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Trisha Kirk   Kirk is a fourth-year political science student who can form an opinion about anything, but always gives the other side a fighting chance. She looks forward to hearing your comments and opinions at trishakirk@hotmail.com.

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In appropriately dramatic Hollywood style, the Federal Trade Commission recently accused the entertainment industry of rape. It rapes our nation’s children by willfully gearing adult-oriented entertainment and similar advertisements toward their impressionable minds.

According to the FTC’s ludicrous 104-page report, movie studios, record companies and video game makers are placing advertisements for violent and sexual material in magazines and broadcasts that consumers under 17 are likely to see. The FTC argues that such companies are deceptive in their advertising, using cartoons and childlike images to rein children in, and claim that their graphic media is responsible for youth violence and sexual irresponsibility.

A sinister, sinful Hollywood has moved into the American family room, and the FTC wants to stop it. It’s funny how the entertainment industry, self-regulating to its heart’s content, hasn’t been lambasted like this since Jerry Falwell’s Teletubbie tirade – and then this report. What is even funnier is that legislators think they can and must use the findings to censor entertainment marketing – and of course, entertainment itself – in America. America, the bastion of freedom, home of the First Amendment, Eminem and “Hustler.”

What provoked this call for reform? Why does Congress feel it has to put its foot down in Hollywood?

  Illustration by JARRET QUON/Daily Bruin If it’s not just a blur in your memory by now, you might remember the tragedy of Columbine High School. Fifteen lives were lost at the Littleton, Colo., school last June when two students in black trenchcoats opened fire on students and teachers. Violent media supposedly influenced the killers, so about a month after the massacre, President Clinton ordered that the entertainment industry be placed under government scrutiny and requested a review by the FTC.

Over a year later, the FTC responded with a phone-book sized sermon declaring that Hollywood is in tragic disrepair and must be fixed before it corrupts any more kiddies. Explicit-lyric warnings on CDs, NC-17 film ratings and the video game rating system apparently aren’t doing enough to stop Hollywood from “targeting” kids with adult material. In fact, the FTC claims that the entertainment industry manipulates these ratings so it can more easily reach a younger audience.

The Columbine shootings were not the only time that Hollywood was blamed for youth violence. Several school shootings and violent gang-related acts have been blamed on violent movies and video games. The game Mortal Kombat was the center of attention when it was considered too graphic to be released without a rating. The first night “Interview With a Vampire” opened in theaters, there were incidents across America of people being bitten on the neck. And many blame rapper Tupac Shakur’s drive-by murder on his music’s violent lyrics.

While these incidents appear to have a connection with entertainment violence, they could have occurred for many reasons. The blame for countless shootings, robberies and carjackings will always be slapped on entertainment, but will censoring the industry really curb youth violence? Not a chance in Hollywood.

While she agreed that entertainment marketing strategies must change, California Senator Barbara Boxer acknowledged that other factors causing youth violence must be considered as well. At the congressional FTC report hearings, she cited the availability of firearms as a potential reason that youth crime is rising (L.A. Times, Sept. 13, 2000).

Drugs and violence in the home have also been cited as causes of youth violence. In these cases, censorship will not work.

The FTC and Congress think entertainment and its advertisements are causing youth violence, but censoring ads for adult material because children may see them would only exacerbate the problem. Like the “War on Drugs,” a crackdown on entertainment marketing will only cause an underground realm of film, music and gaming to run rampant. If entertainment conglomerates cannot market their product the way they want to, they will sell it any way they can. It will still reach an audience and the same people seeing those ads and that media now will find a way to do the same even after censorship is imposed.

Crossing the fine line that separates regulation and censorship takes away artists’ right to express themselves. Whether it be Eminem rapping about killing his wife, the hate violence in “American History X,” or lifelike pools of blood in countless Sega games, these graphic depictions are how some artists perform. And much of what they perform is based on the realities of life in America, however “adult” those realities might be.

The Bible is not censored, and it contains enough murder and adultery to rival “Days of Our Lives.” Shakespeare is also widely read and the Bard had a penchant for bloodshed unlike any director in Hollywood. Documentaries about the Holocaust or warring tribes in Africa are not censored and they are the truest pictures of violence. Censoring such portions of our media and their preceding advertisements is not in question, so why should the marketing of other reality-based entertainment face censorship?

It is true that Hollywood produces material with violence and sex appeal and for a good reason – it’s guaranteed to sell. It is also true that entertainment executives try to market their products to as many consumers as possible. For example, executives responsible for the recent movie “Coyote Ugly” had a scene removed from the film to avoid an ‘R’ rating. This meant that a wider, possibly younger audience could see the film, which surely didn’t change much after the deletion of just one scene.

Some have argued that in such cases, Hollywood is sidestepping its own, outdated rating methods (a 32-year-old system), and that merits reform. But that doesn’t mean they are targeting youths by marketing the movie with billboards and commercials, and it doesn’t mean their advertising is deceptive, as the FTC claims. Billboards covered with busty women are hardly advertising a film that promises to teach moral lessons to a 10-year-old. It is up to parents to prevent their children from seeing films they feel are too adult. That is what the ratings system is for.

Hollywood is not disputing the FTC’s accusations and seems willing to find common ground. The Director’s Guild of America recently announced that it welcomes government scrutiny of movie marketing as long as its measures don’t “cross the line into censorship” (Associated Press, Sept. 14, 2000). Some directors have called for a new, more detailed ratings system that would include all entertainment media. But the choice and implementation of a new system should not be Washington’s. There is no congressional action to be taken here. If any reforms are indeed needed in the entertainment industry’s ratings and marketing systems, those reforms belong in the hands of Hollywood and its executives and not in the gray area of government censorship.

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