Although each segment of the entertainment industry has some form of rating system, the industry is routinely violating its own self-regulation system. According to FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky, "Companies in the entertainment industry routinely undercut their own rating restrictions by target marketing violent films, records, and video games to young audiences."
The report makes the following key findings about the marketing of violent entertainment material by the industry:
• Movies — 80 percent of the movies rated R for violence the Commission selected for its study were targeted to children under 17. Marketing plans for 64 percent contained express statements that children under 17 be targeted by promoting the films in high schools or publications for under-17 readers.
• Music — All of the music recordings with explicit content labels the Commission selected for its review were targeted to children under 17.
• Games — 70 percent of the electronic games with a Mature rating for violence the Commission selected for its study targeted children under 17. Marketing plans for 51 percent expressly included children under 17.
The report also includes results of an FTC survey showing that children under 17 are frequently able to buy tickets to R-rated movies without parental accompaniment and purchase music recordings and electronic games with parental advisory labels or age restrictions.
In a subsequent hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, Mel Harris, president of Sony, parent company of Columbia Pictures, acknowledged that children ages 9 to 11 were interviewed as part of the test marketing of a violent R-rated movie.
The FTC report makes no legislative recommendations to Congress in response to these findings. Instead, the FTC recommends additional action by the industry to improve their self-regulatory efforts. Self-regulation is especially critical in this area because of First Amendment protections that prohibit government regulation of these products' content. However, as the report notes: "Self-regulatory programs can work only if the concerned industry associations monitor compliance and ensure that violations have consequences."
In response to the FTC report, two of the nation's major retailers, Kmart and Wal-Mart, announced that they will refuse sale of violent, mature-rated games to anyone under 17 — a practice that is already in place at Toys R Us. The barcode scanner at checkout stands will prompt cashiers to ask for identification from youths.
Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who said he believes "intense involvement" with violent video games can cause a young person to become violent, applauded the move but said he would prefer that retailers stop selling such games, Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Co. have already done so.
"Common sense should tell us that positively reinforcing sadistic behavior, as these games do, cannot be good for our children," said Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. "We cannot expect that the hours spent in school will mold and instruct a child's mind but that hours spent playing violent games will not."
- PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2000
A military expert on the psychology of killing explains how today's video games, television, and movies condition kids to pull the trigger--using the same desensitization and conditioning techniques employed by the armed forces.
Link to complete article in Christianity Today, August 10, 1998.
"Spare the rod and spoil the child." - Ralph Venning, 1649
"Speak softly and carry a big stick." - Theodore Roosevelt, 1901
In my home as a child, there was a smooth rod about ½-inch thick. It was the tool of punishment for misbehavior.
When children grow up and misbehave, we have other "big sticks" for punishment. Military force was the one we used in Kosovo.
The atrocities in the former Yugoslavia provoked marked ambivalence around the world. What was a proper response to the brutal ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serbian military forces under Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic? Was NATO's bombing the answer? Not only military strategists and politicians, but even peace activists and religious leaders were divided on the question.
The NATO bombing strategy was predicated on the wishful thinking that Slobodan Milosevic would sign the Rambouillet agreement after a few days. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright first announced, "I don't see this as a long-term operation," only to say ten days later that "We never expected this to be over quickly." Two-and-a-half months of nonstop bombing — in violation of international law — were required to achieve the desired objective.
It was like saying that one good swat would make a misbehaving child straighten up and, when it didn't, proceeding to beat the child to death.
Our air strikes went astray a dozen times with bombs plowing into buses, convoys of refugees, passenger trains, private homes, the Chinese Embassy, two hospitals, and a retirement home. The so-called "collateral damage" included more than 1,000 noncombatants killed — men, women, and children — and hundreds of others maimed. NATO cluster bombs — antipersonnel weapons that explode above the ground and spread a hail of razor-sharp needles and/or shrapnel — killed 79 refugees in the village of Prizren.
It was not just "collateral damage" we saw, but the deliberate targeting of civilian property, including residential neighborhoods, auto factories, broadcasting stations, and water and electric power plants. By defining civilian assets as militarily useful, NATO rationalized a methodical destruction of the civilian infrastructure.
The bombing campaign that was originally justified by its humanitarian goals itself became a crime against humanity. Our administration's blame-Milosevic-for- everything rhetoric was rejected by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who asserted that both Serbia and NATO should be subject to investigation for war crimes. Two wrongs don't make a right; and Robinson forcefully denounced "collateral damage" as an Orwellian euphemism.
We have made war both a science and a game. We teach it to students in college and to children playing video games. And our world reflects the violence we teach.
