COUNTERPUNCH
Time to Rethink This Media Theory?

By DAVID MORGENTHAL

It is clear that the unprecedented tragedy of Sept. 11 will affect not only U.S. foreign policy but domestic policy as well. One example of this is the debate over whether the terrorist attacks undercut the supposed benefits of the "Star Wars" missile defense system that President Bush has advocated. Fans and foes have been having their say in newspapers and on talk radio.

As of yet, however, there has been precious little discussion of a theory that is a favorite of politicians on the left and right: the claim that TV and movie violence causes, or contributes to, real violence.

In the wake of every violent tragedy in the United States during the last 10 years, the media have been cluttered with talking heads ready to put the blame squarely on Hollywood's shoulders. In the aftermath of every school shooting, every rampage by a disgruntled office worker, every well-publicized case of matricide, patricide and infanticide, we've been treated to a parade of politicians and "experts" telling us that these horrible tragedies occurred because of the debasing effects of our popular culture. So where are these politicians and "experts" now? Where are they now that an act of unprecedented violence and evil has been committed by people who hail from a culture in which movies, TV and pop music are banned? Isn't the Afghanistan of today the model country for the "blame the media" crowd?

The Taliban has gone beyond mere warning labels and V-chips. It's attacked the problem in much more concrete ways, creating a society free of buddy cop shows, slasher films, MTV's "Jackass" and "Beavis & Butt-head."

In short, Afghani culture lacks the things that the "experts" tell us are responsible for societal violence. And what's the result? You have a country that serves as a gathering place for the world's most violent terrorists, and where, as shown on a recent "Dateline" episode, the murder and rape of women is routine, and political dissidents and non-Muslims are oppressed, attacked and sometimes killed.

So what's the deal? Where are the anti-violence talking heads to explain to us why the banning of violent media from Afghani culture didn't lead to a peaceful utopia? After all, haven't these folks been promising us for years that if we just got rid of violent media, we wouldn't be plagued with high crime rates?

Haven't we been told time and again that societal violence is the inevitable result of messages we absorb from TV, movies and music?

For better or worse, human beings are much more complex than the anti-Hollywood ideologues assume. Our actions are shaped by so many divergent factors that even if we removed the TVs from every house in the United States, I doubt we'd see any major fluctuation in crime statistics. Violent criminals don't need the media to give them ideas. A sick and twisted mind can think up the vilest acts of evil, even if there's not a TV set or movie theater in sight.

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David Morgenthal, a freelance writer living in West Hollywood, is working on a book of horror short stories. He lived for 10 years in Germany, where he edited the bimonthly horror fiction magazine Schrecken.

In part, the group's success can be traced to its ability to effectively use the tools of the pop culture it rejects. An Al Qaeda recruitment video that circulated widely in the Middle East prior to Sept. 11 demonstrated that the group's propaganda skills reached the "Arab street"—its target audience—more effectively than the Western superpowers or many Arab governments. The video begins with the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. It then moves to a quick-cut montage of aggression against Muslims in Palestine, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Chechnya, Kashmir and Indonesia. Many of the images are from Western news clips that still bear the BBC or CNN logos. The scenes are juxtaposed with images of a scholarly Bin Laden, posing in front of bookshelves or seated on the ground like a religious scholar. Then, putting to rest any thought that this is an organization of wimps, come clips of Al Qaeda military training in Afghanistan, including target practice on a projected image of Bill Clinton.

One gunman taunted U.S. troops to come to Afghanistan as he showed Bin Laden's sons a picture of U.S. soldiers.

"You see. They are commandos? They are a superpower only in Hollywood and in films," said the gunman in English.

"Their heroes are only mythical like Rambo and they won't come on the land of Afghanistan. And if they do come here, they will end up in pieces like this," he added, pointing to the wreckage.

"Everybody has these movies on the hard drives of their heads," Gabler said. "And when you're thinking of the cultural ramifications [of such an attack], you're thinking cinematically."

You know the roll call: "Lethal Weapon" and "Die Hard." "The Rock." "The Matrix." "Mission: Impossible." "Face/Off." "Con Air." Each vigilante plot line so disposable it is almost impossible to remember a half-hour after the end title rolls by, but functioning according to a received set of values, including the idea that there is good violence and bad violence. And that here in America, our violence is good violence because it has come from us.

What happened at the World Trade Center was not good violence by anybody's standard of measurement. Though vigilante in spirit—for what is a vigilante if not someone who takes some highly personal and idiosyncratic notion of cosmic justice into his or her own hands?—it was "their" violence, not ours.

Even mired in the emotional muck of awful death and destruction, we half-expect a boastful 30-minute special explaining how filmmakers accomplished such realistic special effects for our entertainment.

Like it or not, the visceral kick of action-hero exploits has become part of our collective pop subconscious. Is it any wonder that some New Yorkers, asked to describe the first moments of the World Trade Center attack, said it was like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie?