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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Is Hollywood to blame? ![]() ![]() By BBC News Online's Entertainment Correspondent Tom Brook In America, this week's carnage at Columbine High School in Colorado, the worst school shooting in modern times, has renewed charges that media violence, propagated by Hollywood, is to blame. Lethal teen violence has extraordinarily complex roots, but clearly access to weapons, and a sense of alienation, were factors in this killing spree. So was pop culture - at least that's the view of a widening circle of psychologists, and religious and political leaders.
Sabrina Steger, whose daughter was gunned down by a fellow teen in a high school shooting in Kentucky sixteen months ago, firmly believes that pop culture can trigger teen violence. Although she's at a loss to explain exactly what motivated the killings in Colorado, she told me she has no doubt that children today have become "desensitized" by the influence of media and video games. Mrs. Steger, along with the parents of two other children who were slain in the same incident of teen killing, is taking Hollywood to task. This month, collectively, the parents have filed a lawsuit in which they are seeking $130m from 25 entertainment companies, including media giants Sony and Time-Warner. Their contention is that Michael Carneal, the teenager who gunned down their daughters, was inspired by media violence when he fired the lethal shots.
Jack Thompson, the lawyer representing the parents, likens the lawsuit to a product-liability claim. To him the Hollywood entertainment companies who create games, movies and websites are no different from car manufacturers. In his line of thinking if a video game or a movie leads to a death, then the company that produced it created a defective product and must, therefore, pay out any damages, just as they would in a product-liability case. Experts argue that similar lawsuits have failed in the past because of the legal precedent that a media company must actually be seen to incite violence to be liable for damages.
Jack Thompson maintains his aim is to hurt Hollywood with the lawsuit in an effort to curtail media violence. He told me he wants those who run entertainment corporations to adhere to a golden rule that amounts to "don't do to other people's kids what you wouldn't do to your own." Politicians have been quick to exploit this theme. The day after the Colorado school massacre Gary Bauer, the leader of the conservative Family Research Council, announced he was running as a Republican presidential candidate and declared "in the America I want, those Hollywood producers and directors, they wouldn't be able to show their faces in public, because you and every other American would point to them and say : Shame! Shame! Shame!"
Whether the suit succeeds or fails, it is focussing attention on the content of pop culture. It is also putting pressure on Hollywood companies to realise they can't hide behind the constitutional safeguard of the First Amendment. Personally, I would be heartened if this lawsuit prompts filmmakers to accept that their right to freedom of expression, enshrined in the constitution, is not absolute. The use of violence in any media product can have consequences, and those producers who use violence have to accept this responsibility. But it is also clear that scapegoating Hollywood is simplistic and easy - it is no substitute for the much harder task of searching for the root causes of teen violence. The American entertainment industry is just a small part of a much bigger problem, and it would be very unfair to lay all the blame for teen violence at Hollywood's door. ![]() |
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