_ TV violence: the case for control

Should there be _ federal
guidelines restricting the portrayal
of violence on television — par-
ticularly for family programs?

An increasing number of
parents’ and educators’
organizations think so — and have
stated their opinions emphatically.
And they’re supported by an im-
posing array of alarming facts
gleaned from various studies that
have examined the effects of TV
violence.

But so far the federal govern-
ment and the commission at which
must of the campaign is directed,
the Canadian Radio, Television
and Telecommunications Com-
mission, has shown little in-
clination to act.

Corporations in the television
business have of course, put up
powerful resistance to any
government regulation of
television programming, first
arguing that TV could not be linked
to social problems and later
asserting that they would them-
selves make the necessary
changes. But the problem con-
tinues and the demand for federal
government intervention is
growing in spite of the networks.

In successive national and
provincial conventions, the Home
and School Federation has voiced
concern over the effects that its
own members had observed of
television violence on children’s
behavior. Initially, it sought
support from program sponsors
and the television networks
themselves for a _ voluntary
restriction by which TV stations
would arrange programming with
minimal violence between the
hours of 2 p.m. and 10 p.m.

But voluntary regulation didn’t

— and doesn’t — work. For the
networks, profit is the first con-
sideration, well ahead of any
concern for socially responsible
programming.

Allan Slaight, president of Global
Television in Toronto voiced the
television industry’s attitude to
programming restraints in an
interview with the Toronto Star in
March. ‘‘Any voluntary controls
would have to take into account
that the Toronto-Hamilton area is
the most competitive in the world
for broadcasters right now,’ he
told the paper. ‘‘Nobody can afford
to lose audiences.”

“The networks are private
companies chasing profits with
violent programming,’’ Judy
LaMarsh, head of the Ontario
commission on violence in the
media, declared in the same issue
of the Star. She added that in the
U.S. — where much of Canadian
programming originates — violent
broadcasting ‘‘is out of control.”

Faced with the refusal of the
networks to police their own
programming, the Ontario Home
and School Federation told
LaMarsh’s commission in 1976 “. .
a clear responsibility lies with the
CRTC to regulate broadcasting in
Canada and to impose guidelines
and regulations respecting the
portrayal of violence during the
broadcast of a_ television
program.” The position adopted in
the submission was subsequently
adopted by the _ federation’s
national convention.

Last month, the B.C. School
Trustees’ Association convention
added its influential voice to the
campaign for federal regulation of
television programming and voted
251 to 76 in favor of a motion urging

VIOLENCE INDEX
2205
eo

wl

1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976

TV violence on U.S. programs, based in this graph on the number of
violent characters as well as the frequency of violence per program and

per hour,
monitored in 1967.

an amendment to the Broadcasting
Act which would require the CRTC
to set guidelines governing the
portrayal of violence _ in
programming.

If the demand for federal
government regulation has grown
louder in the last year, it is for
some very good reasons. In the
first place, TV violence in the U.S.
has hit its highest level since 1967
when it was first monitored. And
more and more’ studies are
discovering the social havoc
wrought by those _ violent
programs.

A survey carried out earlier this
year by Temple University in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
showed that of 2,200 students
surveyed, aged 7 to 10, two-thirds
were afraid that ‘“‘somebody bad”’
might get them in their homes.

has reached its highest point since programs were first

Twenty-five per cent of the
students said that their fears were
based on television programs
‘where people fight and shoot
guns.” The more television wat-
ched, the worse were students’
fears.

Although the study was carried
out in the U.S., Canadians cannot
be unconcerned.. In fact, their
children may be getting an even
more distorted view because many
of the U.S. programs are received
in this country. Moreover, since
the frequency of actual violence is
lower in Canada than in the U.S.,
Canadians are exposed to far more
fictional violence omthe TV screen
than ever occurs in real life.

Children are the first victims of
the effects of the syndrome but
they are not the only ones. The
excessive overemphasis in TV

The economics of

Pornographic movies, once
limited to dingy, store-front
cinemas in the red-light ‘‘combat
zones” of big cities have spread to
the suburbs and towns, not only in
theatres but also on closed circuit
and cable television. The next
target is the tube in everyone’s
living room. Once made by under-
ground producers operating with
gangster funding, sex films are
attracting ‘‘respectable” investors
from the money-lending com-
munity.

As legitimate businesses, paying

taxes, even hiring union labor,

when it suits their purposes,
members of the quasi-legal porno
industry supply about 10 per cent of
the top 50 box office attractions,
according to weekly listings in
theatrical trade journals. X-rated
films are now booked into first-run
movie palaces. At the neigh-
borhood shopping centre multi-
cinema, a thin cinderblock wall
now separates Walt Disney’s
“Snow White” from ‘What the
Bellhop Saw Through The Key
Hole’.

