Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Guns don’t kill people, movies do.
Specifically, movies like Priest.
As Clint Eastwood said without regard to anachronism in Unforgiven,
“Say, what?”
Let’s give Senator Bob Dole this much: Had he not fired this latest shot in
the culture war, a national debate on the influence of popular art and culture
on society would not have been so quickly joined. His speech may have been
poorly prepared (he hadn’t seen the movies he condemned) and his motives
cynical (he desperately needs to shore up his right flank), but he at least got
the national conversation started.
Actually, we’re only continuing an argument initiated in the last presidential
campaign, the one in which Vice President Quayle blamed the breakdown of the
family on shows like Murphy Brown, which he said promote single
parenthood. In the intervening years, the flames have been fanned by criminal
charges and scandals associated with well-known rap artists like Snoop Doggy
Dogg and Tupac Shakur, and the release of movies like Natural Born
Killers and Pulp Fiction.
Dole’s attack was as broad an assault on the entertainment industry as any
that have been recently leveled. Broader than those by Jerry Falwell, Pat
Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and others, who have tended to aim for specific
personalities or programs. And few would argue that the film component of the
entertainment empire doesn’t need savaging. Mainstream American films are, on
the whole, worse than they have been in the 20 years this observer has been on
the job. The quest for the $100 million blockbuster – an increasing Hollywood
appetite after the successes of Jaws and Star Wars – has
marginalized the kind of bold, original filmmaking that held the industry in
thrall from roughly 1967 to 1975, years that gave us Francis Coppola, Martin
Scorsese, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Peter Bogdanovich, Mike Nichols, Milos
Forman, and many others.
But Dole’s complaint is not that Hollywood is producing dull, predictable,
soft-edged, unimaginative, pandering, phonily optimistic, unoriginal,
demographically engineered, sentimental mush. His complaint is that too much of
this mush corrupts our values with gratuitous sex and violence.
Don’t get me wrong – it is time to talk about the effect of entertainment on
society. Before Dole’s comments, there has been a kind of backdrop discussion
going on about the general coarsening of American life. It usually includes
observations about the diminishing use of “please” and “thank you,” how the
social graces of young children have ratcheted downward precipitously from a
generation ago, how a door held open for a stranger produces, as often as not,
nothing but eyes straight ahead. The influence of movies and music may belong
in there somewhere, although I don’t see how Pulp Fiction can be held
responsible for the guy who flips you off after you’ve pulled in front of him
even though nobody in that lane is going to arrive at his/her terminus
appreciably before anyone else.
That entertainment influences behavior to some degree, however anecdotally, is
a given. Witness the story about a person who was killed while re-enacting a
scene from a movie in which a character laid down on the center strip of a
highway. But it is truly difficult to accept the notion that movies and song
lyrics, by themselves, corrupt behavior in any profound way. We boomers grew up
with a lot of violence in Westerns and cop shows, but that didn’t turn us into
a society of lawless hoodlums. As Clint Eastwood said, “I don’t think the
public is that stupid.”
Movies and music reflect culture. The factors that shape culture
are education and parenting, and there is widespread agreement that these
institutions, as currently practiced in American life, suck. Informal polls of
moviegoers reported in the press indicate that the consumers of popular
entertainment – those most likely to be adversely affected by the stuff they’re
paying for – believe that family breakdown, not moviemakers and recording
artists, are at the root of social problems.
But if we were to assume that Dole and his kind are correct, that movies
do have a direct and immediate effect on people, we then have to decide which
movies give offense. Libby Dole says one of them is Priest, because it
depicts the problems of one priest who is gay and another who is heterosexually
active. Viewed myopically, Priest is “about” sex. What it’s really about
is standing up for what is right, about finding renewed passion for a life
devoted to care for others.
Too many of our cultural hall monitors mistake depiction for
promotion. I’ve heard it said that The Bridges of Madison County promotes infidelity. If that’s so, then Dirty Harry promotes tweed
jackets. Please, people, let’s not conclude that a depicted act of violence is
a call to violence.
The good news is that we, the people, will benefit from this debate, even if
it remains for the most part politically motivated and superficial. I think
that when real thought is given to the issue, it will be determined that while
movies and music contribute somewhat to bad behavior, the root causes go much
deeper and have to do with child-rearing, religion, and education. I tend to
agree with acerbic comedian Dennis Miller, who flatly says the problem is not
media, but education. Improve that, he says, then our kids won’t have to pass
through metal detectors to get an F-minus in wood shop.
“Don’t censor Hollywood; it’s supposed to be shitty trash!” No, the issue
deserves more serious consideration than that. But for now, I’m not about to
let Dole or Quayle or any of a dozen other assault-weapons-loving,
Schwarzenegger-excusing Republicans tell me which movies are good for me. n
This article appears in June 16 • 1995 and June 16 • 1995 (Cover).