(This post is rated PG for descriptions of televised violence.)
I don’t often to do this, but I was sick this week, and for the first time in years I watched most of an episode of prime-time TV. The show was Knight Rider, which I recall rather enjoying in its earlier run 25 years or so ago. It kept me somewhat numbingly entertained for most of an hour. Later, though, I had time to reflect on the truly chilling implications of what I had just seen.
There are two chief characters in Knight Rider. One is an incredibly advanced artificial-intelligence computer. Though the show is set in today’s timeframe, this AI character, utterly unique in all of the world, was the product of a small team of (what did you expect?) attractive youngish people. Believability is strained from the start.
This computer is truly astonishing. It’s capable of fully human symbolic reasoning and communication. It knows virtually everything: in this episode, it read a downtown Los Angeles bank’s database, determined who had safety deposit boxes there, and sorted out which one was held by the worst bad guy (a lawyer for drug runners)—all in about five seconds. He wasn’t the real bad guy in this show, though. When the real bad guys escaped from the bank through a tunnel, this computer guessed correctly that they were heading to the coast, to pick up a fast boat into international waters. More than that, it was able to predict which manhole (out of hundreds or thousands) they would use to exit the tunnel systems. I’d like a computer like that, wouldn’t you?
This incredible AI phenomenon is housed in (of all things) a fancy sports car. To be quite frank about it, the show’s whole premise is nothing different from a Saturday morning cartoon.
The car’s name is KITT, and KITT’s best friend, the head of his team of creators, is Michael Knight, who often sits behind the driver’s wheel. He could as easily sit in the back seat, though he wouldn’t be near as cool there; for KITT can take care of his own driving, thank you very much. While Michael was chasing the bad guys through the tunnel, KITT was driving himself to meet them at the prodigiously predicted manhole. KITT, the computer-in-a-car, is very much a personality of his own. That’s why Michael is more his friend than just his operator, and why KITT is a “he,” not an “it.”
KITT is, of course, bulletproof and preternaturally fast on the road. He’s a superhero on wheels. What is this, then, but juvenile drama, fit for boys in about the 8 to 12 year-old range?
But this episode of Knight Rider was riddled with casual, remorseless, cold, cruel violence. There were vicious beatings. One hostage was shot in the back, in full view of the city, expressly so the bad guys could show they didn’t mind doing it, and wouldn’t mind doing it again if they felt like it. Another hostage was shot point blank, merely as an example to the drug lawyer, who had previously been captured and brought inside the bank. They threatened to shoot off the lawyer’s “family jewels” if he refused to give them codes to his clients’ Swiss bank accounts.
We’re not talking about something fit for 8 to 12 year-old boys now, are we? The plot premise was strictly juvenile; the violence was anything but that.
Last week I read that the average 14 year-old has seen 11,000 murders in the media. Does this have an effect on our society? Here’s what some media representatives have said (pdf source):
One common industry response to the conclusions of such literature reviews is to deny the findings. For example, Jim Burke of Rysher Entertainment said, “I don’t think there is any correlation between violence on TV and violence in society” (Stem, 1995, p. 28). Another is to claim that the effects of media violence on aggression are so small or that they affect so few people that the risks to society are negligible and can and should be ignored. For example, a Time magazine writer concluded, “While the bulk of published research has indeed found some correlation between watching fictitious violence and behavingaggressively, the correlation is statistically quite modest” (K. Anderson, 1993, p. 66).
The “Free Expression Policy Project” opines that all the studies showing a link between media violence and real-life behavior are flawed:
It’s therefore regrettable that – without inviting any skeptical voices – the conference organizers embraced two false premises – first, that numerous studies have shown a causal link between sexual or violent media and adverse effects; and second, that filtering and rating systems are an acceptable response to public concerns about dubious media content.
I am not qualified to know whether filtering and rating systems are effective or helpful. What I will say, though, is that all this posturing about “no effect on society” can hardly be anything other than the entertainment industry’s protecting its wallet. They know media influences behavior. Commercial television’s only revenue—billions upon billions of dollars for decade upon decade—has been based on media influencing behavior. What do they think a commercial advertisement is?
I think of all the mysteriously-motivated, cold-blooded shootings in schools, post offices, and city streets, and I wonder, “Are these shooters not just doing what they’ve been shown is normal?”
What can the entertainment industry’s position on this be about other than greed? If it’s about artistic expression, let me remind you that this Knight Rider episode was juvenile drama. I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with juvenile drama, for juveniles, but I can’t be sympathetic to those who say it’s “all about the art.” If it was about the art, they could have done it without the cold-bloodedness.
By the way, KITT and Michael Knight caught the bad guys in the end, but even that had a cold feeling to it. Their victory had no obvious moral impact; it was more neutral than that, like a sports competition (with some scripted heroism thrown in, of course, but nothing like genuine, real-life sports heroism–Mateen Cleaves in the 2000 NCAA final, for example). The effect was: Our team won. Their team lost. Yay for our team. (The drug lawyer and his clients got to keep their money. Yay.)
There was one brief moment of moral reflection there, though. One of the bank robbers was a woman (young and beautiful; what did you expect?) who tried to seduce Michael Knight to let them go and even to come along with them. She said there would be billions of dollars for him. He said, “there’s more to life than money.” If producers gave any thought to how their shows might encourage real life crime and violence, and just why they keep doing producing them anyway, they might notice just a wee bit of irony in that.
I encounter these kinds of things about once every ten or fifteen years; that’s how much I watch prime-time TV. (People ask me how I find time for blogging: there’s a large part of your answer.) It hits harder when you’re not seeing it all the time.
Which reminds of a talk I once heard by an admiral (I’ve forgotten his name) who missed most of the 1960s in America—he had been one of the longest-held POWs in Hanoi. Soon after his release, the Navy briefed him on what had been going on in America and the world. Through this briefing he experienced all of the 1960s at once: and he went out and vomited. He had not been desensitized to the rampant sex, drugs, and violence of the decade, as those of us living through it had been. Thus he was able to see it more clearly, for what it really was.
If you think media violence such as in Knight Rideris just ordinary stuff, my advice to you is to take some time to reflect on it, and then go do as the admiral did— metaphorically, at least. Then turn off prime-time TV for the next decade or two. Use some of the time to pray for the entertainment industry instead.
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I agree with much of what you say, but you should keep in mind that things that are appealing to 8-12 year-old boys are pretty entertaining to 18-40 year old boys too. They’re the intended audience.
Even though I’m sure you’re right about that, ChrisB, that perspective is not nearly as comforting as one might wish. Eighteen to forty is not too old to be influenced by the media; nor is it likely that eight-year-olds never watch these shows.
I agree with this tremendously. I’m a big fan of animation and comics, for example. One thing that disturbs me is this.
Do you like Marvel comics? You know, Hulk, Iron Man, etc? Here’s the thing. If you read Marvel Adventures, it’s all pretty upbeat and expressly kid-ish. If you read, say, Marvel Ultimates, Hulk is a rapist cannibal, there’s an incestual couple on the Avengers team, etc. And the normal universe somewhat navigates between these two extremes. But if you decide ‘Oh, well, Marvel Adventures is appropriate for kids’, you’re associating them with characters who have some very different incarnations by the same company.
Now, that said, I still like the comics. I’m a big fan of Thunderbolts, etc. But that sort of thing bothers me, where it seems like even kid media is less for kids than it is just preparing them for the next stage.
I had the same idea when I watched the episode. The other episodes have a lot of “adult interactions” that are less than appropriate for the target audience.
It’s a shame, but between the commercials for horror movies and other needless components we can’t watch much without Tivo’ing it and then fast forwarding through the junk.