Following the recent spate of schoolyard shootings in the USA - two separate
incidents in March saw a total of two dead and 18 wounded - the effect
of violent films on viewers is back in focus. Still, public concern about screen
violence seems to do little damage to the box office of violent films. Three
weeks after the shootings, Steven Seagal's Exit Wounds went straight
in at number one in the US, grossing US$19 million in its first weekend and
becoming the action star's biggest ever opener.
Silver claims that the screening of violent films in relatively
peaceful countries proves that they don't lead to violent actions in viewers.
"We have problems in the USA, and we all have to work together to solve them.
But I don't know who's responsible and I don't think you can blame the
movies. These films are equally successful in foreign countries, and they don't
have the same problems with violence. Look at Canada, look at Japan," he says.
Japan is actually a case in point. Last year, a furor
over Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale led to the link between youth violence
and media violence being debated in government for the first time. The film's
story sees a right-wing government send a group of troublesome teenagers to
an island. There, the former classmates must kill each other in a gruesome
game of survivor - only one can return to Japan alive. As friend murders
friend in an effort to survive, the death count flashes up in a corner of
the screen like a video game.
Left- and right-wing politicians united to pressure Japan's
self-regulating film censorship authorities into giving Battle Royale
a Restricted-15 certificate. It's the first Japanese film to be given a Restricted
certificate on the grounds of excessive violence. Censorship has previously
only been applied to pornography and films which contain scenes of drug use.
These have usually been given an R-18 certificate.
Japan's juvenile crime rate is reportedly very low, but
some recent high-profile cases, which include the bombing of a video store
by a 17-year-old, as well as a seven-year-old child killer, have made politicians
anxious. "Battle Royale turns murder into a game," opposition legislator
Koki Ishii told The Los Angeles Times. Lawmakers are now mooting a
tougher ratings system. To muddy the situation, it's alleged that some juvenile
offenders have claimed that they couldn't distinguish between reality and
virtual reality.
Director Kinji Fukasaku, well known for his classic yakuza cycle Battles
Without Honour or Humanity, dismisses charges that his film could encourage
violence. "It's strange that it's received this certificate, as it does
not glamorize violence," says Fukasaku, an assertive 70-year-old. "The government
is trying to regulate the media on the grounds that some things are harmful
to young people. The politicians alleged that this film would be very harmful
to teenagers. I said that this was not the case. The debates got very heated,
and made Battle Royale very famous - so it became a great hit!"
Fukasaku claimed that, far from turning murder into a game, the film was
actually an examination of how teenagers react under extreme pressure, based
on his own wartime experiences.
The fact that violent films play unrated in Japan may surprise Americans
concerned about the effects of violence on viewers. But ideas of what is
acceptable and what is unacceptable are often culturally specific. Japanese
popular culture, from pornography to manga comics, brims with violence,
as documented in Ian Buruma's book Behind The Mask: On Sexual Demons,
Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters, and Other Japanese Cultural
Heroes.
The martial arts - whether practical or literary - are an integral
part of Chinese culture, so most Hong Kong kung-fu films receive a Category
2 rating, which allows children to see them. Furthermore, outside areas
of triad activity, Hong Kong is a very safe place.
Violence is perhaps integral to American culture, too.
Many Americans' conceptions of society still hark back to the mythology of
the Wild West the frontier notions of self-reliance, small government,
and family values. As Westerns like John Ford's My Darling Clementine
show, the forces of order from the American East still had to use violent
means to "civilise" the anarchic forces of the Wild West. The gun-slinger
is the definitive image of the frontier years, and, perhaps, of the American
movie itself.
With his 1997 release Wyatt Earp, a tough reading
of the life of the legendary lawman, director/screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan
attempted to show how the values of the 19th Century still inform American
society today. "You can see the seeds of everything that's wrong with United
States in that time," Kasdan told me. "We have always had to deal with chaos.
People often say, 'what we need today is a Wyatt Earp'. Earp would just go
into a situation, blast away, and clean it up. It's a very American idea.
But the last 30 years has shown that, in modern society, it's impossible to
clean things up that way."
If Kasdan is right, banning violent films isn't going to improve the situation
on America's streets. It also means that viewers will be flocking to enjoy
Steven Seagal's violent brand of justice for some time to come.
Richard James Havis
