Entertainment Industry News
Experts: Violent Movies Can Influence Already Troubled Teens
By Eric Choy and Susie L. Morris
July 10 - Are violent movies to blame for troubled teens' acts of violence? Experts say the answer is not so simple.
Three New Jersey teens were arrested this week for allegedly plotting to kill three of their peers, then embark on a random shooting spree. When the teens were apprehended in a Philadelphia suburb following a failed carjacking attempt, they were in possession of guns, swords, and 2,000 rounds of ammunition, police said.
The oldest of the group, 18-year-old Matthew Lovett, is said to be a troubled teen with an obsession with the science-fiction movie The Matrix. Classmates said he often dressed up as a character from the movie and even referred to himself by the character's name.
Given Lovett's interest in The Matrix, some are wondering how much violent movies influence young people involved in violent acts.
"I think that movies or other media may be able to provide the spark for anxiety and consequent violent acting out by teens, although I'm quite skeptical about movies doing this in the absence of other triggers," says Jay Reeve, a senior psychologist at Bradley Hospital in Providence, R.I.
Can Movies Trigger Violent Acts?
Experts emphasize that violent movies coupled with a troubled past have an especially significant effect on youths and their actions.
"I believe that vulnerable youth [with emotional, behavioral, learning or impulse control problems] may be more easily influenced by these types of movies and videos. The problem is aggravated if they role-play through fantasy, or if they lose reality testing and believe they are amid the violence," says Dr. Beth Ann Brooks, professor in psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Lovett's mother died 10 years ago. He was very protective of his younger brother, who was often ridiculed for his speech impediment, their father says. Fellow students saw Lovett was seen as an introvert who harbored a great deal of anger and desire for revenge.
Experts say incidents such as this are reminiscent of the April 20, 1999, massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where two students went on a shooting rampage, slaughtering 12 fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves.
"Recall that the Columbine shooters were isolated, troubled boys who were apparently rejected by their peers and ignored by their parents," says Dr. Thomas Van Hoose, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas' Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
He says excessive exposure to violence in the media often desensitizes viewers to the effects of real violence. "Couple [it] with the immaturity of teenagers, their self-centeredness, and their often unrealistic views of death and you can get a deadly combination of motives and actions that can lead to tragedy."
Early Warning Signs?
While millions of people around the world have seen movies like The Matrix, hardly anybody would respond with an act of violence, says Dr. David Fassler, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
"Kids who are already vulnerable may certainly pick up ideas and copy behavior that they see in a movie. However, there are almost always other warning signs and other contributing factors," he says.
George Scarlett, assistant professor of child development at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., agrees.
"There are always far more compelling reasons in any given case - the quality of family relations, the degree to which a school environment is caring of all, the degree to which a culture provides a spiritual tradition that can guide - these and other considerations come first," he says.
While teenagers are infamous for being moody and difficult, an adolescent who talks about killing is sending a warning sign.
"There's been a misperception over the years that some teens go through 'phases.' It's true that they go through phases, but if they are repeatedly talking about killing or revenge fantasy, it's worthwhile to get professional help," says Reeve.
Source: ABCNews.com
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Do the Ratings Rate?
Not Satisfied With �R� and �PG-13,� Some Are Creating Their Own Ratings
By Oliver Libaw
Aug. 11 - The PGs, PG-13s, and Rs of the movie ratings system don't rate very high in Denise Poh's judgment.
"I think PG-13 is very misleading," said Poh, a school guidance counselor, as she waited with a friend outside a Manhattan movie theater earlier this month.
"PG-13 shows too much - too much violence. It's too much for 13-year-olds," she added. "I think PG-13 gives parents a false sense of security."
Dissatisfaction with the official movie ratings system has fed a growing pool of private individual and groups who are creating their own ratings to help parents figure out what's appropriate for their kids.
Online and sometimes on paper, groups ranging from liberal advocacy organizations to evangelical Christians to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops weigh in on which Hollywood offerings are suitable for young kids or pre-teens.
Some are simply trying to supplement the official rating system, a voluntary ratings process run by the Motion Picture Association of America, an industry group comprising the major studios (including Disney, the parent company of ABCNEWS).
"There ought to be many, many ratings systems," said Aris Christofides, who runs www.kids-in-mind.com. He started providing movie ratings for parents in 1992 on the fledgling America Online service.
