Ill Effects

The Media Violence Debate

Martin Barker, Julian Petley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780415225137
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134590063
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The influence of the media remains a contentious issue. Every time a particularly high-profile crime of violence is committed, there are those who blame the effects of the media. The familiar culprits of cinema, television, video and rock music, have now been joined, particularly in the wake of the massacre at Columbine High, by the Internet and the World Wide Web. Yet, any real evidence that the media do actually have such negative effects remains as elusive as ever and, consequently, the debate about effects frequently ends up as being little more than strident and rhetorical appeals to 'common sense'. Ill Effects argues that the question of media influence needs to be debated by those with a clearer understanding of how audiences and media interact with one another. Analysing the failure of the effects approach to understand both the modern media and their audiences, this second edition examines the influence of the effects tradition in America, the United Kingdom, Australia and Europe as well as the role of the British Board of Film Classification. Contributors examine the increasing number of stories about the alleged ill effects of the Internet and enquire whether this is a prelude to, and a crude attempt to legitimise, the imposition of tighter controls on new media. Ill Effects is a guide for the perplexed. It suggests new and productive ways in which we can understand the effects of the media and questions why many in media education accept a simple interpretation of the effects debate, particularly at times of moral panic. Refusing to adopt the absurd position that the media have no influence at all, Ill Effects reconceptualises the notion of media influence in ways which take into account how people actually use and interact with the media in their everyday lives. Martin Barker, Sara Bragg, David Buckingham, Tom Craig, David Gauntlett, Patricia Holland, Annette Hill, Mark Kermode, Graham Murdoch, Julian Petley, Sue Turnbull.

1

THE NEWSON REPORT

A case study in ‘common sense’

Martin Barker

In June 1994, the Christian Democrat celebrated a famous victory. It had forced the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, to amend his Criminal Justice Bill to make the British Board of Film Classification much more stringent about what was allowed on to video. Howard hadn't adopted their amendment – one which had been drafted at a meeting of the Movement for Christian Democracy in March – outright. But its main thrust, without question, was accepted.

How had they done this? By a combination of arguing and lobbying. They had talked of the need to protect children. They had spoken of gratuitously violent films and videos, and how bad they are for the young. And they had played on memories of recent cases where young people, even children, had so obviously gone to the bad. And they got their argument into every newspaper in the land, and on to many radio and television programmes. The effect, as their Parliamentary sponsor David Alton himself put it, was that they had ‘changed the terms of reference’ in which ‘films of this kind’ would henceforth be discussed.

That was no small achievement. And it owed much to one thing: a report by Professor Elizabeth Newson published in April 1994, just two weeks before the ‘Alton Amendment’ reached the floor of the House of Commons – a report which, as this essay aims to demonstrate, was wildly misleading (Newson, 1994). But the most important thing to note is not just its appalling quality of evidence and argument, but that, because of the nature of what it was arguing, those weaknesses went wholly unnoticed. What we have, in the Newson Report, is a classic case of ‘common sense writ large’. By this I mean that its claims have the same status as medieval witchcraft accusations. When a ‘witch’ was denounced, a whole array of evidences and proofs could be adduced; but these could only ever convince because those hearing them were already completely persuaded that these were the only likely explanations. You can only believe someone to be a witch if you believe there are ‘witch-events’. The facts adduced only look like evidence and arguments if you are already within that frame of reference. So the Newson Report.

In this chapter, I aim to demonstrate just how bad the Newson Report was. But my broader aim is to push to the centre of our attention the question: why don't we spot this more easily? And I focus on the Newson Report because it is so symptomatic. There, condensed within a few pages, are all the marks of a contemporary witch-craze. Few will now remember the details of what Newson wrote. And yet look how the same framework of ideas was so easily reactivated in more recent attacks: on magazines for young girls (for ‘encouraging young girls to experiment sexually’); on The X-Files (for ‘encouraging young people to play with the supernatural’); on any photography of naked children (for ‘pandering to child pornographers’); on ‘porn on the Internet’ (for giving access to a ‘vast array of corrupting materials’); and so on and on. Newson's report allows us to see in miniature all these processes.

