by Jimmy R Allen

INTRODUCTION

The Problem

A history making event passed virtually unnoticed during the Union address by the President of the

United States to the joint session of the Congress. The President called on the communications media to be more responsible by curbing the gratuitous feeding of images of violence to American minds. He said, "For people in the entertainment industry in this country, we applaud your creativity and your world wide success, and we support your freedom of expression. But you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our media all the time." He was met with a thunderous standing ovation. Never have the joint leadership of America, including both parties, all of the key figures of the legislature and the administration, and leading members of the public expressed such unanimity on this subject. It was unprecedented and significant.

Alarms are sounding as Americans worry over the impact of image communication media pouring gore into the living rooms of our homes and into the minds of our children. The dire predictions of a few Paul Reveres sounding warning cries a generation ago is coming true in the streets and schools yards of today. Our killers are becoming younger, our crime is spreading out of the ghettoes into the mansions of our country, our compassion is drying up, and our fears are increasing. While media experiences are not the sole cause of these trends, there is little doubt that they are a major factor.

There is a rising litany of lament being wrung from the souls of grieving Americans about our violent society. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control has declared violence a leading public health issue. Our murder rate has increased six times faster than the population in recent years. Homicide has become the second leading cause of death of all persons fifteen to twenty four years of age (second only to automobile accidents). In 1992 the U. S. Surgeon Genera] pointed out that violence is the leading cause of injury for women ages fifteen to forty four.

"Mindless" and "repetitive" violence is the mental food we are feeding our young. Despite stated concerns about the amount of television viewing done by children, the time spent before television screens by children ages two to eleven continues to expand. It is now averaging 28 hours of weekly television watching. Prime time programming contains an average of five violent acts an hour. That amounts to 5000 acts of violence a year. Cartoons contain even more violence and are steady fare for children. Saturday morning cartoon shows contain 25 acts of violence an hour. That adds up to children watching 8000 screen murders and more than 100,000 acts of violence by the end of their elementary school years. By the end of their teen years, the figures will double: 16,000 screen murders and more than 200,000 acts of violence.

The Evidence Is In

Despite our hand wringing over the amount of time our children spend in front of television sets in America, the trend continues to spiral. Unsupervised television watching is a fact of life. Neil Postman, who has written extensively on the effects of television in our society points out in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death that America is now raising a second generation of children for whom television was "their first and most accessible teacher and, for many, their most reliable companion and friend." When your most reliable companion and friend glorifies violence without consequence, it creates a consequence of its own.

There was a time when many social scientists thought the impact of television viewing was minimal. They sometimes took comfort from the idea that most cartoon violence was so far removed from life situations that it was actually a substitute or release in imagination for acting out angry or hostile impulses in children. The overwhelming evidence of research over the past few years has silenced most of that debate. There are still significant studies on the details of what causes what kind of aggressive behavior, but the fact that there is a direct relationship between what we absorb into our minds and what we do in our actions is now reaffirmed. Dr. Leonard D. Eron, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, cites a summary of over 200 studies published in 1990 which provide "convincing evidence that the observation of violence, as seen in standard everyday television entertainment, does affect the aggressive behavior of the viewers. All types of aggressive behavior, including illegal behaviors and criminal violence, demonstrated highly significant effects associated with the exposure to television violence. The behaviors affected by viewing television violence are cause for social concern."[1]

Television Violence and Homicides

Ten of the ground breaking studies on the relationship between television viewing and violence is the study by Dr. Brandon Centerwall, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington and a psychiatrist in private practice. He traces the homicide rates in the United States, South Africa, and Canada since the introduction of television. He finds that the white homicide rate experienced a 93% increase within ten to fifteen years in the US, a 92% increase in Canada while there was no increase during that same period in South Africa. After television's introduction in South Africa in 1975, there was a 130% increase by l987.~~~ Since there are varying mixes of social trends and racial components, the common denominator is television violence.

Dr. Centerwall contends that the time period allows the impact of value development on preadolescents to bear its fruit. Violence watched in adulthood does not change basic value systems, but violence watched in childhood fashions those value systems. Dr. Centerwall is so convinced of his evidence that he states that ten thousand of the twenty thousand annual homicides in the US are directly attributable to television's impact.

More impressive than the impersonal studies about the relationship between television viewing and homicides are the tragic events reported constantly in our news. Jason Edward Lewis, a high school freshman in a rural community near Atlanta, sat on a swing beside his mother with his arm around her as they spoke. His truck driver father was in back of the house working on a chore in the yard. That same evening, the sixteen year old left his parents watching a television program, retrieved a shotgun from his room, and shot his mother and father to death. While most of the boy's friends reported seeing no signs of anger against his parents, three of them had talked after a movie about killing their parents, robbing a pawn shop, and making their way across the country. There had been no history of violence or abuse in the boy's family. Notes were found reflecting a churning inner anger but not directed against anyone or anything specific. He had a marked behavior change which was traced to drug use. He had also been absorbed in a violent movie "Natural Born Killers" in which heroes Mickey and Mallory killed 52 people in three weeks. He refers to them in his notes in which he says "let's kill 'til we are killed".~3' Such tragedies are taking place all over our nation because of the "no real consequences" violence portrayed in our entertainment media.

The Problem is Larger Than Television

The popular response to the increase of violence in our society is to blame it all on television - its programmers, companies buying its presence in our homes, and those who are writing to pander to the lowest appetites of Americans. Elizabeth Thoman, founder of the Center for Media and Values, points out.

that television elementally is a reflection of a violent culture. We have developed a culture in America which glorifies violence as a way of life. This culture is reflected not only in our glorification of vigilante violence, but also in massive military spending. While the Cold War of confrontation with the Soviet Union created the market of fear, we built up the industries of destruction which then made us the largest sellers of destruction on the earth. As that world situation has changed, we are still grinding out the products of violence and marketing them to small nations or groups within nations. We have not learned the lesson of Humpty Dumpty that when the egg breaks "all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put Humpty together again." It takes more than violence to lead responsibly in a complex world.

BIBLICAL INSIGHTS

Parental Responsibility

Parents are exhorted in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 not only to love God with all their hearts but to teach this love for God to their children.

Hear, 0 Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be asfrontlet between your eyes. you shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. (New King James Version)

• A general meeting on the subject of "Redeeming Television" can take the form of a one hour interactive use of video and discussion. One of the most helpful Christian resources on what the churches and church families can do about television is Dr. Quentin J. Schultze, professor of communications at Calvin College. Dr. Schultze has prepared an hour-long interactive video based on his book, Redeeming Television. The video presents an overview of the challenge with a special emphasis on what churches and Christians can do.
  
  
• Small adult discussion groups can explore media violence and constructive responses using a resource available from the Center for Media Literacy. Dr. Quentin J. Schultze provides another source of information for these groups in his book, Winning Your Kids Back From The Media.
  
  
• Stop the Violence Sunday. A number of communities and denominations are joining in a Stop the Violence Sunday designed to spotlight the problems of violence. While media violence is only one aspect of this emphasis, the effort helps to sensitize people to the problems each community faces. It is sometimes accompanied by a violence inventory of the community conducted by a task force of community religious leaders. Appropriate steps for community actions can be supported by Stop the Violence Sundays.

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