Screen Violence: To Regulate or Not to Regulate? : Just Say ‘No’ to the War on Drama

I am Janet Reno’s nightmare. I write drama. And whether it was cunning editorial design or happy accident, Calendar, by putting two apparently unrelated articles on the same page Oct. 23, has helped explain why I scare the Attorney General. I refer to “Pop Culture. Violence. Copycats. Blame?” about the controversy over Hollywood’s responsibility for death and injury caused by those who imitate the actions of movie and TV characters, and “ ‘Horror’ in Your Own Living Room,” about Fox Broadcasting’s showing of the cult classic “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Taken together, the articles illustrate how Reno and her supporters are close to right in their criticism, but tragically simplistic in their solution.

Imitation is at the heart of both stories, whether it’s fans harmlessly copying “Rocky Horror” antics or the tragedies that resulted when teen-agers defied highway traffic to mimic Disney’s “The Program” and a small child played with fire like the animated cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-head.

Every rational person hates to see bad things happen in real life. But, paradoxically, we love seeing them happen in fiction. In that, fiction is captivating because it allows us to explore imaginatively things we might not care to experience. When the audacious or the reckless attempt to imitate actions they see (and this is not confined to fictional actions), it does not always result in harm. In the vast majority of cases it does not. But we live in an age when anecdotes pass as arguments. Based on a couple of admittedly tragic events, Reno and others charge that artists are encouraging violence and danger when they try to explore them dramatically.

Reno has given dark but unmistakable hints that if artists don’t voluntarily do something to stop this “plague of violence,” Washington will have to step in. In this Reno follows Plato, who began this debate a little over 2,300 years ago when he concluded that:

” . . . both poets and prose-writers tell bad tales about men in most important matters; they say that many unjust men are happy and many just men wretched, that injustice is profitable if it escapes notice, that justice is another’s good and one’s own punishment. I think we will forbid these tales and order them to compose the opposite kind of poetry and tell the opposite kind of tales.”

Underlying Plato’s argument was the assumption that audiences are incapable of serious reflection, and will mindlessly imitate whatever is presented to them. Therefore, audiences should be exposed only to stories that will be good for them.

This may be an appropriate way to deal with children. But when it affects what adults may see, it goes too far.

What Reno, like Plato, wants from artists, is edification, not art. Art deals with complexity because life is not simple. Human interactions are fascinating precisely because they are enigmatic. The scene in “The Program” was compelling because every adolescent male understands testing the limits, taking the dare. In this, the scene from “The Program” fits into a long tradition: “Rebel Without a Cause’s” game of chicken, for example, or “Stand by Me’s” bridge-crossing scene.

What is going on here is something very different from mere concern about recent tragedies. Politicians across the country are grandstanding, catering to (and sometimes inciting) public anxiety about crime. The war on drugs was just the latest effort on that front. Now we have the war on drama.

Art can undeniably be powerful. And like all power, including the power held by politicians, it can be misused, especially by those unable or unwilling to fully comprehend the awesome force that is in their hands. In this, artists and politicians are not so different.

As a fiction maker, violence and danger are among my tools, alongside sex, religion, truth, authority, honor and every other human characteristic. Individually and in combination they can have tremendous effect, can lead people to laughter, outrage, understanding, compassion. But as tools, they have no value until they are used.

Homer and Shakespeare, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese used the tool of violence well to tell us some fundamental truths about ourselves. Many more have used violence poorly. It is the same with politicians.

*

As with politicians, the answer is not to make everyone speak with one voice. The answer is to focus on those who hear the message rather than those who deliver it; to insist that the speaker be viewed with caution, and then let him be heard. That is the way parents should teach their children to deal with politicians, and it is the only way we should deal with artists.

Every movie, every television show, every book--and every politician--should be approached with the same initial sense of caution, fear and distrust. You don’t know me or my motives any more than you initially knew those of David Duke, J.F.K., Richard Nixon or Janet Reno. None of us, politicians or artists, is simple, so you must constantly read between the lines, verify what we say against your values and truths. Only then can you decide how to take what we say, to believe us, follow us or condemn us.

If we use these unfortunate incidents by children and reckless adolescents to justify artistic regulation, we risk taking the beauty and greatness out of art. What we will leave behind is a tepid trail of catechisms for simpletons, bloodless tales no one would have any desire to watch in the first place, much less imitate.

Link’s most recent screenplay, “Hate Speech,” deals with the difficulties posed by political correctness.