COUNTERPUNCH : We Have a Vote on Violence

Until this morning, I didn’t think anything could be better than a Kenneth Turan review. But oh, a Kenneth Turan editorial (“Time for a Cease-Fire Before the Hellfire,” Aug. 22).

Now, according to Ken, no issue

inflames his devoted followers more than movie violence. All polls indicate these cineastes feel powerless. The ability to stay away from the offensive film

in droves; to not go; to withdraw their patronage--no, that’s not power enough. The studios have to do something, they have to . . . to. . . .

Now, here’s where things get a little murky. No one is suggesting censorship. Well, maybe. Just, you know, the good kind. The kind that might just cost us a few “theoretical civil liberties.” I love the term. So piously ominous. Like the whole piece, it struck a perfect, chastening Sunday tone.

But there were a few items Ken didn’t hit. If I may:

What was Caligula’s favorite TV show? Attila the Hun, he was hooked on Tetris? That Hitler guy, he loved those Jackie Chan movies, didn’t he? And the Christians who massacred the infidels, the church that directed the Inquisition, the cowboys who created cheap land by eliminating those pesky Native Americans, the systemic violence that was once everyday existence--this was all due to heavy reruns of “Combat” starting about AD 1201, right?

Obviously, no one but a liberal, Commie, 1st Amendment Hollywood type would ever try to defend movie violence on the grounds that it’s, I don’t know, fake. I’m sure we all agree that if we could join Sherman and Peabody in the Wayback Machine, we’d gladly travel to 1976 and stop “Taxi Driver” from being made. It’s so obvious to the thinking man that Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader were to blame for John Hinkley. It’s not that Hinkley was crazy as a June bug. It was that darn De Niro Mohawk!

Radical idea. No more dogs. For anybody, ever. Because you never know when one of them is going to start talking and tell the next David Berkowitz to kill. No pooch, no Son of Sam.

Because you’re right, Ken--righter than a Chuck Heston letter to the editor. We’ve got to think of the populace. Especially the Hinkleys and Berkowitzes of tomorrow: those poor, pasty, intolerant, “Mein Kampf”-reading, Thorazine-chomping, basement-dwelling, loner nut jobs. Thanks to a deeply thoughtful government concerned with the numbing effect of media violence, these people are heavily armed. Not that the Looney Tunes are in control. No, no. We are. We just have to choose freely--before the government chooses for us--never to say or do anything that might inspire them. So let’s agree that from now on, our art, our collective media cannot inspire. It can only calm and opiate. Then imagine. A world of “Brady Bunch” reruns, Kenny G music and heavily edited Merchant Ivory films. Marie Osmond would be a sex symbol. Bob Saget would be an action star. We’d all get a lot more sleep.

Yes, through fear of the polled populace and the officials who supposedly work for us, we can, in our lifetime, eliminate choice, nullify expression and, most important, create a culture that caters only to the insane. Sure, right now, it’s just a dream. But Ken dares to think it might someday be reality. And we can all help . . . by doing absolutely nothing.

John McNamara is a television writer-producer whose credits include “Lois & Clark,” “Profit” and “Vengeance Unlimited.”