What does watching TV make you do?

  The following article is reprinted by permission from the

 opinion page of the Sunday, June 21, 1993 Orange County

 Register. Copyright (c) 1992 by J. Neil Schulman.  All

 other rights reserved.

                        TUBE SHOCKS

                     by J. Neil Schulman

      What does watching TV make you do?

      Since we live in a violent society, we're constantly

 hearing arguments that seeing TV violence, particularly as

 kids, desensitizes us so we accept real violence more

 offhandedly -- maybe it even triggers real violence.

      But TV also shows lots of hugging.  The standard plot

 for most family sitcoms is (1) Problem causes family

 members to get mad at one another; (2) Family members abuse

 each other in cute ways; (3) All is forgiven by end of show

 and everybody hugs.

     So television gives us a conflicting set of images:

 violence and hugging.

      Every popular medium has undergone the charge that it

 corrupts youth.  The novel was attacked, then movies,

 radio, comics, rock and roll, and now TV, music videos, and

 rap.  The theory behind the attacks is always the same: if

 Johnny commits a crime, he's not responsible and his

 parents are not responsible: Something Else is responsible.

      The problem in this society isn't the easy

 availability of drugs, or guns, or pornography, or

 television, although all are scapegoated.  All are mere

 inanimate things: they do only what we have them do.

      All supposedly scientific studies on the subject of TV

 violence "causing" real violence are based on a theory of

 cause-and-effect that is contrary to humans having

 the capability of making responsible, moral choices.

      But we are volitional beings by nature: we choose what

 we do and what we make ourselves.  You take two brothers

 from an identical lousy environment -- missing father,

 overworked mother, no money, rotten inner city

 neighborhood.  One brother joins a gang and has committed

 his first murder within a couple of years.  The other

 brother hides out from the gangs at the public library and

 learns to read out of boredom.  Because of reading, he

 manages to stay in school and takes a fast-food job while

 attending night college.

      Even if you postulate a deterministic model

 of human behavior, comparing two specific phenomena in

 isolation tells us nothing useful.  How can you isolate

 one specific set of television images from the effects of

 the other available images?  Further, how do you go inside

 the skulls of the people doing acts of violence and find

 out the actual causes, when even asking won't give you a

 sure answer?

      Serial killer Ted Bundy claimed in a final death-row

 interview that reading pornography made him do it.  But how

 did that screwed up psyche \know\ what was cause and what

 was effect?  It's just as likely that the same impulses

 that attracted him to pornography attracted him to violent

 acts, and there was a third (prior) cause.

      Studies linking TV violence with real violence try to

 reduce human behavior to stimulus and effect. It may work

 with rat psychology, but it doesn't work with human

 psychology.  We aren't robots which are programmed.  We

 learn, choose what we focus upon, change our minds, ignore

 what we don't like or believe, focus on what we like and

 believe.  If someone is prone to violence, then they will

 probably seek out and obtain violent images -- and if it

 isn't broadcast on TV, it will be sought and obtained

 otherwise.

      A mere statistical link between two phenomena -- TV

 and violence -- supposes a causal link which is unproven.

 It's just as likely that TV violence, by providing a

 catharsis to those who would otherwise commit real

 violence, prevents real violence.

      Furthermore, TV violence is almost always part of a

 morality play.  When criminals initiate violence on TV,

 cops use violence to make sure they don't get away with it.

 If TV drives home any lesson, it's that using violence for

 criminal purposes will bring you to a violent end.

      It's even more probable -- given that TV is demand-

 driven -- that the increase in real violence is the cause

 of the increase of violence on TV.  The more violence there

 is in real life, the more reason there is to portray it on

 news and other "non-fiction" programs, and the more demand

 there is from violence-interested individuals to see it

 portrayed.

      Showing that real violence causes TV violence is

 simple.  But statistical correlations between any two

 particular phenomena, in the absence of a valid theory of

 human nature, prove so little that one could just as easily

 come up with a plausible-sounding theory of how hugging on

 TV sitcoms causes real violence.

      Try this on for size.

      Johnny is a latch-key kid whose father beat him every

 night before the age of five, then abandoned him and

 Johnny's mother.  Johnny is left at home alone for hour

 upon hour, and watches TV.  Johnny is fascinated by the TV

 sitcoms which show functional families.  He watches them

 all: \Family Ties\, \The Cosby Show\, \Roseanne\, \Who's

 the Boss?\.  Over and over again, young Johnny sees these

 families hugging each other.

      He watches these scenes of family hugging for years,

 and they have a cumulative effect.  When Johnny is eleven-

 years-old, he's in a sporting goods store at a mall, when

 he sees a son hug his father, who has just bought the son a

 new baseball bat.

      Johnny goes over to the baseball bats, picks out a

 nice heavy one, then goes over to the son and smashes the

 bat into his head, fracturing his skull and instantly

 killing him.

      Now, what conclusions do we want to draw from this

 incident?

      1) Hugging on TV causes senseless violence, and the

 networks should be subject to greater regulation by the

 FCC.

      2) Baseball bats are dangerous and should require a

 fifteen-day waiting period and background check before they

 are sold, and they should never be allowed to be sold to

 minors.

      3) Johnny committed the act of violence because he was

 jealous that another boy had a father who loved him, which

 Johnny never had.  The trigger for the incident of

 violence, and the particular tool Johnny used to commit it,

 are more or less random.

      This is the sort of question that might appear on your

 average test in verbal logic to get a job.

      But I wonder how many members of Congress, or

 sociologists, or journalists -- or lobbyists against

 pornography, rock videos, guns and TV violence -- could

 pass such a test?

      If there is any valid criticism of TV, it's the same

 one that can be brought against drugs: both can be

 distractions designed to dull the pain of living in a

 stupid, painful, and hope-destroying society.  TV, not

 religion, is today's opiate of the masses.

      If you want to change TV, change the desire of the

 viewing public from distraction to intellectual

 stimulation.

      Or you can just change the channel.

                                  ##

 J. Neil Schulman is a novelist and screenwriter.  He lives in

 Los Angeles.