How does ‘common sense’ operate?

The aftermath of the murder of James Bulger in Liverpool gave a huge fillip to the prosecution case against TV, film and video. At the trial, the judge speculated on what might have prompted the killing. He wondered if there wasn't a connection with violent videos. He didn't mention any particular films, but the press had been primed, and one film, Child's Play III, became their target. However, it soon became clear that, despite police efforts, there was not a scrap of evidence that the boys had watched the film. Did this failure produce retractions of the claim? Did any of the newspapers, or Alton, or the other campaigners, admit they had been wrong? Not one. So urgent is the wish to find such a link, it seems, that when an exemplar like this falls apart the response is simply to carry on.

In fact, several things happen. Some retreat to the position ‘Well, they certainly had/could have had access to films of this sort; after all, we all know children will find ways . . .’, or: ‘Of course, there is an evil climate that surrounds children from films like this, whether they actually see them or not.’ (This apparently weaker position is in fact rhetorically stronger. For what would count as a test of it?) Others escape by arguing ‘Well, maybe not that time – but here's another . . .’, and cite another new case, in its turn difficult to check.

These strategies were all at play in the Granada TV programme, TV Violence – Will It Change Your Life? on 1 May 1994, intended as television's riposte to the threatening resonances of the Bulger case. Granada had arranged for one of the Merseyside police investigators to be present, to ‘give the facts’. And he did so, briefly acknowledging that they had found no link. But he continued: no, they hadn't seen that film, but they had grown up in a ‘violent video culture’. And, to see the harm that could do, look at the case of Suzanne Capper in Manchester, a young woman brutally murdered in a drugs case. Inevitably a warm round of applause greeted this rebuttal. The trouble is, the claimed link in the Capper case was just as bogus, but no one was there to show it. The story most people remember is the story as the press told it – as the Liverpool policeman retold it, having heard it from the press.

Most of us have no chance to check claims in cases like this. We are therefore dependent on how the facts are presented to us by the media. In fact, if we want an example of media effects, this is probably the clearest we can get! And it is very tempting to welcome and accept quick-fix explanations that seem to ‘make sense’. They speak in a vocabulary that we recognise. So, even when refuted, such cases don't go away. They linger like ghosts, always half-alive to ‘explain’ the next ‘inexplicable’. Long after the link in the Bulger and Capper cases had been thoroughly disproved, journalists and others were happily repeating them as if they were established truths.

This isn't something new, though it currently has a new vigour. In the 1950s, for example, when there was a scare about the possible effects of horror comics on the young, a story hit the press which seemed to prove the point perfectly. A young Borstal absconder, Alan Poole, was killed in a police shoot-out. The press story was that when the police broke into his hideout they found him surrounded by hundreds of crime and horror comics.

Or did they? Some months later the Home Secretary had to make a statement to Parliament:

Take the case of Alan Poole the Borstal absconder who shot a policeman and was himself then killed resisting arrest. In that case it was reported in the press that he had a library of 50 of these comics. Indeed a social worker said that he had a collection of over 300 . . . [I]n spite of all the publicity, we found that this particular lad had one ‘Western’ comic in his possession, and that not a very alarming one.

(cited in Barker, 1984a, p. 30)

Yet, despite this official refutation, the case of Alan Poole was cited as proof for a long time after. It suggests that these claims are not part of a rational debate.

But we need to take this further: these arguments have a very particular nature and structure. There are many horrible events ‘out there’, but only certain very specific kinds of explanation are mobilised to account for them. In the Bulger case, it seemed to ‘make sense’ to explain their behaviour by saying they had been ‘corrupted’ by watching videos – and never mind that they hadn't actually watched them at all. They could have, might have; it could all make sense if they had.

