Caught in the Crossfire of the Media-Violence Debate
by Daniel Batt
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 63
Autumn 1999

The two poles of the culture wars

IN PART, THE SHOOTING brings up those two poles in the 'culture wars' (a debate which is surprisingly similar in Australia and England). Free speech advocates blame the guns, the parents, well, anything but the media; conservatives (who want the freedom to own guns or an opportunity to 'clean up' the Sodom of the media) blame the media, the parents, well, the same as the other guys, except the guns. It's not a coincidence that the media more often is vilified by the governments which seem least interested in tackling the violence which comes from poverty and marginalisation.

The anti-censorship libertarians and media theorists see clearly government scape-goating, and the self-interest of the gun lobby and right wing moralists. To describe these strategies they use the theory of 'moral panic', which says that levels of violence and crime are exaggerated in public debate in order to further the needs of the powerful. The trouble is, when anyone draws a connection between the media and violence, all they see is 'moralists' (for want of a better word) with their censors' scissors ready to chop away at free speech (which is, of course, sometimes correct). The irony of this is that, when 'free speech' appears to be threatened, sometimes they resort to doing things they ostensibly oppose.

For example, in the collection of essays published in The Retreat from Tolerance, the editor, Philip Adams, tells us how he has learnt not to use emotional arguments or caricatures in debates with those he disagrees with, that, for example, to "pillory Pauline Hanson and her political patrons gets us nowhere". Yet Adams edits a book which fails to practise this 'tolerance'. David Marr describes Senator Brian Harradine as a "grasshopper in a grey suit" whose "principal interest is gynaecological" (principal interest?). The often incisive Catharine Lumby, in her chapter pejoratively entitled "Back to the Brady Bunch", classes Richard Neville's "indiscriminate attacks on popular culture" in the same category as conservative US Republican Bob Dole-and Neville wasn't remotely calling for censorship.

Another example of the anti-censorship theorists doing what they say they oppose happened in the UK a few years ago when a series of essays on media violence was commissioned by the publisher Routledge. But when academics David Miller and Greg Philo produced the only essay questioning the "extremely dubious" arguments by those who claim there is no relation between media violence and real violence, the chapter was, er, censored and excluded from the book. The editors only wanted one side of the argument presented.

In The Retreat from Tolerance, in which perhaps half the book deals with the media's critics, not one of the authors mentions even one adverse word about media content. The effects of screen violence are never discussed, simply dismissed, as David Marr does, with the line: "No absolute connection has ever been established".

Well, "absolute" is a bit of a caveat. Fourteen-year-old Barry Loukatis of Moses Lake, Washington, loved the film Natural Born Killers and, according to the New York Times, said it would be "pretty cool" to go on a killing rampage like the two lead characters in the film. On 2 February 1996 he did just that and killed three of his classmates. And as he stood over one boy drowning in his own blood he commented, "this sure beats algebra". No "absolute" connection there. But enough to take the topic a bit more seriously.

Of course, the studies on the effects of media violence are numerous (and they don't all show a conclusive relationship between violence in the media and real acts of violence). But what countless people can't seem to understand is that, with this sort of research, there will be no 'Pavlov's dog' relationship of simple cause-and-effect. Which makes you wonder why so many commentators still come out with the fatuous line: "Well, I've seen many violent films and I haven't killed anyone yet." After the British toddler James Bulger was brutally murdered in a 'copycat' killing echoing the gore film Child's Play 3 (it was a favourite of the two children who killed Bulger), Martin Amis wrote in The New York Times that he had watched the film, it hadn't made him want to kill anyone, so what's the problem? Could Amis have been serious? Arguments such as this resembled the proverbial grandfather who smoked all his life and "never got cancer".

Daniel Batt Daniel Batt is the Editor of Zadok Perspectives. E-mail: editor@zadok.org.au