Porno production costs are
traditionally low although it is no
longer necessary to develop the
film in the producer’s bathtub. A
well-known porno performer,
announcing that she had just
completed a three-hour feature
was asked how long it took to shoot.
“Three hours,’’ she replied. Such
economies are appreciated by
investors.

Now that pornos are released
under the labels of major studios
and distributors, some budgets run
as high as half a million dollars.
Patrons paying $5 admissions want
Hollywood backgrounds in full
color with mood music.

In their latest twist, sexploitation
entrepreneurs have borrowed a
tactic from big business. They turn
out a full-length feature in two

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 27, 1977—Page 10

editions. The hard-core version
gets an X-rating, a valuable asset,
while the soft-core version is given
the milder R (or restricted) rating.
These two categories account for
56 per cent of the 480 films rated by
the U.S. motion picture agency in
1976. Of the remainder, 150 are
classified as PG _ (parental
guidance) and 62 G (general).
With dual-standard releases the
potential audience is greatly in-
creased as are the profits. Two
products are manufactured at the
same time with the same capital
outlay. Insurance against cen-
sorship is built in. Should the
courts rule pro or con on por-
nography, all bets are covered.
The double standard caper is not
original. In the 1930’s when
morality was defined and
regulated by their own self-
imposed Hays Code, Hollywood
producers ~ sometimes made
features in two versions, one for
family fare and the other, chauvin-
istically called ‘‘the South
American version,’ for export.

pornography

Bootleg versions were screened at
stag smokers behind drawn
shades.

Ironically, former customers for
“blue”? movies from the U.S., such
as Argentina and France, now
accept only the expurgated ver-
sions, insisting on deletion of
material that violates their
national standards of propriety.

American pornography expands
its domestic market through high
pressure advertising as movie
pages of daily newspapers will
demonstrate, not to mention
posters in theatre lobbies ‘and lurid

trailers screened as “coming at- |

tractions.’’ Attempts by well-
meaning civic groups to curtail
these excesses for the protection of
children come into direct con-
frontation with finance capital
which controls the bulk of the
entertainment industry.

Next on the agenda for the
monopolies is porno-TV, placing
so-called “freedom of expression”’
ahead of social responsibility.

Pornography is notoriously

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Hal Griffin

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sexist in its encouragement of
male supremacist attitudes, but
women are not its only targets. As
currently in the U.S. in particular,
it is often deliberately racist. Some
specialized pornography features
child abuse, sadomasochism, and
sexual bestiality that is criminal
by any civilized .code. And the
violence it does to society is in-
calculable. Basically an attack on
humanity as a whole, its principal
victim is the working class.
—Robert Hart
Daily World

2679 E. Hastings St.,
Vancouver, B.C.
253-1221

-adventure,’’ one psychiatrist put it,

‘countless social problems in its

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programming on crime dramas
has been shown to make adults far
more receptive to increased
budget allocations for more and
better equipped police and to ac-
cept more punitive laws and arrest

procedures.
Inevitably the network
executives responsible for

television programming argue that
violent programs “are only what
people want’’ and “merely reflect |
the violence in society.”’

That argument, of course,
ignores the formidable powers of
manipulation of which television iS
capable. But specious as it is, the
argument has nevertheless held
many regulatory agencies at bay
— and violent programs become
more excessive as TV ratings
respond to the manipulated
demand.

In fact, the violence in most of
the contentious television
programs — Baretta, Starsky and
Hutch, the Bionic Woman and the
scores of others of the type — has
little if anything to do with the
reality it is purported to reflect.
The violence on these programs 15
gratuitous, completely without
cause, meaning or context. The
violent crime is the basis of all
action and producers outdo
themselves to. create complex
situations from which central —
characters can only extricate
themselves by violent means.

“Violence is seen as a great.

“and he who is best at it wins.”

For the moment, parents con”
cerned about the television
programs that their children watch
will have to monitor the viewing:
But every ounce of public pressure
will have to be brought to bear

compel the federal government
act.

And the government ites a
responsibility to act. ‘‘Televisio®
violence needs checking in a big
way,’’ Nicholas Zill, the psy —
chologist who directed the study at —
Temple University has em-
phasized. “‘And it can’t be done
merely by a Sesame Street or 4
family hour concept.”

The desperate drive for profits i?
television programming has left

path — problems the enormity ©
which we are only now beginning
see. Unless Ottawa begins to liste
to parents and educators — an
their organizations those —
problems can only become worse —
—Sean Griffit

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