Some critics pretend to know what motivates celebrities to lend themselves to human rights causes: that the causes are dumping grounds for the guilt that may attend lives of affluence and privilege; that the benevolence associated with taking up a cause somehow assuages or offsets a public perception of Hollywood hedonism; that having your name and face put to a cause is just another self-centered spotlight, another photo op, another PR stunt; or that it is simply another fashionable bauble on an evening gown or a tuxedo lapel. But what does motive matter if a star’s efforts in a cause make a positive difference in the lives of the downtrodden and dispossessed? Doesn’t selflessly helping less fortunate people advance civilization despite a subset of murky motives? Certainly, although it would make little sense to countermand humane endeavor by inhumane endeavor.
Celebrities make movies and TV programs and music that are often times violent in content. People are hurt, maimed, tortured, raped, murdered, and killed in incredibly realistic ways. I am a Vietnam combat veteran and I almost walked out of Saving Private Ryan because of the over-the-top, violent special effects in its first twenty minutes or so. The empirical data that indicates that media violence leads to violence and desensitization to violence in children is questionable at best. For every finding in support there is a finding in opposition. Apparently, the data tell researchers what they want to hear, so objectivity in studies is dubious. I single-parented my first daughter and I was not particularly vigilant during that time in my life about what we watched on TV or at the movies. I even rented a VCR and showed Alien at her ninth birthday party. She is thirty-seven-years old now, has a Master’s in Nursing, her own family, and is an upstanding and outstanding citizen so, apparently, media violence has had no harmful and lasting effect on her. But that is not to say that media violence can’t have a negative effect on some children. What about children who live in violent, abusive homes and also have a steady diet of media violence that, perhaps, desensitizes them to their own plight and positively reinforces the violent behavior that seems a rule in their homes? If so, is it possible that they might have a propensity to pass that violence on to others, including their own progeny, without forethought? We don’t need to scrounge around for a debatable “study” to use as a surrogate for our own rational minds. We know that we can’t answer that question with an absolute “yes” or a “no.” We also know that it is not a question to answer capriciously because the potential consequences for a knee-jerk “no” can be grave when you factor in a 2009 report from Child Help that states that “approximately 3.3 million child abuse reports and allegations were made involving an estimated 6 million children” and that “14 percent of prison inmates were abused as children.” You could argue those statistics, I’m sure, if you are inclined to see this as a numbers game. Nevertheless, the victims of violence in America are deprived of their human rights and often their lives. In fact, America has the highest prison population rate (2.3 million) in the world so, in a very real sense, we are all hostage to violence. We all must look over our shoulders and stay away from the shadows, and that kind of compulsory, intrusive vigilance deprives us of freedom of movement, place, and peace in this land that boasts its freedom. Is it probable, at least, to assume that some of that deprivation owes its origins, in part, to violence in media, media which owes its success, in large part, to its stars?
Off-loading the responsibility on parents who should not allow their children to watch violent media is a cliched excuse and a palliative that can’t soothe because all parents are not responsible enough to keep their children away from harmful things—like loaded guns, unhealthy foods, tobacco, drugs, alcohol, and profligate peers. The reason that we have laws is to protect ourselves from one another—and ourselves. Some states (e.g. Oregon Revised Statue 339.010) even have laws that require parents to make sure that their children attend school, and parents in violation can be cited into court. And, indeed, the Motion Picture Association of America has devised a motion picture rating system that warns parents that a film may contain scenes with sex, violence, substance abuse, profanity, and other mature content because the motion picture industry itself understands that these scenes may be harmful to children. Ironically, the movie industry’s own rating system tells us in no uncertain terms that media violence is harmful to youth. However, the rating system is unenforceable—as it should be— and was instituted primarily to ward off government censorship, so its effectiveness ostensibly relies on parents who are not always reliable. This same irony is laughably palpable on the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarette packages: “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy”—but light up while you're reading the warning. What is more, movies are no longer restricted to a theater where eons ago admittance was monitored by a uniformed usher. Movies these days are readily available at children’s delicate fingertips on devices that fit in shirt pockets. No parents required.
I am not naive enough to suggest that violent films be outlawed anymore than I am to suggest that cigarettes and alcohol should be outlawed. However, I wonder when celebrities glide among the starving and diseased masses in, say, Darfur, if they consider that blowing someone’s brains out in their next movie is perhaps also a cause of human rights deprivation—and what might happen if they took up that cause by refusing to promote violence in their principal work.
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