1993 Year in Review : VIOLENCE : Tracking the Media-Violence Explosion

It was another year of living dangerously. Turn on television in 1993 and there was proof galore that America seemed awash in violence.

Terrorists tried to blow up the world’s tallest building. A gunman blasted commuters inside a railway car. A 12-year-old girl was abducted from a slumber party and strangled. Followers of a fiery preacher met a fiery end. And that Reginald Denny tape repeated over and over and over.

And that was only the fare served up on the evening news. Film at 11.

But what really concerned a growing chorus of critics from living rooms to the White House was the violence portrayed in the entertainment media. A growing number of social scientists drew a causal relationship between the madness in the streets and glamorized violence in TV programs, movies, rap music and even the next generation of entertainment--video games.

President Clinton had left no doubt about what he would like to see when he politely lectured hundreds of top entertainment figures, imploring them to examine how film and TV violence affect the lives of impoverished young people. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno went even further when she warned a Senate committee that if TV violence isn’t reduced, “government action will be imperative.”

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), author of the 1990 Television Violence Act and a leading congressional crusader against gratuitous TV violence, described a cycle by which the entertainment industry ducks responsibility for curtailing violence.

“Broadcasting blames cable, which blames the movies,” he told the National Press Club. “Executives say they use what producers give them; producers blame the screenwriters; and the screenwriters say they script what they have been instructed to write. And then they all point the finger at others.”

Under Simon’s TV Violence Act, Congress had given the networks until this month to do something about it. Concerned that the act would expire without anything being done, Simon and other lawmakers leveled warning shots at CBS, NBC, ABC and the Fox network.

The entertainment industry--always fearful of censorship--was once again on the defensive, as lawmakers in Washington convened hearings and at least nine bills were introduced in Congress to crack down on TV violence. One would require new TV sets to come equipped with computer chips enabling parents to block violent programming. Another would threaten TV station owners with loss of their licenses and heavy fines for violating anti-violence standards.

It was enough to drive network officials and veteran filmmakers up the wall.

“For these people to zero in on network TV, which has put its house in order better than any other media, and threaten them with government censorship, this is a political disgrace,” said Edgar J. Scherick, who has produced such TV miniseries as “The Kennedys of Massachusetts.”

Network officials said that the era of “Miami Vice,” “Vega$” and “Hunter” was long gone but noted that in the public mind, network TV somehow symbolizes all the gratuitous violence depicted in the media.

Yet, during the May sweeps period alone, the networks offered viewers made-for-TV movies such as “Murder in the Heartland,” “Black Widow Murders,” “Visions of Murder,” “When Love Kills,” “A Case for Murder,” “In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco” and “Terror in the Towers.”

Other forms of entertainment could not escape the anti-violence tidal wave of 1993.

On cable television, MTV was compelled to remove fire jokes from “Beavis and Butt-head” after an Ohio mother said her 5-year-old son, inspired by the popular animated series, set the bed on fire with a cigarette lighter, killing his 2-year-old sister.

Debate continued to rage over rap music, but allegations that some gangsta rappers committed real-life crimes didn’t seem to hurt sales. Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose debut album, “Doggy-style,” zoomed to the top of the charts, faced criminal charges in Los Angeles stemming from an incident in which his bodyguard fired a shot that killed a man, from a car the rapper was driving. Both Snoop and the bodyguard pleaded not guilty, calling the shooting self-defense. And in New York, rapper and actor

Tupac Amaru Shakur--whose hit single “Keep Ya Head Up” was being touted for its positive pro-woman message--was arrested after a 20-year-old woman alleged that the singer and two other men held her down while a fourth sodomized her in a room of the upscale Park Meridien Hotel.

Some radio stations chose to deal with the verbal violence in rap. KPWR-FM, the most popular English-language radio station in the Los Angeles-Orange County market, announced it was eliminating three derogatory words from rap songs, while KACE-FM banned all music that glorified violence or denigrated women and a New York radio station also announced it would do the same.

The video game industry scurried to police itself after critics complained about “Mortal Kombat”--soon to be a major motion picture--in which martial arts combatants can remove vital organs and body parts from their defeated enemies. (A character called Sub-Zero, for example, yanks off his foes’ heads with their spines attached.) Toys ‘R’ Us, the nation’s No. 1 chain of toy stores, announced it would no longer carry another video game, “Night Trap,” in which players try to save scantily clad sorority sisters being terrorized by hooded killers wielding a neck-drilling device.

Movies also came in for some criticism. Although Hollywood churned out a significant number of family films in 1993, studios continued to rely on a steady stream of action movies to achieve box-office success in the global marketplace.

As always, some films in 1993 were notable for their violence: the gunplay and blood-soaked fights in Morgan Creek’s “True Romance”; “Cliffhanger,” with its savage beatings and even a death by impaling on a stalactite, and the disturbing serial murders of “Kalifornia.”

The biggest-grossing movie of all time, Universal’s “Jurassic Park,” might seem geared toward the young, but even director Steven Spielberg said that he wouldn’t take his young children to it. That didn’t stop the usual commercial toy tie-ins.

Why did the issue of media violence flare with such intensity in 1993? Marcy Kelly, who heads Mediascope, a Studio City-based nonprofit group that encourages the reduction of violence to resolve plots in Hollywood productions, believes that one reason for the current debate is that American society appears to be increasingly violent.

“When you see people shot in offices, on a Long Island commuter train and in post offices--places that should be safe--it’s not amusing anymore,” Kelly said.

Mike Medavoy, who as chairman of Sony’s TriStar Pictures has released both action (“Basic Instinct,” “Cliffhanger”) and nonviolent (“Sleepless in Seattle”) movies, agrees that “some movies with sick characters on the screen can, in some instances, create antisocial behavior.” But he defended Hollywood, saying that “everyone from directors to studio executives know their responsibility to society.” He says his job entails trying to “figure out a balance between a filmmaker’s artistic prerogatives and my responsibility (to the studio and public). I’ve had knockdown, drag out fights with filmmakers.”

Sources said Medavoy chose not to make the next film--”Pulp Fiction”--by “Reservoir Dogs” writer-director Quentin Tarantino because it is too violent. The movie will be made by Miramax Films.

Like many producers in Hollywood, Michael Pressman, co-executive producer of the Emmy-winning CBS drama “Picket Fences,” said he fears that the current criticism of media violence, while properly addressing societal concerns, “seems to be a loose-cannon approach to looking at the ills of society.

“I think there is a genuine concern about rising violence in society,” Pressman said. “The fact that children are exposed to a lot of violence on the screen and television is one of the concerns being expressed. I believe, however, that you can’t create legislation about this, because it is censorship. To make legislation is, in essence, to put the judgment in the hands of the government.”

As the year came to a close, Sen. Simon said that he too does not want censorship of television programming in any form. But the mood in Congress, he warned, is “very hostile to industry.”

Simon said he plans to meet with the CEOs of the three major networks next month and discuss putting together an industry group to monitor violence in TV programming.

If that doesn’t work, he said, “Then I will introduce legislation to set up some kind of monitoring group . . . either with the National Institute of Mental Health or the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta or with the Federal Communications Commission.”

Words to grab Hollywood’s attention in 1994.