The following article is reprinted by permission from the
opinion page of the Sunday, June 21, 1993 Orange County
Register. Copyright (c) 1992 by J. Neil Schulman. All
other rights reserved.
TUBE SHOCKS
by J. Neil Schulman
What does watching TV make you do?
Since we live in a violent society, we're constantly
hearing arguments that seeing TV violence, particularly as
kids, desensitizes us so we accept real violence more
offhandedly -- maybe it even triggers real violence.
But TV also shows lots of hugging. The standard plot
for most family sitcoms is (1) Problem causes family
members to get mad at one another; (2) Family members abuse
each other in cute ways; (3) All is forgiven by end of show
and everybody hugs.
So television gives us a conflicting set of images:
violence and hugging.
Every popular medium has undergone the charge that it
corrupts youth. The novel was attacked, then movies,
radio, comics, rock and roll, and now TV, music videos, and
rap. The theory behind the attacks is always the same: if
Johnny commits a crime, he's not responsible and his
parents are not responsible: Something Else is responsible.
The problem in this society isn't the easy
availability of drugs, or guns, or pornography, or
television, although all are scapegoated. All are mere
inanimate things: they do only what we have them do.
All supposedly scientific studies on the subject of TV
violence "causing" real violence are based on a theory of
cause-and-effect that is contrary to humans having
the capability of making responsible, moral choices.
But we are volitional beings by nature: we choose what
we do and what we make ourselves. You take two brothers
from an identical lousy environment -- missing father,
overworked mother, no money, rotten inner city
neighborhood. One brother joins a gang and has committed
his first murder within a couple of years. The other
brother hides out from the gangs at the public library and
learns to read out of boredom. Because of reading, he
manages to stay in school and takes a fast-food job while
attending night college.
Even if you postulate a deterministic model
of human behavior, comparing two specific phenomena in
isolation tells us nothing useful. How can you isolate
one specific set of television images from the effects of
the other available images? Further, how do you go inside
the skulls of the people doing acts of violence and find
out the actual causes, when even asking won't give you a
sure answer?
Serial killer Ted Bundy claimed in a final death-row
interview that reading pornography made him do it. But how
did that screwed up psyche \know\ what was cause and what
was effect? It's just as likely that the same impulses
that attracted him to pornography attracted him to violent
acts, and there was a third (prior) cause.
Studies linking TV violence with real violence try to
reduce human behavior to stimulus and effect. It may work
with rat psychology, but it doesn't work with human
psychology. We aren't robots which are programmed. We
learn, choose what we focus upon, change our minds, ignore
what we don't like or believe, focus on what we like and
believe. If someone is prone to violence, then they will
probably seek out and obtain violent images -- and if it
isn't broadcast on TV, it will be sought and obtained
otherwise.
A mere statistical link between two phenomena -- TV
and violence -- supposes a causal link which is unproven.
It's just as likely that TV violence, by providing a
catharsis to those who would otherwise commit real
violence, prevents real violence.
Furthermore, TV violence is almost always part of a
morality play. When criminals initiate violence on TV,
cops use violence to make sure they don't get away with it.
If TV drives home any lesson, it's that using violence for
criminal purposes will bring you to a violent end.
It's even more probable -- given that TV is demand-
driven -- that the increase in real violence is the cause
of the increase of violence on TV. The more violence there
is in real life, the more reason there is to portray it on
news and other "non-fiction" programs, and the more demand
there is from violence-interested individuals to see it
portrayed.
Showing that real violence causes TV violence is
simple. But statistical correlations between any two
particular phenomena, in the absence of a valid theory of
human nature, prove so little that one could just as easily
come up with a plausible-sounding theory of how hugging on
TV sitcoms causes real violence.
Try this on for size.
Johnny is a latch-key kid whose father beat him every
night before the age of five, then abandoned him and
Johnny's mother. Johnny is left at home alone for hour
upon hour, and watches TV. Johnny is fascinated by the TV
sitcoms which show functional families. He watches them
all: \Family Ties\, \The Cosby Show\, \Roseanne\, \Who's
the Boss?\. Over and over again, young Johnny sees these
families hugging each other.
He watches these scenes of family hugging for years,
and they have a cumulative effect. When Johnny is eleven-
years-old, he's in a sporting goods store at a mall, when
he sees a son hug his father, who has just bought the son a
new baseball bat.
Johnny goes over to the baseball bats, picks out a
nice heavy one, then goes over to the son and smashes the
bat into his head, fracturing his skull and instantly
killing him.
Now, what conclusions do we want to draw from this
incident?
1) Hugging on TV causes senseless violence, and the
networks should be subject to greater regulation by the
FCC.
2) Baseball bats are dangerous and should require a
fifteen-day waiting period and background check before they
are sold, and they should never be allowed to be sold to
minors.
3) Johnny committed the act of violence because he was
jealous that another boy had a father who loved him, which
Johnny never had. The trigger for the incident of
violence, and the particular tool Johnny used to commit it,
are more or less random.
This is the sort of question that might appear on your
average test in verbal logic to get a job.
But I wonder how many members of Congress, or
sociologists, or journalists -- or lobbyists against
pornography, rock videos, guns and TV violence -- could
pass such a test?
If there is any valid criticism of TV, it's the same
one that can be brought against drugs: both can be
distractions designed to dull the pain of living in a
stupid, painful, and hope-destroying society. TV, not
religion, is today's opiate of the masses.
If you want to change TV, change the desire of the
viewing public from distraction to intellectual
stimulation.
Or you can just change the channel.
##
J. Neil Schulman is a novelist and screenwriter. He lives in
Los Angeles.