But who actually wanted to move beyond those old discussions last week, when, after Columbine, there was such juicy material? In the Boston Globe, Jim Sleeper offered a relatively balanced proposal, splitting the difference. He argued for a fair-is-fair civil rights trade-off between liberals and conservatives: "Curb guns? Or curb degrading entertainment? Both." Sleeper says he doesn't advocate censorship, but rather boycotts and protests. It's worth noting, though, that such efforts, even if they don't involve airstrikes or FBI agents smashing printing presses, do generally involve calling on media to stop making "degrading entertainment" available not only to one's own kids but to everyone else's. Clearly, the implication is that simply choosing not to let the programming in your house isn't good enough.

Sleeper's argument starts off with its own best rebuttal. He perceptively notes that family-values conservatives today are taking the same approach to school violence that liberals did to urban crime -- trying to attack "root causes." Liberals are still paying for the failure of many of those efforts, and likewise will cultural conservatives left and right. Sleeper is correct that it's too simplistic to pretend broadcasting, music and movies don't affect how people think -- art is all about affecting how people think. But it's also too simplistic to pretend we can determine how any given expression will affect what and whom.

In practice, will we be able to identify and excise those precise entertainments that are Bad for the Juniors, sparing those that are Good for the Juniors? Or will we simply see more efforts to eliminate those that hurt people's feelings? Recent experience indicates the latter. Last week, episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on the WB and "Promised Land" on CBS involving youth violence were willingly pulled, not because the makers felt they were dangerous but simply because of the timing. (Sleeper, incidentally, decries "Buffy" -- a moralistic show for all its violence -- as a program on which "kids' decent impulses are derided and snuffed out every week.") If "Carmageddon" is one person's depiction of violence inappropriate for children, "Schindler's List" is another's. It's always tempting to think we can reach an enlightened consensus on what is beyond the pale, but that's a fantasy. Already, we're seeing attempts to make hay out of claims the Littleton killers were gay, and I'd just as soon not give ammo to the "No more Leopold and Loebs!" camp. Today, "Buffy"; tomorrow, "Will and Grace."

And the TV-turnoff gestures of "Buffy" and "The Promised Land" do little to help. A more principled decision would have been to air the episodes, inviting anyone who might be offended at this juncture to read a book or talk to the family. As it is, the networks have simply bolstered the case against their shows -- because if the shows are inappropriate a week after Littleton, why are they ever appropriate? -- all in the name not of principle but of PR.

Questions of taste, after all, did not keep the round-the-clock funeral coverage off the air this past week, nor the potentially dangerous live shots of the high school during the actual siege, nor the 911 call aired after the fact. And questions about the motivations behind violent programming have not kept the Pentagon from getting its self-selected, self-promotional bombing footage onto the air. We will argue interminably over whether television causes violence. But make no mistake about it, violence certainly causes television.
salon.com | April 29, 1999

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