LIKE presidential elections and the Olympics, political denunciations of Hollywood violence have become a bedrock quadrennial American tradition. At least every four years—sometimes more often, if there’s a school shooting-movie-industry lobbyist Jack Valenti simultaneously sucks up to politicians and lectures them about the First Amendment. Liberal activists who denounce Joe Camel as a pied piper of social coercion swear that screen idols have no influence on human behavior. Television executives who make billions of dollars off the persuasive power of 30-second commercials declare that the 26-and 54-minute programs those ads punctuate have no net impact on their viewers.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are no new arguments since the last go-around, when Bob Dole denounced “nightmares of depravity” and the “mainstreaming of deviancy” in a slew of films he’d never seen. This season, a Federal Trade Commission report—released with precise political timing—details how the film industry targets very young audiences for mature films. While this gives the controversy a newsier feel, the report’s details merely confirm what everybody knew: Hollywood makes its money from kids.
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