If we want a more peaceful world, we have to teach peacemaking skills, including effective parenting skills. As parents, we have to learn that controlling behavior through punishment does nothing to teach children the only real discipline there is, namely, self-discipline.
In my home as a parent, I used a hand applied to the seat of the problem as a method of punishment, but only with my first two children and not with my last two. In between, I learned something about alternative methods of effective parenting; and I learned how much damage corporal punishment does inside where we can't see it. I would never spank a child again.
In our adult relationships, do we similarly respond to conflicts with anger and other violence? Or do we know and practice the skills of nonviolent conflict resolution, like "talking it out"? — something even kindergarteners can learn. Do we have the inner strength to turn the other cheek when attacked? - something that a commitment to nonviolence requires.
The 850,000 Kosovo refugees displaced since the NATO bombing began on March 24, 1999, traded one hell for another. Tens of thousands now make their home in squalid refugee camps where babies are born in the mud. Those who didn't make it to the camps are in even direr straits. Groups of refugees hiding in Kosovo's high mountain passes have so little food they are eating leaves. Some took shelter in a filthy chicken coop until poisonous centipedes began biting the children.
The attention paid to humanitarian aid to the refugees was totally inadequate — trivial compared to the billions spent to bomb Yugoslavia. And now as repatriation is about to begin, the refugees will be returning to homes and stores looted, scarred, and charred, roads and bridges destroyed, and fields fallow. They will face serious shortages of food, clean water, and electricity — not to mention the deadly hazards of buried landmines.
We seem to have the conflict in Kosovo under control — at least for the present. But we haven't taught the warring factions anything about dealing with their conflicts nonviolently — something they will need to live in peace. And at what cost has our control of the situation been bought?
What we have done reminds me of the infamous line uttered by one of our armed forces in Vietnam:
"To save the village, we had to destroy it."
- Jim Stoffels, chairman and editor
PeaceMeal, May/June 1999
"The diabolically insane Wretch Armstrong is a see-through savage whose guts light up! And he's equipped with deadly weapons. Age 4 and up." (Toy flyer ad, November 3, 1996)
Does anyone besides me find it grotesque to give a "diabolically insane ... savage ... equipped with deadly weapons" as a toy to a little child? Especially for Christmas! Yet, such toys account for a large part of the market. By the late 1980s, war toy sales in the United States totaled more than one billion dollars annually, exceeding the sales of all educational toys.
Not that war toys are without their own "educational" value. War toys and the violent cartoons and video games that accompany many of them teach that violent behavior is not only acceptable but heroic. A whole succession of action figures, from GI Joe to He-Man to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Power Rangers to X-Men, teach children that all problems can be solved with violence. There are no steps needed to reach a solution, just "Pow!" and there's your answer.
These programs and toys make violence and killing exciting to children. They indisputably desensitize children to the real horrors of violence and war and to the danger of harm that can come to them from violent behavior. They also dehumanize opponents by stereotyping them as devoid of any good and, therefore, deserving of being killed.
The thirty-minute cartoon shows (essentially extended commercial ads for the toys) display an average of 48 acts of violence per program hour, according to the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV). And children mimic the action they see on TV. We can see from the way (our?) children play that these programs stimulate hostile, brutal feelings even in very young children.
The director of NCTV, psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Radecki, says, "This repeated teaching of seeing your opponent as someone despicably evil, who can only be dealt with through combat, is very harmful. The research of cartoon violence and violent toys is quite clear. These programs and their violent war toys ... cause children to hit, kick, choke, push, and hold down other children. They have found increases in selfishness, anxiety, and the hurting of animals."
Children need to know that war is not exciting fun, but that it hurts real people. Children need us parents to be role models of respect for others, including those who are different from us and those we disagree with. Children need us to teach them nonviolent ways to solve conflicts. And children's play environment needs to encourage communication and cooperation with their peers to begin building a harmonious future.
In a world filled with violence and war, can we afford a new generation of children trained by their play to believe that violence and killing will make them heroes? Well, what's on your child's wish list?
-Jim Stoffels, chairman (and father of four children)
PeaceMeal, Nov/December 1996
Hundreds of thousands of children are used in child prostitution and child pornography in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, Eastern Europe, and several other regions. The sex market for children under 16 is a $5 billion industry driven by poverty, greed, and a callous demand for sex. A country that prohibits child prostitution but makes the age of majority 12 has no protection for a teenage child targeted by an adult exploiter. An international effort is needed to standardize the definition of child and the age of consent, taking into account what we already know about the universal physical and psychological development of a human person.