The Down Side of the Camcorder Revolution

Despite curiosity from outsiders and the occasional sneak photo of her in a slouched hat, Greta Garbo seemed able to indulge her zeal for privacy without much interference. Today it would be different. Today her aura of mystery and enigma would be shattered by technology.

It’s a bad time to be a recluse.

Whereas the secretive Garbo’s main nemesis for nearly five decades was the intrusive still camera, today it’s the compact, featherweight, inexpensive, increasingly pervasive camcorder that is becoming the world’s most effective and profitable snooper, helping feed television’s ravenous appetite for pictures of all types.

The camcorder is creating a citizen paparazzi.

Even the elusive Garbo could not have withstood the challenge of the camcorder revolution. It’s not that the number of camcorders is as great as that of still cameras, only that videotape has greater appeal in today’s VCR-oriented world and also offers opportunities for greater profit through the premium prices that TV pays for footage.

Serious Garbo watchers inevitably would have gotten the message of the ‘90s by acquiring camcorders, and then they would have proliferated. Soon old Uncle Mike would be showing you his personal tape of Garbo that you could compare with the footage on “A Current Affair.”

On one level, roving camcorders are supplementing news crews by sometimes supplying videotape of breaking stories that occur outside the realm of professional journalists. Whether the subject is revolution in Romania or erupting violence in a neighbor’s back yard, these amateur shooters are becoming unofficial stringers for news organizations. This aspect of the video revolution is positive, as long as these videos can be authenticated.

On another level, the explosion of camcorders, and the expansion of TV outlets available to them, means potentially less privacy for everyone. Prepare for your private moments, humiliations and embarrassments to go public.

The worst-case scenarios go something like this: You forget to zip your fly? You pick your nose when you think no one is looking? You leave the public facilities with a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe? You’re rejected in a single’s bar by someone who says you look like Manuel Noriega? You break your nose with your own racket while serving on the tennis court? You fall into a manhole?

Smile, you’re on candid camcorder!

In essence, this is the mentality underpinning “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” the ABC program that has racked up enormous profits and Nielsen ratings on Sunday nights while making falling down--and losing your pants--a national pastime.

“America’s Funniest Home Videos” is at once fueling and riding the camcorder revolution. Some ABC stations--including KABC in Los Angeles and KEYT in Santa Barbara--have been doing their part by urging viewers to send in home videos that will be passed on to “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and possibly will also be featured on the stations’ local newscasts.

On television, one ludicrous level is inevitably surpassed by another. So what’s next?

Given TV’s passion for replicating popular and profitable concepts, it seems only a matter of time before the video craze invades still other areas of TV. For example, you can easily envision “Donahue” or “Geraldo” jumping on the bandwagon:

“Alcoholics who walk into walls and suffer contusions.” “Transvestites whose bra straps break.” “Lesbian nuns who slip on banana peels.” “Women who still love the husbands who tried to strangle them in front of a camcorder for ‘America’s Funniest Home Murders.’ ”

It’s a short jump from this to “Funniest Home Videos of America’s Most Wanted.” Same old show, except you apprehend the criminal--and tape the capture. Or perhaps there could be a game show inspired by the $10,000 weekly payoff available on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and $100,000 offered at the end of the season: “Bruising for Dollars.”

Speaking of bruising, ABC Entertainment President Robert Iger and Vin Di Bona, executive producer of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” get good marks for announcing last week that the show will be declaring emphatically on the air that it will reject staged videos in which children or animals appear to have been physically hurt. “We want to discourage dangerous or abusive behavior,” Iger said.

Amen. Although imposed in response to pressure from viewers and others, regular on-air declarations are an important step. But only a first step. In addition, the show’s screeners--who view all arriving videos--should be given some guidance on what are objectionable videos and then instructed to flag these for the producers, who should refer them to the proper authorities for possible action. To fail to bring them to the attention of authorities is, in effect, to sanction child and animal abuse.

Di Bona has said he has seen no submitted videos that “are life-threatening to a person or animal.” If so, then he is curiously out of touch and hasn’t seen some of the submitted videos described to The Times by a screener for the show. These include one in which a toddler was left alone in the cab of a moving truck and another showing a rabbit killed by a dog. Moreover, what about videos of incidents that are not life-threatening, but merely limb-threatening or psychologically harmful?

Admitting that there is no way to ensure that children or animals depicted on videos have not been harmed, Iger has said: “We have to trust the people.”

Tell it to Peace Rone, who was physically and sexually abused as a child. “People laughing at children being hurt brings back memories,” said Rone, who is working toward a license in clinical psychology. “I’ve been struggling for more than 30 years to overcome the results of the humiliation and abuse, and that program (‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’) takes me right back to what I survived and tried to get over.”

Tell it to Shari Karney, for whom viewing the show has triggered memories of her own physical and sexual abuse as a child. “Watching it made me feel the same neglect I felt growing up, that I could be hurt and no one would be there to help me,” said Karney, an attorney specializing in the cases of adults who were abused as children. “This program is another desensitization of the viewing audience toward the rights of children. We’re a nation that eats our young.”

In some cases it’s a bad time to be a child as well as a recluse.