Generation Gap Separates Hollywood and Washington

Though respectful and restrained, Wednesday’s Senate hearing on the marketing of violent movies points toward a sustained conflict between an entertainment industry heavily dependent on young people and a political system increasingly focused on parents.

To a large extent, both phenomena spring from the same root: the rapid rise in the number of children under 18 as baby boomers have become parents themselves. In the political world, that has encouraged politicians to increasingly tailor their agendas to the concerns of parents. In the movie world, it has made children and teenagers an ever-more-critical component of the ticket-buying audience, according to industry figures.

Those structural forces virtually guarantee heightened tensions between the political and entertainment communities as elected officials respond to parental anxieties about the influence of movies, television shows, records and video games on their children.

“The more the kids’ market expands, the more kids become consumers, the more parents are concerned about what is happening here,” said Democratic pollster Mark Penn, who advises President Clinton.

Indeed, Hollywood now seems caught in the same current propelling a long list of family-related issues to the forefront of political debate. That current is the rising number of children under 19 in the United States--a figure that now has hit nearly 79 million, up 13% from just five years ago.

From teen smoking to school construction and competing proposals from presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush to cut taxes on families with children, the political agenda increasingly revolves around the concerns of parents raising that horde. And that means the political pressure on the entertainment industry is unlikely to ease any time soon.

“There’s this great unease out there on the part of parents as to how they are able to determine what their children should see and view and use,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who chaired Wednesday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing.

A new Times Poll buttresses that assessment, finding that parenthood is a clear dividing line in attitudes about Hollywood: While a plurality of non-parents say they have a favorable view of the entertainment industry, two-thirds of parents view it unfavorably. Among married women with children--the fabled “soccer moms” and “waitress moms” both parties covet--fully three-fourths give the industry a thumbs down.

The divide was just as sharp when the poll, conducted Saturday through Monday, asked respondents whether they worried more about government imposing “undue restrictions” on Hollywood or the industry producing “material harmful to American society.” Nearly three-fifths of non-parents said they worried most about government controls; a majority of parents worried most about industry excesses.

Political support for measures to reduce the exposure of children to violent and sexually graphic entertainment already has yielded some results, from the voluntary television rating system embraced under pressure in 1997 to the marketing restraints on violent films the industry announced this week.

Most of the senators at Wednesday’s hearing made clear that they expect the industry to take further steps. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), for instance, pressed the studios to adopt a uniform ban against advertising R-rated movies on television before 9 p.m.--a step that only Disney has explicitly endorsed. And McCain repeatedly expressed support for a universal system that would synchronize the disparate ratings now applied to movies, television, music and video games.

The problem for Hollywood is that these political pressures are rising even as children and teenagers become an ever-more-critical market. According to figures from the Motion Picture Assn. of America, the industry trade association, those aged 12 to 20 accounted for 31% of total tickets purchased in 1999--up from 25% in 1995 and double their share of the overall population. About half of those aged 12 to 17 now identify themselves as “frequent” movie-goers, compared to less than 3 in 10 of those over 18.

Those numbers are bound to place the film industry in conflict with many parents at a time when fully 70% of the movies now released are rated R, according to the MPAA. The mere fact of Wednesday’s hearing is evidence of the consequences of that conflict--Jack Valenti, who has represented Hollywood in Washington for 34 years as MPAA’s president, said he could remember no other congressional forum during that period that focused solely on the movie industry.

The only comparable precedents reach back further. In 1941, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--controlled by isolationists--convened hearings to accuse the film industry of producing pro-intervention movies meant to stampede the nation into war. The industry easily beat back the assault, with 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie making its case.

In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee grilled executives from the major studios on alleged communist influence in the film industry--a confrontation that produced momentum for the blacklisting of those with links to the left. And in 1955, Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) summoned studio moguls to hearings on whether Hollywood films--such as the James Dean classic “Rebel Without a Cause”--contributed to juvenile delinquency.

Since then, despite sporadic hearings on television violence, Hollywood had largely avoided serious conflict with Washington. Through at least the mid-1980s, politicians viewed the entertainment industry as relatively noncontroversial. It was seen as a source of significant campaign funding that would not raise eyebrows with voters, such as the oil or chemical industries might.

That detente has eroded in the last decade, as politicians from both parties heightened their criticism of the content of popular culture. Republicans, who receive less financial support from the entertainment industry, generally criticize it more enthusiastically than Democrats. But Hollywood cannot rely on blanket support from either party.

Gore, who has raised substantial sums from industry leaders, has threatened to pursue legislation if Hollywood’s voluntary efforts fail to limit the marketing of violent films to children. And Democratic Sens. Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota and Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina were as critical of the industry Wednesday as their GOP counterparts on the Commerce Committee.

But for both parties, it may prove difficult to find practical responses to parental concerns. For instance, even supporters say that the existing television rating system--which is meant to be used with the V-chip that allows parents to block out objectionable programming--has not yet had the impact they had hoped. And several senators at Wednesday’s hearing, including McCain, repeatedly stressed their reluctance to pass any legislation that could be remotely interpreted as an attempt to censor content.

That suggests the more likely scenario is continuing political heat on the industry to self-regulate, rather than direct government intervention. But even informal pressure probably will produce far more time in the political limelight than the star-makers in Hollywood would prefer.