The site will go well beyond the usual G, PG, and R, to provide details of what might be objectionable to parents.
What's Wrong With G, PG, and R?
Others are convinced the official system is broken.
"I think it needs to be replaced and vastly improved," said James Steyer, president of Common Sense Media, a recently created media advocacy group. He and other critics allege the 35-year-old system favors the industry over parents' concerns.
They say the movie studios should not rate their own products, and that their system produces overly lenient ratings that are out of step with most parents' standards.
"I see a PG-13 movie rating - I don't know what that means," Steyer said. "It means nothing to parents. You take your kids to a PG-13 movie and you end up holding your hands over their eyes for half the movie."
Steyer points to this spring's PG-rated comedy Kangaroo Jack. Common Sense Media rated it appropriate only for kids 15 and older, saying it had "violence and gunplay, a stepfather who orders his stepson killed,
drinking to excess seen as impressive," and other issues the group said made the movie a bad choice for kids.
In a summer where PG-13 movies have dominated, critics have charged the studios are looking to push the envelope on acceptable material as far as they can - without getting an R rating that could hurt business.
PG-13 movies are recommended only for kids 13 and older, but anyone can buy a ticket for any movie not rated R or NC-17.
Millions of Satisfied Customers?
The MPAA insists such accusations are groundless and not representative of most parents.
"We think we're doing a great job," said Rich Taylor, an MPAA spokesman.
After all, Taylor said, the industry is in effect turning away paying customers - teens - who want to see R-rated movies by themselves. It is also shunning business by discouraging parents from bringing their younger kids to PG-13 movies.
The current system may be run by the studios, but Taylor insists it is objective and independent.
"The studio folks get very frustrated sometimes," he said. "It's not geared to give great pleasure to producers; it's geared to parents."
A recent MPAA survey reported that 76 percent of parents think the rating system is "very useful" or "fairly useful," Taylor said. "That's a pretty strong endorsement from our constituents."
Several moviegoers at a theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side agreed.
"I think it's a good system," said Billy Hum, a 35-year-old with no kids, as he waited to see the R-Rated Matrix: Reloaded.
Edith Freni, a 24-year-old New Yorker with no children, agreed.
"I think they're reasonable," she said, "They do the best they can."
But public opinion is disputed. Common Sense Media commissioned its own poll last April, which reported that 70 percent of parents surveyed said ratings should be in the hands of an independent group of experts, not the industry.
Waiting to see the PG-rated Johnny English at a Manhattan movie theater, Adina Zion said the official ratings system was not much help to her.
"It gives you a guideline, but it's not necessarily accurate," said Zion. When making a decision for her kids - a 16-year-old son and 13-year-old girl - she wants to know more than just the rating. "You have to know what the movie is about."
Ratings Competition
Most of the independent rating sites offer detailed breakdowns of alcohol use, irreligious behavior, nudity, and other issues. "Too much nudity/sexuality for young people," said Familymoviereviews.com of this
summer's X-2, which drew a PG-13 from the MPAA. "Breast details were visible in several scenes."
Visitors to the similarly named Family-movie-reviews.com are greeted by a drawing of a distraught-looking woman exclaiming, "If only you'd known what was in that movie before your family watched it!"
Common Sense Media uses child welfare experts and professional reviewers to assign their own detailed ratings to the latest releases. They give movies a green, yellow or red rating in each of four categories - sexual content, violence, language, and content (including scariness, character's social behavior, and the presence of drugs and alcohol).
Another site, Familystyle.com, warned the latest PG-rated Harry Potter movie contained "animal cruelty, child abuse, emotional, [and] burning."
Gerri Pare, director of the office for film and broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said her group's reviews and ratings also aren't intended to compete with the MPAA.
"We have our own approach and they have theirs," she said. "The MPAA movie ratings system isn't set up to say if a movie is good or bad or take a movies' moral message into consideration."
She says parents "want to have an idea not just if a movie has some violence in it, for example, but whether it has exploitative violence or glamorizes it."
This summer's Terminator 3 got an R rating from the MPAA, but the Catholic Bishops' rating went further, giving it an O for "morally offensive." The PG-13-rated Charlie's Angels sequel received a "A-IV" designation, meaning it was suitable for adults, but not adolescents.
An A-IV rating applies to "problematic films that, while not morally offensive in themselves, require caution and some analysis and explanation as a safeguard against wrong interpretations and false conclusions," according to the group.
