Before all 11 victims in the 1997 film Scream 2 have been gored, shot or hacked to death, there’s an odd bit of dialogue. A roomful of young Hollywood hotties–playing a roomful of Midwestern college hotties–debate whether film violence causes real violence. “It’s directly responsible,” says the student played by Josh Jackson (Pacey on Dawson’s Creek). “That’s so Moral Majority,” sneers Cici, the coed played by Sarah Michelle Gellar (a.k.a. Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
This rare instance of Hollywood introspection would be more interesting if it weren’t so cynical. A few minutes later, the action has returned to a heart-thumping pace. Cici is stabbed in the back and thrown from the balcony of her sorority house. The rock sound track swells as the camera dwells for a moment on her corpse.
Last week the action in Hollywood stopped again, but this time it may not resume so breezily. It has been nearly two months since the shootings at Columbine High, and much of the political maneuvering in the weeks following focused on guns. But now Washington has unleashed a set of proposals designed to prevent kids from watching their favorite stars threatened with grisly deaths. Many politicians are hoping that by reining in violent imagery, they can prevent future Columbines–or at least convince constituents that they are trying to. Americans seem receptive: 64% of the respondents in a TIME/CNN poll said they favor legislation to restrict teenagers’ access to violent and sexually explicit entertainment.
President Clinton used Washington’s most recognizable set, the White House, to announce that most cinema owners had agreed to require young people to show photo IDs when they ask for tickets to R-rated movies (an R rating means those under 17 must be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian). The agreement with the National Association of Theatre Owners is voluntary–as is the ratings system itself–but others want stricter regulations.
Representative Henry Hyde, Republican of Illinois, has the most ambitious plan. It would ban sales of obscenely violent and explicitly sexual material to minors. Hyde also wants Congress to urge stores to make song lyrics available to parents before purchase. And he wants a study on the effects of music and video games on youth violence–though the Congressman seems to believe he knows what the findings would be. “There is a spiritual vacuum in these young people,” he said last week, “that is filled with the culture of death and violence.”
Senators got into the production too. Presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona and his colleague Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut have proposed a bill to force the show-biz industry to label violent products with government-approved warnings. The labels would fall under the law that requires warnings on cigarettes. (Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, a crabby film producer suggested this text: “Enjoy the Film, but Remember: Uncontrolled Firearm Use May Be Dangerous to Your Health.”)
The Senate has passed a bill that would stop directors from using federal property in violent pics. (Scratch the next Department of Transportation thriller.) And Washington is threatening to recast suave movie honchos as dastardly tobacco execs. The President has ordered an investigation into whether the industry markets violence to youngsters. Similar investigations showed that tobacco firms targeted kids; the scandal damaged that industry’s image.
Some of the harshest proposals come from the states. Concerned about what kids are listening to, state senator Dale Shugars of Michigan attended a Marilyn Manson concert (with two bodyguards). Shugars was so horrified that he wrote a bill to require warning labels on concert tickets. The bill passed the state senate last month; the American Civil Liberties Union and the Recording Industry Association of America have promised stiff opposition before the House vote, expected in the fall.
But if the National Rifle Association played a steely John Wayne in reaction to gun-control proposals, prominent figures in Hollywood have acted more like Woody Allen characters. At a hand-wringing June 4 panel discussion titled “Guns Don’t Kill People…Writers Do,” several screenwriters virtually re-enacted the navel-gazing scene from Scream 2. “People who say we have no responsibility are extremists,” said screenwriter William Mastrosimone (Extremities; With Honors). “We have to look at the effect of what we do on the rest of the world.”
Most studio executives are reluctant to criticize publicly the new pop-culture crackdown. “These things are cyclical,” says Peter Bart, a former studio exec who now edits Variety. “Washington comes forth with the rhetoric and gets as much media attention as possible, and then Hollywood lies low.” It leaves the p.r. to a Washington pro, Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America. A fierce defender of Hollywood, Valenti did tactical maneuvering last week; he publicly urged his industry to consider excising filth from films. And he praised the announcement by theater owners. But he opposes forcing the industry to adhere to government-imposed ratings.
Especially coming from a Republican, the Hyde proposals smack uncharacteristically of Big Government, critics say. “This turns the government into Mr. Mom,” says Representative Mark Foley, a moderate Republican from Florida. In an interview with TIME, Hyde argued, “What parents are going to cope with Disney or Time Warner? I’m for smaller government. But it takes someone big and strong like the government to stand up to these purveyors.” Yet Hyde is vague on what would constitute unacceptable content. (He told the Wall Street Journal that “any movie that has more than 50 killings is pushing the envelope.”) And there may be a larger conservative agenda at work in his bill, which would bar kids from seeing not just the most vile images but also any depiction of hom*osexuality.
The movie-rating system was instituted in the ’60s to ward off such meddling. But some insiders admit the system needs attention. The NC-17 rating, created in 1990 to replace the stigmatized X, has become all but useless. Because most newspapers won’t advertise NC-17 films, studios do almost anything to ensure that their movies get an R rating. But even if Washington could devise a perfect system, a larger task would remain: identifying kids so close to the edge that a mere film could push them over.
–Reported by Jay Branegan and John F. Dickerson/Washington, Nichole Christian/Detroit and David S. Jackson/Los Angeles
