A Glimmer of Hope in the Media Toxic Spill : Culture: The sex-and-violence debate blurs political lines as more of us call for trashing the stuff that treats life like trash.

We used to be careless about lumping sex-and-violence together as a phrase, but in fact, until recently on the political spectrum, they’ve stood poles apart. Sex bothered the right and violence bothered the left.

That’s still generally true. The right tends to remain more tolerant of violence than the left (as in recent moves to repeal the assault weapons ban) and less tolerant of sex (as in the Senate’s move last week to keep cyberspace sexually innocent).

What’s new about the culture war this time is that by keeping sex and violence together, the current calls for media reform transcend the old political divisions. Left and right suddenly matter less when President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich prove to be pals on this issue. And Republican presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole’s attack on rap music distinctly recalls, for those who remember it, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s argument with Sister Souljah. It’s as if a Berlin Wall of metaphoric sorts had fallen between Republicans and Democrats on this issue of popular culture.

This time it’s not Washington on the right baiting Hollywood on the left. It’s Washington on the right and on the left weighing in against a Hollywood milieu suddenly short of political cover.

The interesting point about this particular culture war, then, is that it’s been relatively depoliticized. And that’s because at base what we’re actually seeing here is the clumsy if potent emergence of a media ecology movement. Like the old ecology movement, the media ecology movement is grass-roots in origin and may equally prove to be the leading edge of a general consensus.

“Toxic spill” might well describe what many consider wrong with our media. There’s a general feeling of being sullied, of being disappointed by our media, even when they tell us that the stuff that bothers us appeals to the greatest number. In fact, what that stuff is, the sludge of this toxic spill, is simply stuff that grabs our attention, not stuff that rewards it. Major figures in this gathering media ecology movement include George Gerbner, dean emeritus of the Annenberg School for Communication in Philadelphia, Elizabeth Thoman of the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles and Douglas Rushkoff, the New York-based author of “Media Virus!” and other provocative texts.

Some of the more interesting voices in the movement significantly argue that simulated violence is not, in itself, necessarily wrong. What matters is whether the violence is used to raise or to lower our sense of the value of life. That may not be something that’s easy to ascertain, but it’s no less real a measure of value for all that. Some media ecologists even claim the relative value of life reflected on the screen--or in song lyrics--to be the key variable where media ethics are concerned.

The violence in “Hamlet” or “King Lear,” they point out, raises our sense of life’s preciousness. (And if you try telling these media ecologists that those bloody plays are old hat, they’ll remind you that Mel Gibson made one of them new again not long ago.) It’s the inconsequential violence in a “snuff film” or in a video game like “Doom” or “Mortal Kombat” that makes one feel that life is cheap. Media ecology begins, they say--and many more of us are agreeing than ever before--when we start to treasure the movies, games, programs and lyrics that treasure life and to trash the stuff that treats life like trash.

Censorship will cease to be a danger and the ratings-driven culture might even start to improve--fancy that!-- when the audience gets more screen smart and can tell the difference between what’s worth noting and what’s worth nothing. A wave of such objective and non-ideological “media literacy”--one that enabled people to watch out for what they watch--just might make the culture wars themselves start to fade.