Assigned to write a breaking story involving a movie or book or piece of pop music, and usually scrambling against deadlines, reporters often resort to the most simplistic, alarmist characterizations, failing to familiarize themselves with their subject, unable to put it in cultural context. When I worked at a Boston newspaper in the mid-'80s, the local news was dominated by a murder case in which a couple were suspected (but never proven guilty) of raping and killing their infant daughter. When it became known that the couple had gone to see "The Terminator" on the afternoon of the murder, a reporter asked me to tell him what the picture was about. I told him it was the story of a killer robot from a future ruled by machines, sent back in time to murder the woman who would eventually bear the rebel leader who would rally the humans to victory. When the reporter's story appeared, "The Terminator" somehow became a film whose plot prominently featured the murder of a child.

These are the "experts" who are feeding the suspicions and fears of parents. I understand that love isn't always rational. But too many parents seem to have thoroughly banished memories of their own youth in favor of the fantasy that childhood and adolescence are a time of purest innocence (which, Heins reminds us, is not the same thing as inexperience). Kids love dirty, gross jokes; they find bodily functions hilarious; they can be cruel and selfish; their energy often expresses itself in the sort of aggression that causes them to run riot around the house. My friends and I used to exhaust ourselves trying to hit my Superman punching bag so hard it would stay down -- what could be cooler than knocking out Superman? I'm willing to bet that most teenagers, at one time or another, have fantasized about blowing up their school or cocked a finger at some kid making their life miserable and made a shotgun noise. The adults who see such actions as alarming evidence of corruption are the ones who live in a dangerous fantasy world.

Next Page: When meddling parents terrorize their kids

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