�Feeding the Children�s Minds�
Whether alternative systems are competing with the official ratings or just supplementing them, many agree parents need more information.
"Most movies are not Terminator 3," said Christofides, the editor of www.kids-in-mind.com, referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger's obviously violent action extravaganza. "With most movies you need guidance."
Michael Rich, a pediatrician who is also director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Harvard University, said it is vital parents make informed decisions about their kids' exposure to media.
"My concern is that we don't have a system that protects and notifies parents about the effect to their children's mental health," he said.
Like Common Sense Media, Rich advocates a movie-ratings system that is independent of the studios.
"American kids and America parents deserve the same level of information on what they're feeding the children's minds as their bodies," he said.
In any case, some parents, like New Yorker Mitch Bacharach, admit that controlling kids' access to inappropriate material goes far beyond the local multiplex.
Television viewing, in particular, is hard to control, he said.
"Once you have cable, you're doomed."
Source: ABC News
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Teen Idols Emphasize Apple-Pie Image
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
By Catherine Donaldson-Evans and Mike Waco
LOS ANGELES - The next generation of rising young stars may be tossing out the "sex sells" image in favor of apple pie.
Some of today's teen idols, like all-grown-up twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, pro surfer Kelly Slater and actress Hilary Duff, have been taking a more clean-cut approach to fame and marketability.
While Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and other hot, young performers aren't going away any time soon, wholesome goodness has been gaining ground, judging from the cast of characters honored at last week's televised "Teen Choice Awards."
Purity seems to be paying off in other ways, too.
The Olsen sisters have turned their sweet, girl-next-door schtick into a multimillion-dollar empire. The attention-grabbing Slater is a health-conscious good boy with a steady girlfriend and a just-released autobiography entitled "Pipe Dreams."
Duff has also been playing up her prim side - and getting more popular in the process. On her latest album, newlywed Jessica Simpson has gone from being an "Irresistible" single, sex goddess to a virtuous, mature married woman.
"I love being a positive role model," Simpson said backstage at the "Teen Choice Awards." "That's one of the most important things in my career - just being able to inspire people."
But make no mistake about it: Coy doesn't have to mean comely.
"Girls these days think they have to take off more clothes in order to be sexy," Duff said. "I don't think that at all."
Clean teen idols may not have transformed Hollywood quite yet, but the fledgling trend has made Tinseltown sit up and take notice. It's also creating feel-good vibes among parents and their starry-eyed adolescent kids.
"I try to put up a healthy lifestyle and positive attitude and that sort of thing," Slater said. "You can be anything and be a role model in some way."
Because she's admired by many teens, actress Amanda Bynes said she thinks carefully about everything she does.
"I want to make sure I'm doing something good," said the "What a Girl Wants" star.
Even those who have capitalized on their sex appeal say raciness isn't everything.
Despite her boy-crazy, party-animal image, hotel heiress and model Paris Hilton believes the real secret to fame and popularity isn't sexiness but a strong sense of self.
"No matter what you look like or what color hair you have or how tall you are, if you have confidence, that's what makes you beautiful and that's what makes people like you," she said.
Source: Fox News
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Study: Television Violence on the Rise
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK - Fights, gun battles and blood are increasingly making their way into homes each night through television, according to a study released Tuesday.
The study by the Parents Television Council counted 534 separate episodes of prime-time violence on the six major broadcast networks during the first two weeks of the November ratings "sweeps" in 2002. That was up from 292 violent incidents during the same period four years earlier, the organization said.
Although the study is slightly outdated, the PTC says preliminary data from last month shows the trend toward increased violence is continuing.
The violence is getting more serious, too. The study found 156 incidents where guns or other weapons were used during the two-week period in prime-time in 2002, up from 67 four years earlier.
"In both quantity and quality it is getting worse," said Brent Bozell, founder of the conservative media watchdog group. "I think it is a cause for concern."
Fox narrowly beat CBS, 151 to 148, for having the most violent incidents, the PTC said, even though Fox broadcasts an hour less each night than ABC, CBS and NBC. Fox executives say they never comment on PTC studies, although they privately note that some of their more violent shows in 2002 have since been canceled.
Four of the networks � ABC, Fox, the WB and UPN � had more than double the violent incidents in 2002 than they had four years earlier, the study said.
NBC was the only network where the level of violence went down, from 51 in 1998 to 42 last year, the PTC said.
