c. 1996 Religion News Service
(Frederica Mathewes-Green is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She is the author of the recent book”Real Choices,”is active in the National Women’s Coalition for Life and is a frequent contributor to Christianity Today magazine.)
(RNS)-Coming soon to your home theater: ratings for TV shows. Entertainment industry executives, wary of government-imposed standards for sex and violence, have found it politic to jump the gun, so to speak, and impose their own.
Not that these standards will reduce prime-time mayhem and monkey business; they’ll merely identify it. It could well rise; ratings for movies didn’t preserve decency standards at 1960s levels. TV ratings could be an excuse for further decay.”What do you expect?”the execs could shrug.”If you don’t like this stuff, don’t watch it. We gave you the rating.” This begs the question: Who sets those cultural standards, anyway? Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, may be suspected of having an interest in shifting blame away from his industry. Still, his words about the upcoming ratings have a bite:”(Without) moral regeneration … no rating system, however purposeful, no `V-chip’ or electronic device, no government law can salvage that child’s conduct or locate a lost moral code.” Valenti has a point. The moral code wasn’t lost at the movies, or in front of the television. Pop entertainment accelerated negative trends and found them profitable, but standards were already shredding due to other cultural forces.
It’s encouraging to realize that we’ve been through similar moral disintegration in other areas before, and that in time, standards can reassert themselves, almost naturally. Take the delightful 1934 comedy,”It Happened One Night,”as an example. This film has big stars and won 5 Oscars, and includes no sex or violence. But it presumes certain values even some in Hollywood would find appalling today.
For example, drunkenness is here treated as an amusing indulgence. We meet the hero as he stands at a pay phone telling off his boss with boozy zest. Later the boss gives him money to get plastered, saying sympathetically,”When you sober up, come in and talk to me.” Also, characters smoke in every imaginable place and situation. The female lead smokes in her wedding gown. It’s not even safe smoking. We see the hero puffing a cigarette while lying in bed and even lighting up in a haystack.
Perhaps most disturbing are the casual threats of violence against the female lead. When she, penniless, wants to beg a meal, the hero responds,”You do and I’ll break your neck.”Later he tells her father,”What she needs is a guy that would take a sock at her once a day, whether it’s coming to her or not.” Did ’30s moviegoers demand ratings for drinking, smoking and assault? No, such vices were an accepted element of the period’s entertainment. Today, if an actor smokes, gets drunk and threatens women, it’s a signal to the audience that he’s an ugly character. Times changed; values improved.
How this can happen is illustrated by the tides of cultural attitudes toward drunkenness. In 1920 the country welcomed the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol-an idealistic attempt to curb the damage alcohol can do. But during those dry years, America built up a terrible thirst, and a deep resentment. The criminal status of drinking gave it a daring appeal.
When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the country entered a backlash that went on for decades. Drunkenness and hangovers became humorous evidence of adult freedom and sophistication; when the leading lady appeared with an icepack on her forehead the audience would share a knowing chuckle. This attitude trickled down even to children’s films. The terrifying hallucinations of delirium tremens became the stuff of fun in the”Pink Elephants on Parade”sequence in”Dumbo”(1941).
By the time”The Days of Wine and Roses”appeared in 1962, with its grimly realistic portrait of two alcoholics, the party was just about over. The national psyche had worked out its rebellious exultation in drinking and was beginning to rethink the subject. Heavy drinking is now treated with disapproval-as in”Leaving Las Vegas,”a powerful film depicting a young alcoholic’s final days. We have nearly come full circle.
Cultures do change, and sometimes for the better. It may be that, like the human body, they have an innate longing for health. Irresponsible sexuality and titillating violence do spectacular damage, a truth that can’t be suppressed forever. Perhaps the seamier elements of X-rated entertainment will be gradually jettisoned, like the antiquated vices of”It Happened One Night.” But the 1934 film is still a delight to view, redeemed by its magnificent acting, script, humor and charm. Sixty years from now, will our grandchildren be treasuring the excellence of 1990s TV shows, while forgiving their outdated vices? On that front, it’s hard to be hopeful.
MJP END GREEN
