PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE : Parents, Not Government, Should Tune Out TV Gore

Sen. Paul Simon and several of his purportedly liberal cohorts in Congress think they can help me and my wife raise our daughter Katie. He was in Hollywood recently to lecture television producers about violence on TV. Meanwhile, Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts has proposed a bill that would require all newly manufactured TV sets to include a chip that would allow parents to block out “violent” programming.

Among the issues left unclear amid all the sound bites is how violence is to be defined. Will the vaunted chip be programmed to shut out the evening news, with its real-life murders or body-contact sports? Will the definition include slapstick comedy like that of the Three Stooges, or the Westerns from the ‘50s, like “Have Gun Will Travel”? Will it preclude families from seeing a PBS showing of Kenneth Branaugh’s version of Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” with dead bodies strewn everywhere? Is there truly a single “family” standard of violence incorporating the attitudes and values of Jews, Catholics, atheists, Muslims, Baptists and Quakers, rural and urban, rich and poor, college-educated and illiterate? Who will set the standards?

Now, I admit my wife and I are not very happy when Katie, who just turned 3, runs around the house pretending to shoot us or our cat. But I can’t see how Congress can help us. Katie doesn’t even watch regular TV--just videos we control. Her exposure to guns comes from friends at preschool.

Guns are part of American culture and have been since long before TV and movies were invented. When I grew up in the ‘50s, network TV aired many Westerns in which people got shot and died. My parents taught me to hate violence; the job of teaching Katie that violence is evil is ours.

Washington’s latest assault on the entertainment business is reminiscent of the “healers” in the Middle Ages who prescribed leeches for serious illnesses. Not only did the removal of “sick blood” fail to cure the disease; the treatment, however well-intentioned, seriously weakened the patient. Similarly, politicians who beat up on entertainment, whatever their motives, are making easy headlines but weakening the culture--and doing nothing to help parents or children.

To be sure, every adult will, at one time or another, detest a portion of the popular entertainment to which their children are exposed. Undoubtedly, some parents support the attacks on Hollywood. But are the members of the public who watch supposedly offensive entertainment all morally inferior to those who don’t? Is there really no room for a clash of cultural images in a moral society? Are politicians and pundits and social scientists really better equipped to guide entertainment than the free marketplace?

A belief in a free marketplace of entertainment does not preclude criticism. We have decided that Katie is too young to see “Jurassic Park,” and we now feel we made a mistake by allowing her to see the video of “Wizard of Oz.” The witch was too scary.

It’s helpful to read reviews, to ask friends for advice and to impose a moral context for evaluating entertainment. Criticism is not only constitutionally protected, it is righteous. But there is all the difference between criticism that advocates one idea or aesthetic over another and blacklisting that seeks to prohibit controversial ideas and images from being exposed at all. Contrary to the platitudes of modern-day blacklisters, moral decisions are made in a more complex and mysterious way than decisions about what kind of toothpaste to buy.

Unfortunately, many kids grow up with little parental supervision, and, perhaps, politicians have some wistful hope that curtailing violence on TV will make these “latchkey children” better citizens when they grow up. The reality is unsupervised kids are unlikely to stay home and watch bland TV if they can visit their friends and see the gory stuff. Even if they stayed home, everything we know about leaving kids to grow up by themselves tells us that absence of guidance is infinitely more damaging than anything on TV.

Ironically, Simon can currently be seen, playing himself, in the movie “Dave,” in which he advocates a full-employment bill that, in real life, he no longer actively supports. Rather than pass gun-control legislation and help American families, Congress seems to be saying “let them eat sit-coms.”

Entertainment is not supposed to “solve” problems; it is supposed to allow people to alternatively escape from them or think about them. There is no evidence that repressing art or entertainment improves the moral character of people.

So, no thanks, senators and congressmen, I do not want my daughter growing up in a blander America in which artists are punished for exploring the dark side of life. Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock, Bruce Springsteen, William Faulkner, Martin Scorsese and the Greek tragedians are among the artists who could not have searched for truth under the bureaucratic eye of Congress. Unfortunately, there is pain and ugliness in the world. We will not raise moral children by pressuring for a culture that ignores real life.