Then, what about this?

FATHER STABBED BABY TO DEATH ‘AS SACRIFICE TO WARD OFF EVIL’: A father who thought he was Joseph, his wife was Mary and they and their children were on the way to the Garden of Eden killed his 17-month-old daughter as a sacrifice, an Old Bailey court was told yesterday . . . Before the attack in June, he had . . . watched the film King of Kings, about the life of Christ.

(Guardian, 21 December 1994)

Not one newspaper which recounted this sad story thought it worth suggesting that King of Kings is a potential cause of murder. Why not? Actually there is probably more evidence to sustain such a link, because of the tendency for certain very disturbed violent offenders to adopt a ‘killer-missionary’ role; they explain their violence as a command from God. The reason why such a link wouldn't be proposed is because it doesn't seem ‘obvious’ – and that is the problem we must explore.

Newson's assumptions

David Alton may have used the good offices of the Movement for Christian Democracy to prepare and promote his case, but he also apparently had science on his side, in the form of Elizabeth Newson's Report, co-signed by twenty-four other child professionals. I want to put that ‘science’ to the test. One of the problems has been the disparity between its size and scope, and its impact. Here is a short report, making no claim to present new evidence. It mainly tells of a supposed change of heart by twenty-five people. Its tone is certainly thoughtful and concerned. It makes no obviously wild claims. Follow, then, its narrative, to see where steps are taken that might give us cause to question.

Newson begins with the Bulger case. She is careful not to assert that the two boys really did see Child's Play III or other equivalent films. Rather, the boys are depicted as exemplars of a new cruelty in children. Something exceptional must explain this new viciousness. And here Newson acts as spokesperson for a group who have been growing increasingly worried: the child professionals. It is their view that there are now new kinds of film, and that these films have disturbing ‘messages’. To confirm this, we are referred to two films as examples, and to a large body of research evidence which (we are assured) now concludes that these messages are doing harm. The conclusion is inevitable: professionals must forego their traditional liberalism. The problems are just too over whelming.

We need to get behind this narrative. For it is built on a series of claims, all of which have to be true for her argument to hold up. There are eight such claims:

1 the murder of James Bulger was so special as to require special explanation;

2 such an explanation has to be some singular change. The most singular recent change is the easy availability of sadistic images within films;

3 these films offer a distinctive message which can be traced and correlated with the attitudes and/or behaviour of James's killers. Child's Play III might well be an example of such a film;

4 there is also now a new kind of film, in which ‘the viewer is made to identify with the perpetrator of the act, not the victim’;

5 these four propositions are linked to a general claim: ‘The principle that what is experienced vicariously will have some effect on some people is an established one, and is the reason why industry finds it worth while to spend millions of pounds on advertising’;

6 this new kind of film is the start of a worsening curve, as film-makers, video games writers and the like exploit the growing potential of their technologies. Therefore their effects are almost certain to get worse;

7 a great deal of research has already been done, with consistent conclusions: ‘media violence’ is linked via ‘heavy viewing’ to ‘aggressive behaviour’;

8 there is now a vast world literature on this topic, which consistently supports this link.

Eight claims, then, so common to debates on these issues they could be endlessly reproduced. Unfortunately not one of them can be justified. Not one of these claims can be supported by either evidence or logic, as I aim to demonstrate. Yet each one looked disturbingly obvious and persuasive. So persuasive in fact that only a fool or a villain would ignore that obviousness. I will tackle them through four key themes around which they are organised: How do we tell what the ‘message’ of a film is? . . . How can we understand ‘media influence’ . . . Is there, as claimed, an overwhelming body of evidence for ‘harm’ . . . And just what is ‘media violence’?

How can we tell what the ‘message’ of a film is?

