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

"Voluntary acts of responsibility"

THE TERM, "VOLUNTARY ACTS of responsibility", cuts right against that successful formula studio executives have discovered, which is termed "happy violence" by George Gerbner of Temple University in the US. "Punitive and vindictive action against dark forces in a mean world is made to look appealing, especially when presented as quick, decisive, and enhancing our sense of control and security", he commented to The Atlantic Monthly some years ago.

Gerbner's research suggests television and film violence "cultivates" our understanding of the world. The violent act is not so much the problem as the message of "Who can get away with what against whom?" The huge rise in the depiction of 'consequence-free violence', and the violence which is "swift, painless, effective . . . and always leads to a happy ending . . ." "We live in a world that is erected by the stories we tell", he said, "and most of the stories are from television. These stories say this is how life works. These are the people who win; these are the people who lose; these are the kinds of people who are villains."

But do the studio executives and directors take this growing call for responsibility seriously? Richard Donner, director of the Lethal Weapon series, responded thus: "If people see gratuitous violence in any of the Lethal Weapon movies, I wonder if they've seen the same movie. It's entertainment. That's my obligation. I brought social issues into the Lethal Weapon movies, like when Danny Glover's family comes down on him for eating tuna, or the 'Stamp out the NRA' sign up in the LA police station. In the last one the daughter wears a pro-choice T-shirt." Hmm, social issues?

Easterbrook, understandably, is pretty pessimistic about any real change in the studio formula. He reckons it won't come till the day "a teenager guns down the sons and daughters of studio executives in a high school in Bel Air or Westwood, [then] Disney and Time-Warner will stop glamorising murder". Let's hope it doesn't take that long.

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