My two sons, ages 8 and 4, are having a deprived childhood, and they resent it. Although virtually all their friends have seen Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, my wife and I have stubbornly refused to let our children join the crowds at the box office. We cling to the old-fashioned, even reactionary, notion that watching one act of violence after another may be harmful to very young minds.
Are we being ridiculous? I admit that as a kid I saw Roy Rogers shoot-'em- ups and the brutal battles between Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck. These didn't warp me for life. But I never saw anything so violent as Batman before I could tie my shoelaces, and to this day I don't have the stomach to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As a teenager I thought the Rolling Stones' Let's Spend the Night Together was cool, but it's a long way from that to this Guns N' Roses lyric: "Panties 'round your knees/ With your ass in debris/ Doin' dat grind + with a push and squeeze/ Tied up, tied down, up against the wall . . ." Or this from 2 Live Crew: "Just nibble on my d like a rat does cheese."
I realize that I can shelter my boys for only so long. As they grow older, I will lose control of them, and they will eagerly sample the forbidden fruit. I hope that by then they will have internalized my values. But I fear that pop culture and peer pressure may overwhelm my influence. Look at how our culture spurred drug use among the young.
It is too easy to dismiss protests about pop entertainment as prudishness. Most concerned parents fret not so much about sex as about the combination of sex and violence. In heavy-metal music, there is often little difference between sex and rape. Too much of today's entertainment carries messages that are damaging to young psyches and dangerous to society. Among them: 1) women are sexual objects to be used and abused by men; 2) violence is an effective means of resolving conflicts; 3) it is O.K. to hate another class of people.
Parents would not be so upset if the sex and violence were confined to the screen and stereo. But our children are at risk in the real world. While the total population of teenagers is dwindling, the number of murders and rapes committed by juveniles is on the rise. Teenage pregnancy has reached epidemic proportions. To a degree, entertainment just reflects what is already going on in society. But isn't it possible that pop culture reinforces and perhaps amplifies bad behavior? There are many reasons for teenage crime, including poverty, family problems and psychological ills, but who can say for sure that violent entertainment is not a contributing factor?
Last year in New Jersey seven middle-class teens allegedly took a miniature baseball bat and sexually assaulted a 17-year-old mentally impaired girl as six friends looked on. Who knows what demons haunted the boys? Were they all psychologically disturbed, or were they acting normally in a culture where sexual violence is deemed tolerable, even entertaining? All parents have to live with fears that their daughter will be the next one assaulted or that their son will be one of the culprits.