There have been claims about ‘new, bad media images’ for a very long time. An example:

Granted, my dear sir, that your young Jack, or my twelve year old Robert, have minds too pure either to seek after or to crave after literature of the sort in question, but not infrequently it is found without seeking. It is a contagious disease, just as cholera and typhus and the plague are contagious, and, as everybody is aware, it needs not personal contact with a body stricken to convey either of these frightful maladies to the hale and hearty. A tainted scrap of rag has been known to spread plague and death through an entire village, just as a stray leaf of Panther Bill or Tyburn Tree may sow the seeds of immorality amongst as many boys as a town may produce.

(see Barker, 1989, p. 102)

Thus a nineteenth-century campaigner against ‘penny dreadfuls’. Or again:

Before these children's greedy eyes with heartless indiscrimination horrors unimaginable are . . . presented night after night. . . Terrific massacres, horrible catastrophes, motor-car smashes, public hangings, lynchings . . . All who care for the moral well-being and education of the child will set their faces like flint against this new form of excitement.

Thus The Times, eighty years ago (see Pearson, in Barker, 1984b, p. 88). Or again:

I find that many parents and teachers are blissfully ignorant of the contents of comics and they would be wise when the opportunity occurs to examine them in detail. They will not be impressed by the printing, colouring, drawing or literary contents, and they will soon see that the comics can be broadly divided into two classes, harmful and harmless.

Thus one of the 1950s campaigners (see Barker, 1984a, p. 81).

If we look carefully at these three quotations we can discern the core of critics’ claims. There are ‘bad materials’ out there, and we only have to look to know that they are bad. One contact can be enough (if in the nineteenth century the favourite metaphor for this was disease, today it is drug addiction), so the dangers when we are ‘bombarded’ with ‘floods’ of these things are incalculable. So how do we tell ‘bad’ materials from ‘good’? Let us take Newson's examples head-on.

Child's Play III is not a very good film. But the point is: what kind of film is it, and what could reasonably be claimed about it? Not many people will have seen it, and therefore it is interesting to ask readers to fill out a mental image of what it must be like. After all, the film was widely claimed to be the possible trigger for the murder of James Bulger. What sort of a film is it in your imagination?

The most remarkable thing about this film is that a great majority of the film is devoted to a desperate attempt to save a small child from being killed. It is a horror film, no question. In part it is scary, sometimes a bit bloody. But judge for yourselves whether it fits your mental image. Here is a synopsis:

The story is the third in a series in which teenager Andy Barclay is forced to do battle with a ‘Good Guy’ doll which has been possessed by the mind of a former murderer. The title sequence shows a doll forming out of plastic contaminated with the blood of the murderer: evil is returning. The opening scene shows the chairman of the doll-making company resolving to resume production of the doll. He is a cynical man – ‘Let's face it,’ he sneers at one of his executives, ‘what are children, after all, but consumer trainees?’ For that he will get his comeuppance. That night, he takes home the first doll off the production line, and it comes alive and kills him gleefully. ‘Don't fuck with the Chuck’, it rudely pronounces.

The remainder o...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• ILL EFFECTS
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of contributors
• Introduction: from bad research to good – a guide for the perplexed
• 1 The Newson Report: a case study in ‘common sense’
• 2 The worrying influence of ‘media effects’ studies
• 3 Electronic child abuse? Rethinking the media's effects on children
• 4 Living for libido; or, ‘Child's Play IV’: the imagery of childhood and the call for censorship
• 5 Just what the doctors ordered? Media regulation, education and the ‘problem’ of media violence
• 6 Once more with feeling: talking about the media violence debate in Australia
• 7 I was a teenage horror fan: or, ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love Linda Blair’
• 8 ‘Looks like it hurts’: women's responses to shocking entertainment
• 9 Reservoirs of dogma: an archaeology of popular anxieties
• 10 Us and them
• 11 Invasion of the Internet abusers: marketing fears about the information superhighway
• 12 On the problems of being a ‘trendy travesty’
• Index