Guns and Violent Entertainment Are Blamed When Kids Kill Kids

As a writer working in Hollywood, I have felt a chill reading some of the sentiments expressed on your editorial pages in connection to the recent tragedy at Columbine High.

Virtually every bloody epic and every violent program at which critics have leveled their collective criticism plays (or airs) in major cities around the globe. In fact, it is the action films with the highest body counts that generally do best in foreign countries. Yet there has been a startling lack of statistical evidence linking these exports to adolescent murder sprees in, say, Germany or France. Why oh why oh why, one wonders, do the same programs and movies loathed by our native divines and right-wing wackos have no corresponding effect on European youngsters? What could possibly differentiate these two similar groups of teenagers, both of whom have access to the same World Wide Web, the same grotesque video games? What does one side have that the other does not? Hmm.

Could it possibly be . . . guns?

I hesitate to suggest it, since the obvious is never enough to distract the righteous from their predetermined opinions. But shouldn’t the rest of us consider, just as a possibility, that these crazy boys accomplished their aims because they were armed to the teeth with legally purchased firearms? Does anyone seriously suggest that the same carnage could have been achieved with a bowie knife or a pair of enhanced knitting needles? Before we repeal what’s left of the 1st Amendment or pass sentence on the mundane and eerily banal world of action films and popular music, shouldn’t we at least review the happy parallel universe inhabited by Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Assn.?

JAMES DUFF

Los Angeles

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I read where CBS felt that the sensitive thing to do was postpone a program [an episode of “Promised Land”] about a shooting in a high school in Denver in the light of the massacre in Denver (Morning Report, April 22). Postpone! How long does it take to forget a massacre?

Don’t just “postpone” violence. Abolish it. I’m asking us to wage the same war on violence that we did with cigarettes. Violence on TV, videos, films and the Internet should be labeled as “Violence is injurious to the mental health of everyone!” It’s a start.

ART MANCIN

Venice

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What has changed in our culture, causing the level of violence in our entertainment to have adverse effects in society, is the ubiquity of video rental stores within walking distance of all our homes.

The films in question are notable not only for the level of violence throughout but for the type of hero these films feature. The repeated lurid victimization of innocents is necessary to the formula of “action” films in order to set up the climax, wherein the “hero” can execute the antagonist, vigilante-style. This constant, ready availability has absolutely changed the context of film archetypes in our culture. The result is something that looks to an adolescent male like an unofficial truth about adulthood and power in the world.

We need to send a message from every community by demanding that our video stores restrict the display, proliferation and availability of films glorifying revenge, whether that be Blockbuster or the local ma and pa store. We don’t have to censor any particular film, just manage the context in which a film persists, once released.

GARY A. DUNN

Los Angeles

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The entertainment industry has been in denial for decades now regarding the influence of glorified violence on its less-than-well-educated audience. If the media--meaning print, radio, television, films and now, sadly, video games and the Internet--has little or no influence on its consumers, then why do advertisers spend so much money trying to influence our “consumption” within these very venues?

Someone should tell the sponsors their ads have no effect. They’d save a bundle.

RALPH COOLEY

Los Angeles