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THE COMING MEDIA CRACKDOWN!
I knew it was coming.
It always happens around this time every four or so
years, at least during the last decade--you can almost set your clock to it.
I’m referring, of course, to the inevitable election
year media crackdown. These things always occur on or immediately preceding the
year of a major election and entail entertainment industry transgressions
apparently so grievous the government is forced to step in, threatening to enact
legislation to keep us safe from the excesses of the big, bad media.
Three points are always evident in addition to the fact that, as mentioned above, the crackdown always occurs around a major election. First, there’s one or more Galvanizing Events that capture the public’s attention and allow for government officials to prove their worthiness by making a big stink. In 1995, during Senator Bob Dole’s witch hunt against Hollywood’s apparent “Nightmares of Depravity”, those galvanizing events were the many killings attributed to Oliver Stone’s NATURAL BORN KILLERS. In 1999 it was the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, and in 2004 Janet Jackson’s Super bowl “wardrobe malfunction”.
Point number two is the fact that the finger-pointers always seem to have something to promote and/or cover up. In 1995 Senator Dole was gearing up for his ‘96 Presidential run, which just happened to coincide with his anti-Hollywood jihad. In 1999 President Bill Clinton was desperately trying to distract the public from his impeachment hearings, for which the Columbine massacre provided a heaven-sent opportunity--around the same time Clinton also ordered Iraq bombed, which made his admonishments against violent media all the more difficult to swallow--and in 2004 George W. Bush and co. were looking to stay in power despite falling approval ratings.
As for point number three, it decrees that the entire entertainment industry, or at least those segments of it most disliked by authorities, get bashed. Hence, in ’95 not only NATURAL BORN KILLERS got slagged by Mr. Dole but also PULP FICTION and virtually Hollywood’s entire post-1950’s output (though Dole was careful to leave Republican-friendly fare like TRUE LIES off his persecution list). The Columbine inquest focused not only on Marilyn Manson and Rammstein, both said to be favorites of the shooters, but also THE BASKETBALL DIARIES and THE MATRIX (though no evidence exists that the killers ever saw either film) and the government’s perennial whipping-boy Howard Stern, who was censured by the Colorado legislature for apparently off-color comments about the case (which was clearly far easier then coughing up the funds needed to rebuild Columbine High, which the legislature couldn’t do). Stern was again the focal point of the ’04 Janet Jackson scandal, which led to increased FCC indecency fines that in turn led to Stern leaving terrestrial radio...even though he had absolutely nothing to do with the incident.
In all three cases we witnessed enough political grandstanding to fill three seasons of THE WEST WING, while Hollywood reacted in each instance by meekly digging its head in the sand and waiting for the mess to blow over. In all cases it eventually did, with the official wisdom being that the industry “narrowly escaped” censorship due to a last-minute change of heart by government officials (I tend to believe those “narrow escapes” were due to money changing hands, but anyway...), followed by a stern warning that they’d better clean up their act or next time things might go differently.
I wrote a supremely pissed-off 1999 article on the Columbine reaction that was published in Gauntlet magazine. The anger, I can assure you, was genuine; back then I did a lot of shouting over the issue. Nowadays I’ve mellowed considerably. Certainly I remain virulently opposed to censorship, but find it easier to view the bigger picture: the fact is censorship has always existed, and always overturned sooner of later. HUCKLEBERRY FINN, let’s not forget, was once considered deeply subversive, and in 1997 VHS copies of the German film THE TIN DRUM were forcibly yanked from libraries and several private homes in Oklahoma City (the subject of more angry Gauntlet articles by yours-truly), yet the film is now back in the hands of film buffs everywhere.
All of which leads me, in an admittedly roundabout way, to the latest media furor: the case of After Dark Films and the “accidental” advertising for its upcoming splatter flick CAPTIVITY. You might have heard about this incident already: in mid-March several middle-school students complained about a graphically violent billboard for the film posted near their school. After Dark quickly pulled the offending images, with the (lame) excuse that they were never supposed to go up in the first place and that the entire thing was a mistake.
Doesn’t exactly seem like a Columbine-worthy incident to me (but then I never thought Janet Jackson’s breast-bearing was a big deal, either), yet the Motion Picture Association of America is doing its best to turn it into one. A week after the CAPTIVITY billboards were pulled MPAA CEO Dan Glickman claimed he was “very, very troubled by this particular case” and vowed “this issue will not go unnoticed”. The MPAA last week announced it will hold up CAPTIVITY’S rating submission time for a month because its distributor exhibited non-MPAA approved advertising, which will likely postpone the film’s scheduled May 18 release date. Never mind that After Dark Films, being an independent company, aren’t MPAA members and so aren’t bound by the same rules as the majors; Glickman, as promised, just isn’t letting the issue drop.
Such behavior might seem inexplicable from the MPAA. In the wake of the muckraking ’06 documentary THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, which took a deeply unflattering look into this notoriously secretive organization’s inner workings, the MPAA has been trying to soften its image (Glickman recently announced it would be changing many of its hard-and-fast rules on how films are rated, among other things). So why all the vitriol to After Dark, which may have violated advertising rules but has recanted profusely? My theory: the MPAA, foreseeing the inevitable government inquest, is simply covering its ass.
And you can rest assured there will be an inquest, with ‘08’s
Presidential hopefuls getting their licks in at the movie/TV/video game
industry, one of the most pliable punching bags around. If it’s not the After
Dark Films advertising “mistake” that prompts the scrutiny than it’ll surely be
something else--news has just surfaced about a campus shooting in Virginia that
reportedly left 21 people dead. Little is known about the shooter or his
motives at this point, but stay tuned!
Keep in mind also that the latest edition of the
Federal Trade Commission report on the marketing of violent movies, television
and video games to children is coming out soon. Instituted in 2000, the FTC
report always seems to be updated around election time (imagine that...)
and always seems to tell publicity-hungry politicians exactly what they want to
hear. A recent New York Times article on the subject opines that it “might just
kick the issue back into the political arena...if the new study were to find
that the industry has violated or has outgrown its voluntary standards.” My
prediction: the FTC will reach that very conclusion, and indeed thrust
the issue “back into the political arena.”
And no, you needn’t worry about censorship, or at least
not permanently. True, there may well be some immediate suppression, as history
has shown. (True story: in early 2000 the senate passed a Columbine-inspired
gun-control bill forbidding violent movie or television fare to be shot on
federal land--yet these days, with states desperately trying to stop the spread
of so-called “runaway productions” shot outside the US, that law appears to have
been put on hold.) But in the long term you can bet things will go back to
semi-normal for our friends in the media...provided the right palms are
greased. No, I don’t have any proof that anybody is or will be payed off by
Hollywood, but in today’s political climate I think it’s a fair assumption.
For that matter, I have no proof that any of what I’ve
predicted will ever occur, being far from clairvoyant. This is, however, an
educated guess...and I promise that when it’s all over I’ll try not to say
I-told-you-so!
--4/16/07