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"I'm too young to die!" The sixteen-year old standing in the dark at my door was very frightened and nearly incoherent. This is a true story. I wondered if he was full of booze, and he did smell like alcohol. "There are five men with guns chasing me. Please let me come in. They're going to kill me. I'm too young to die." I looked the young man over - something didn't quite add up. I looked around and didn't see anyone close, so I let him in. I suppose this should have been exciting. This kind of thing doesn't excite me or upset me - I would make a poor adrenaline junkie. Other things do excite me. At first his story was targeted at "them." "They're trying to kill me," he repeated over and over. "Please don't hurt me. Please don't call the police." Drug related - it had to be. I began questioning him, knowing that he was being elusive. Slowly the pieces began to come forth. He was at their house and they were drinking beer. Then they threw him out and told him he had five minutes to get off their property or they were going to kill him. He ran like the wind. "And please call my father and make up a story about why I am visiting you, and ask my father to come and get me." Umhmmm. I declined getting creative on the phone. I glanced out the window for any sign of the five guys with guns. "Why do they want to kill you?" I asked. "What did you do to them?" They were nowhere to be seen. Again the pieces of the story came out in unconnected fragments. Basically he had been one of their pushers and when the police caught him, he squeeled on them. They probably thought that a good scare would silence him. "If they were going to kill you, you would already be dead." I offered him a ride home. Outside as we were about to get in the car, a car raced up the street and stopped near my property. A couple of guys got out and looked around. The young man hid behind the deck until they left. Later I watched out my window as the car raced around the neighborhood for hours, and the men beat through wooded lots looking for the young man. I wished they would quit so I could go to bed and not worry about them tearing up the neighborhood. I didn't bother calling the police. Notice how the first words, "I'm too young to die," made you read the rest of the story. It has long been realized that life and death openings get people to buy or read books. You want to know how it turned out. In many books and in Hollywood it has turned into an art form called the action movie, the epitomy of which is the thriller . They are chock full of life and death situations - keeping you on the edge of your seat. I like many thrillers, but not a steady diet of them. We all read or go to see them. Some are almost too intense and I leave the theater feeling bashed and shaken. Thrillers are also filled with violence. Violence doesn't do anything for me. Even situations that might end in violence don't do anything for me. It is the threat of a life ending, I think, that grabs most people, not the violence. But some people do identify with the violence, and we are feeding them a growing diet of it. This editorial is about two things:
What kind of world are we creating for ourselves? This is the overriding concern of this site, to which all the effort is ultimately focused. This thought is born of my judgment that creative people (writers) and the visual medium (movies) are more influential than any other type of communication medium. Yet it is also my judgment that stories have little actual influence on people, but can be reflective of the values of some people - some people seek out in communication and in action what is already in their minds. It is their choice what to dwell on, and stories assist what they are becoming. But for most people, stories can be a way of dancing with life. It is our choice whether we mimic what we see in stories, or not. And if I thought that the previous paragraph was the end of it, I would have no reason for writing the next paragraph. Life is complicated. What does it matter? Congress is about to consider legislation that would penalize anyone who exposes young people to violence. This sounds like a totally impractical quagmire that will not pass into legislation, and will not stand before the Supreme Court. However, Congress is obviously under pressure (or doing political posturing) to pass something related to violence. Since they can't confront the gun lobby, it is easier to point the finger back at the people. My confidence in the Congress (as a body) to do anything responsible, or even to be able to make a mature inquiry and judgment about an issue, is sadly at an all time low. I have a lot of respect for many Congressmen, but I say this after over 40 years of watching the Congress - do nothing congresses, do everything congresses ruled by veto. And mostly political congresses, deadlocked along party lines, cutting deals, adding "pork" to budgets, posturing on issues, courting special interest groups, vetoing legislation that would clean up their act, and conducting very negative campaigns - unable to do the one thing they are hired to do, pass legislation for the good of the people. While Clinton's inappropriate personal life deserved some remedial and punitive action, and maybe could not have escaped repraisal, the political inquisition into the President's personal life was a major fiasco that indicted them all for incompetence - especially when public opinion was always against all of it. So unfortunately while posturing on violence, they may just bungle into passing some kind of legislation against media violence modeled on pornography laws, that will actually stand. The ramifications are ugly. I have no wish to be alarmist or extremist, but if someone can be arrested for exposing youth to violence, this could apply to violence on news broadcasts, to novel writers and publishers, used book traders, libraries, some person who leaves a novel on a bus seat or in a trash can, video stores, comic books, parents who let their children and neighbor's children watch a thriller, and of course, young six-year-old Tommy who pirates a thriller video and watches it at night with his brother in his bedroom. What kind of a world would this be? Pornography is something that we tolerate in adults and prevent children from exposure to until it is their mature choice. But violence in the media is something we accept in adult media and minimize from children's view, knowing that they will be exposed to violent stories or real violence in the streets as a world condition as they mature. We would likely be no more successful at restricting violent stories than we are at restricting drugs - it is a marginal, never ending battle. We can (and I believe should) remove pornography from visibility by young minds, but we can only remove violence from view by eliminating real violence from the world. Violence is a primitive instinct. When the peaceful (relatively) inhabitants of tiny, isolated Easter Island ran into famine in the 1700s, they warred against each other, and killed and ate each other. I don't think anyone had to sail thousands of miles across the ocean to teach them violence, or show them a violent movie. Given enough pressure, people will become violent. If we are not teaching people how to resolve disputes in nonviolent ways, then the blame is on us. Eventually the people of Easter Island worked out ways of surviving together. I suspect that we are somewhat more capable of doing the same. The US has not always been a country that resolved conflicts without guns. President Andrew Johnson appeared before a political crowd during a campaign with a pistol in his hand. Vice President Van Buren regularly wore two pistols into the Senate. And when conflicts became too heated, elected Presidential candidates were even known to resolve their disputes legally with a private dual in which only one would walk away. These men seem little more mature than adolescents. As a society, we have grown and become better at resolving conflicts. And I'll admit up front that for today I see little reason for guns in our current society - perhaps a hunting rifle, or a handgun for personal protection where it is really needed. While I think that guns that mimic automatic weapons, and assault weapons, should be totally banned to prevent mass killing by school children or anyone else, I don't think that gun control is going to buy us much. If a kid wants pornography, or drugs, or sex, or violent films, or guns, he will find them. But I think we have to realize that when these things are so pervasive and seemingly accepted or approved, falling into the hands of everyone, while some learn to deal with those things, others fall prey to their evil. For example, in some small African nations, AIDS is decimating the married population because sex outside of marriage is so commonplace and acceptable. In the small island nation of xxxx, where television has just been introduced, one of the first problems has been the change in self-image among women who, after watching thin to emaciated women on TV, now think that they are fat. When the world is saturated with messages about sex, power, violence, and guns, it has to have an impact. The entertainment business responds to where the money is, which is where public interest is. But it isn't really that simple. The challenge is to write captivating, high impact stories that the public wants to see, without putting in the violence. If the same effort was put into trying to write nonviolent scripts that is poured into trying to increase the violent scenes in movies, what would be the result?
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