Violence in the Movies

The view that actor Edward James Olmos and director James Cameron take that horrible violence and overt sex is a reflection of society is a cop-out of the first order. What the entertainment industry has done under the guise of free speech is to educate and desensitize an entire generation to accept this as entertainment. Young people growing up pick up the social attitudes they have been saturated with through television and movies.

You play, gentlemen, not to a generation who did not need the rotten language and the graphic depiction of horror but to the young, and too many fall into your trap. Don’t tell those of us who know better that your sick values sell tickets and thus excuse you. Do you feel no responsibility to better society rather than push it farther into the gutter? That indeed is a silly question.

HAZEL R. ELLIOTT

Long Beach