During the four-year period, CBS' forensics drama, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," became the nation's most popular television program. CBS has already completed one spin-off of its most successful show and is planning another.
At the same time, HBO's "The Sopranos" was one of the nation's most influential programs. Although its violence level wasn't studied here, the broadcast networks took note of the drama's success and tried to imitate it.
There was no immediate comment from the TV networks on the PTC's study.
Among the incidents cited in the study from last year: Gil cutting a finger off a dead man's body in "CSI"; a man being shot in the forehead on NBC's "Boomtown"; a warlock on the WB's "Charmed" taking a human heart from someone still alive.
Television isn't operating in a vacuum, Bozell said, noting violent content in video games and in music. And he said that it's likely television was even more violent during the 1970s and early 1980s, with Westerns and police dramas popular.
"It's a cyclical thing, I think," he said. "But this is cyclical with an edge to it."
The PTC isn't opposed to violence on television, particularly if it comes with a moral message that makes clear the consequences of actions, Bozell said. But the networks should be mindful of what they're beaming into homes, he said.
"If you believe that the product has consequences and you believe you can influence an audience, particularly impressionable youngsters, then I think television along with all the entertainment media ought to be mindful about what they're teaching," he said.
One positive finding for the PTC was that three networks � CBS, NBC and the WB � cut back on the level of violence during TV's so-called family hour, between 8 and 9 p.m. For the WB, that's due almost entirely to losing one program, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Otherwise, the PTC found that violence increased during every time slot.
Source: Yahoo News
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Teen Video Game Packages Don't Tell All
By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Feb. 17 (HealthDayNews) -- Video games rated for teenagers often contain more sex, violence, gambling, and substance abuse than what is described on the game box, a new Harvard study finds.
Parents and pediatricians need to take a more active role in selecting the games and in discussing content with teens, the researchers say. Their study appears in the Feb. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study authors, Kimberly Thompson, founder of Harvard University's Kids Risk Project, and Kevin Haninger, a Harvard doctoral student, used a random sample of 81 video games rated "T" for teen by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), a self-regulatory body. The games were chosen from the 396 T-rated video games in the United States that had been released by April 1, 2001.
"We actually played a random sample of games for about an hour each and coded all the content we observed," says Thompson, who is also the co-founder and director of research for the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.
In 48 percent of the games, the researchers found there was violence, sexual themes, profanity, substance use, or gambling that was not noted on the game box.
In 15 percent of the games, they also found depictions of alcohol or tobacco, but only 1 percent of the games carried a content descriptor saying that.
"In nearly half the games we played, we found one or more types of content that was not listed," says Haninger.
"The content descriptors are used and good when they are there," says Thompson. "But they are not always there."
The rating system works, she adds, "but there is certainly room for improvement."
A spokesman for the ESRB takes issue with the research conclusions, however, and says that other research found that parents were satisfied with the ratings.
The ESRB was created a decade ago to rate video games with age-based ratings: "C" for early childhood, "A" for adults only, "E" for everyone, "T" for teens, "M" for mature, and "RP" for rating pending. The ratings are displayed on the game box, as well as the content descriptors, to help consumers make appropriate choices.
More than half of 2-to-7-year-olds and 82 percent of 8-to-18-year-olds live in homes with at least one video game console, according to the authors. Video games are a multibillion-dollar industry.
A spokesman from the ESRB, Matthew Kagan, says that independent research has come up with different findings. An October 2003 study conducted by Peter Hart Research Associates showed 400 American parents actual footage from 80 video games and found more than three-quarters would have assigned the same rating as the ESRB or a less restrictive one.
The Harvard study, he says, was based on subjective evidence of the researchers.
On one point everyone agrees: No rating system can be a substitute for the judgment of informed parents.
Both the authors and the ESRB officials advise parents to talk to their children about video games and to actually play the game to see the content.
"No rating system can replace the judgment of parents," says Marc Szafran, ESRB's general counsel and senior vice president. "The system [ESRB] is a very useful tool. Parents still need to take a lead role in deciding which game is right" for their children.
Parents are "clueless" about video games and their content, says Dr. Victor Strasburger, a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. And he suspects that many parents don't even know that the ESRB rating system exists.
Parents need to keep a closer eye on their children's video game choices, Strasburger says. His biggest concern is the "point and shoot" games in which players "kill" characters.
Source: Yahoo News
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