Cultural Freedom and Crime
The cultural majority in America is up in arms over the rising levels of violence and
horrific images that have seeped into popular entertainment. Movies, television, and
music have always been controversial, but even they can cross the line between poor taste
and immorality. Entertainment corporations and record labels don't even blink, when told
of the excessive torture or satanic lyrics found in material. Producers and directors
continue to push the envelop on what is "done in good taste."
Gangsta rap is one of the current problems of society. Popular music for teens has
always been controversial, or at least in conflict with middle class attitudes. Teen
music has always been under scrutiny by those who are older. Parents, whether from the
60's or 90's, never welcome the sounds of the younger generation. Unfortunately this
fact does not comfort someone when listening to Snoop Doggy Dog or Ice Cube talk of sex,
violence, beatings, and suicide.
Hollywood, the country's Mecca for TV and movies, is another contaminated disaster area.
This area has given us hero's such as Clint Eastwood, Humphrey Bogart, and Bruce Willis.
Once filmmakers would evoke sexual interests through eye contact or a touch of the leg.
Today cinematographers resort to graphic sexual acts and horrific beatings. A poll by
Newsweek stated that sexual moderation and fidelity are normal for both married people
and for those who live together. In contrast, 7 out of 8 televised sexual encounters
involve extramarital sex (Newsweek, 1994). This trend is startling when compared to the
fact that children spend more time watching television than they spend in school.
According to the American Psychological Association, a typical child sees 8,000 murders
and 100,000 acts of violence on TV before graduating from elementary school (Nation,
1994).
The results of how television, specifically sex and violence, affect children is not
completely known. Although psychologists state, "Aggressive children like to watch
violent TV shows, and it appears that watching violent TV shows makes children more
aggressive; this is presumably due to their exposure to aggressive models" (Eron, 1987).
One of Hollywood's more remarkable aspects, is that it has produced approximately 400
pictures that convey traditional integrity and the mainstream virtues of love, loyalty,
honor, duty, and compassion. Consider movies such as Forrest Gump, Little Women, and The
Lion King. In contrast, a movie such as Natural Born Killers was intended to imitate the
link between violence and media attention in our culture.
In the long run, individuals will make decisions about what they will buy, read, or see.
Some will lean towards the vulgar and the pornographic. The American society has some
sense of this. They may be irritated or outraged by pop culture, but the polls state
that the principal courses of violence and other national problems lie beyond the
entertainment industry (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 1995). Parents are
already aware that children are affected by the general decline of public morality,
family breakdown, lack of religion, and poor parenting.
The price we pay for our cultural freedom is the movies and songs that influence people
to act out their fantasies of grandeur. I would rather the chaos of the free market than
the government telling us what or what not to see and hear. Our culture would be
definitely poorer without those who bring us daily news, weather, and sports. What would
happen if government began to censor our music, movies, and literature? Children would
grow-up never knowing the internal conflicts faced by Huck Finn, the violent nature of
the "Wild West" or the songs that built America "Their blood has wash'd out their foul
footstep's pollution," may sound like a excerpt from a Snoop Dog song, It is actually
part of the of the Star Spangled Banner.
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