Our Kids’ Innocence, Unprotected

Despite the fact that some of the current anti-Hollywood rhetoric is politically motivated and that some of Hollywood’s response is merely self-serving self-defense, the debate about the effects of movies, television, music and other media on young people is extremely valuable. Some very important truths lie between the two extreme positions--that watching violence causes violence or that watching violence and sex has no effect on children.

Virtually every aspect of this issue is more complex than is acknowledged. For example, the general perception is that the battle lines can be fairly easily drawn--parents of young children versus Hollywood. As a parent, I used to think this way. But speaking with callers on my radio show, I have learned the far more disturbing truth that many parents have no problem with almost anything their children hear or see.

I learned this when I discussed the presence of young children at theaters showing “Titanic.” I noted on my radio show that I was amazed, even appalled, that parents would bring kids to a movie that featured a nude scene, not to mention an hourlong, utterly realistic portrayal of a thousand men, women, and children going to their watery graves. Even I, at 50 years of age, had trouble falling asleep the night I saw the movie.

Parent after parent--mother after mother, in fact--called to strongly disagree with me. The gist of their argument was that “Titanic” portrayed real life, and that it is not a parent’s task to hide reality from their children, but rather to expose them to it. This accords with what Marie Winn, author of “Children Without Childhood,” perceptively noted years ago: whereas parents used to believe that their task was to protect their children, many parents today believe that it is their task to prepare their children.

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Little can be done about children and potentially destructive media influences until most parents and the society at large decide that protecting children’s innocence is of utmost importance. I am increasingly convinced that robbing children of their innocence is at the root of much later maladjustment in many Americans’ lives. There is a time to be a child and a time to be an adult, and when you are deprived of the time to be a child, your adulthood will be adversely affected. Destroying a child’s innocence destroys his love of life, enthusiasm and optimism.

There are moral ramifications as well. Jadedness--the opposite of innocence--ought to be regarded as a national epidemic. We are seeing more and more young people at younger and younger ages who have already left behind childhood. Young girls who should have been playing house are instead watching Britney Spears take off much of her clothing at the MTV awards. Parents who would be horrified at their child watching a Joe Camel ad are quite at peace with their child watching a veritable striptease by one of the child’s idols.

No wonder the New York Times reported that it is common for sophisticated Long Island preteens to engage in oral sex. They are, in the words of child experts repeatedly quoted in the article, jaded. And jaded children cause the havoc that we see so regularly.

Yet, parents who would panic at the thought of their child being exposed to five minutes of secondhand smoke, allow them to ingest hours a day of firsthand soul pollution. Do we really need studies to tell us that what children watch affects them? How can children not be affected seeing people tortured, blown up or shot? How can this not make them more scared of life or regard human life as less than infinitely precious?

The idea that watching gratuitous violence and sex has no effect on a child is so preposterous that anyone who believes this only testifies to the human ability to deceive oneself. If companies believed this, all advertising would end, and with it television itself. Children watching murders doesn’t cause them to murder. But is that now our parental and societal standard for what we should feed our children’s souls--asking whether it causes them to murder? Are there no other adverse effects? Of course there are.

But while the adverse effects on children of watching films and TV containing sex, violence or profanity are, I believe, indisputable, the issue is more complex than parents merely banning all such entertainment. While all sex scenes will compromise a child’s innocence, many, but not all, scenes of violence will have that effect.

Some violence has no effect on a child’s innocence, and some scenes of violence actually enhance it. Let me give examples of each. Among the scenes of violence that destroy innocence are those that are cruel, gory or show the sufferings of victims, particularly innocent ones. Worst of all--meaning that they will do more injury to a child’s development than only rob his innocence--are those scenes that combine these three characteristics in a way meant to entertain the child. Associating the infliction of pain with fun stymies the development of empathy, the greatest single source of human decency.

The second type of violence, that which most likely has no effect on a child, is of a fanciful nature. Fanciful violence is that of cartoons such as Tom & Jerry. Parents do not have to worry that seeing a cartoon cat and mouse beat each other up will hurt a child’s innocence or conscience.

The third type of violence can actually help develop a child’s conscience. This is violence used by good people against bad ones (provided, of course, there is an absence of gore). When my son watches movies in which there is such violence, he is actually relieved to see the good guys fighting and ultimately winning. It gives him optimism about the ability of people to vanquish evil, a deep natural yearning in most any child. An example of such a film is “High Noon.”

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Thus, attempts to assess whether films are appropriate for children solely on the basis of how many scenes of violence they contain are not only unproductive, they are counterproductive; they disqualify many uplifting films for children. With regard to sex scenes, on the other hand, context is irrelevant. Some sex scenes will, of course, have a worse impact on children than others, but no matter how loving the context, no sexual acts should be seen by children.

In the natural course of events, children will both see and imagine violence--they fight with their siblings, see classmates fight, play soldier games, shoot toy guns, etc. Some degree of violence is ubiquitous in even the most healthy child’s life. But none of this is true with regard to sex. A healthy young child never sees sex, never play-acts it, and does not fantasize it in any conscious way.

The argument that “children are sexual beings” is true but irrelevant. That a young boy will want to see his mother’s breasts or peek under a schoolmate’s skirt does not mean that he is aware of sex. He is not. And we are therefore literally child abusers if we do make him or her so aware (as, incredibly, many schools now do with, among other things, sexual harassment seminars for first-graders).

There is nothing parents can do about raunchy billboards, newsstands that don’t cover sexually explicit magazines or other poisoners of our children’s souls. But regarding television and movies, parents have total control. We should allow our young children to watch the many fine films Hollywood has produced by restricting their media viewing to good videos while not allowing them access to TV.

If this seems radical, think of the wholesomeness of the Olympics and then recall how Nike and NBC destroyed that wholesomeness with the ad featuring a woman taking her top off while being stalked by a masked man, who then chases her with a chain saw. Nothing on television is so important that it is worth risking having your little boy or girl see that.

As for movies, until Hollywood and theater owners treat all American children as if they were their own and stop showing inappropriate trailers at kids’ films, wait for good movies to come out on video and then watch them at home. Anti-tobacco activists in Hollywood welcome government censorship of tobacco ads, and if poetic justice were the issue, Hollywood would receive the same governmental oversight. I believe that government should stay out of both tobacco advertising and Hollywood’s films.

But whatever one’s position on government interference, there is no room for doubt about one thing: what our children view affects them forever. If you love your children, be as careful about the films and TV programs they ingest as you are about the food and water they take in.