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The Action Group
on Violence on Television — led by Discovery Channel president Trina
McQueen— has managed to devise a ratings system for television to make sure
our children don’t see anything nasty. And God knows there’s a lot of nasty
stuff on television these days. This is the first step to a bright new
tomorrow, one in which we’re all nice to each other and nobody thinks
anything bad or says anything offensive.
AGVOT shouldn’t be
discouraged that its system bears little relation to its counterpart in
Quebec; being a distinct society apparently means, along with putting cheese
on your French fries, eating white margarine and enjoying the work of Céline
Dion, that you can watch sex on television without becoming a rapist. The
United States uses another —different — system for classifying television as
objectionable. Even though the bulk of our TV programming comes from there,
it will be subject to the Canadian ratings. NBC has refused to rate its
programming, which makes it seem as though the network is trying to make a
mockery of the entire initiative, since this kind of effort has to be
unanimous to succeed.
The employees and
owners of the National Broadcasting Company don’t seem to realize just how
impressionable today’s youngsters are. If kids are allowed to watch anything
on television, they will, at the earliest possible opportunity, replicate
the misbehavior exactly as they’ve seen it enacted.
This ratings
system is just one step in a much longer process. Eventually, all these
different ratings systems will be sorted out with the advent of the V-chip,
so we’re told. The device will be wired into TV sets any day now, perhaps
starting as early as 1999. Of course, in the early field trials of the
device, folks in Calgary found the V-chip too confusing and difficult to
operate; it was easier to switch it off entirely and keep an eye on what the
kids were watching or turn off the television altogether.
But that was only
a test. Even if the chip couldn’t tell the difference between shirtless men
and women and blocked both equally as “nudity,” I’m sure its Canadian
inventor will figure out a way to fix that glitch. Similarly, in those
trials, the chip didn’t differentiate between cartoon cats flattened by
anvils dropped on them and Arnold Schwarzenegger machine-gunning evil-doers.
It blocked both as offensive. Good for the chip. Better safe than sorry.
Wouldn’t you rather have your kids watching too little television than too
much? That’s what the V-chip is all about.
Advertisers, no
fools, back the AGVOT ratings. They’ve also been acquiescent on the prospect
of the V-chip. They’ve got their priorities straight. They know that revenue
is nothing compared to the goodness and righteousness of an entire
generation. Has a single one of them uttered so much as a syllable of
complaint that the V-chip may well consign their advertising to some
broadcast limbo where it won’t be seen? No, sir. The philosophical question
“If an ad fails in a V-chip, does it make a sale?” is entirely moot under
the circumstances. And ads won’t be rated. Between the stretches of blank
screen while an offensive program is being blocked, the ads will still be
there. Kids may not be able to see the exploding cop skulls on Brooklyn
South, but that cute Terra Military boots commercial where the guy digs
his own grave will still be available . . . although it probably will be
tougher for consumers to find it if it appears out of nowhere.
Woe to those who
maintain that advertisers would be so cynical that they’d back the ratings
hoping that concession might hold off the V-chip, perhaps even kill it
entirely. People who make television commercials are just as concerned for
the well-being of their kids as anybody else. They know this drive isn’t
just a momentary spasm of guilty boomer hysteria like the war on drugs. Just
like drugs and sex — which the boomers had to suck up in vast quantities
before they knew it was wrong — televised violence is something that the
current generation of parents had their own fill of as kids. How else could
they know how damaging it is? They don’t want their own kids to lead the
pointless, empty lives they’ve consigned themselves to. And people say the
current generation of parents are perpetually adolescent hypocrites with no
thought for anybody but themselves. Preposterous.
Besides, it’s not
like these ratings constitute incipient censorship. News and sports won’t be
touched. You’ll still be able to see every frame of pointless Middle East
hatred, every demented rampage by a moody loner armed with an assault rifle.
And we don’t have to explain why watching hockey players clobbering the
bejesus out of each other makes them better viewing than fictional cops
fighting bad guys, do we? Of course not.
It’s just that
some things need to be monitored. And the ratings have arrived just in time.
Any day now, that recent movie version of Romeo and Juliet will be
turning up on television. It’s practically kiddie porn, for God’s sake,
never mind all the dreadful violence — teenagers getting knifed, run through
with swords, shot and God knows what else before the two protagonists
finally kill themselves at the end. Definitely 18+. |
