In Capitol Hill Show, No One Even Got Hurt

Dueling actors, hardly a new concept on Capitol Hill.

Stage right, the Senate Commerce Committee. Stage left, eight slickly groomed senior Hollywood executives summoned to this political theater to answer for marketing violence to children and for a movie ratings system that is too vague.

In the process, they disclosed to their inquisitors that they’re concerned citizens whose movies bring joy, and just as impressive, that they’re loving parents. Going further than her colleagues on that critical point was Stacy Snider, Universal Studios chairwoman, who explained in detail for the rapt senators the lengths she goes, as a responsible parent, to decide the entertainment that her two daughters watch. “And finally, I rely on other parents’ word-of-mouth recommendations.”

To be honest or not to be honest--that was the question facing this crowd Wednesday morning as C-SPAN cameras taped the gathering for airing early that evening.

Alas, poor John McCain, the vocal committee chairman and GOP senator from Arizona. We know him, not just from his earlier political life but from his ongoing crusade to reform the entertainment industry. Part of that effort was this hearing. It followed a report from the Federal Trade Commission that faulted the entertainment industry for selling violence to children, including running questionable ads during kid-friendly TV.

The hearing led each network newscast that evening, with CBS News illustrating its story by showing precisely the type of graphically violent scenes from movies that have been attacked for being marketed to children. KCBS, its station here, did the same an hour earlier, just after 5:30 p.m.

Wednesday’s highlight was arguably an exchange between slow-drawling Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and Robert Iger, president of Walt Disney Co., each of whom quizzically regarding the other as if he were speaking in tongues. It was notable that at one point Iger had to define for Hollings what he meant by television prime time. Shouldn’t the senator have checked that out in advance?

Actually, compared with the movies the committee was criticizing, this was pretty dry stuff. Two and a half hours, and not one person was beheaded.

Calling movie content “a separate issue for which parents will make a decision,” McCain insisted that “marketing practices” were the subject of the hearing. Formally, perhaps, but not informally, as several other senators raised the specter of content and freedom of expression under the 1st Amendment.

What didn’t come up in this discussion was the conundrum facing makers of movies and TV programs in regard to exposing kids to violence. Times columnist Mike Downey touched on it, perhaps unknowingly, in his Wednesday column when he composed a list of questions he wanted McCain and his committee to ask the Hollywood executives, including:

“If somebody in a movie gets shot, do we have to see the blood? Couldn’t the victim just fall?”

In other words, can’t we go back to the good old days when people who were shot in movies and TV sank to the ground in a peaceful slumber--no bullet holes or blood--as if they would later awaken?

That glamorized violence, making it seem like harmless fun, for which movies and TV were justifiably attacked. But later, when they began showing the horrific consequences of violence, they were still attacked, this time for being too gory.

Talk about mixed messages.

Americans can’t have it both ways. With universally celebrated “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” on the tips of tongues, moreover, a ban on all violence in entertainment was clearly something none of Wednesday’s participants was prepared to even bring up, let alone endorse, as the curtain came down on their show.

And how did these Hollywood moguls spend the rest of their day in the capital? Probably, they did lunch.