America '92: TV, movies make it a tough place

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

In 30 years this country has gone from being a place where you could picnic in the woods, walk the streets at night, cut through an alley, sleep without locking your doors, drive without worrying about getting lost and ending up in a neighborhood where people will kill you, drive without worrying about a boulder crashing through your window, or a bullet smashing through your head, send your child to school without fear that someone will take a shot at him on the bus, or beat him up in the school yard, or knife him in class.

Thirty years ago you could go anywhere without hesitation, take public transportation, wear jewelry, pick up hitchhikers, live without the threat of being robbed, raped, beaten or murdered.

Thirty years ago people didn't have burglar alarms. Stores didn't have metal detectors. Ordinary people didn't sign up for handgun training. America was a safe place to live.

Not any more. The homicide rate in this country was 4.6 per 100,000 back then. Now it's 455 people per 100,000, up 10,000 percent.

And the numbers keep climbing.

Rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, sexual abuse, child abuse, riots, rampages, kids killing kids, men killing their children, men killing their wives. These are all everyday crimes.

Many blame the violence on poverty. But there have always been poor people. There are poor people all over this planet, but there is no more violent a nation than ours. Some 1.1 million of our citizens are in prison.

We lock up a larger share of our people than any other nation on Earth. Still the mindless carnage continues.

So what's the X factor? What is it in America that feeds this epidemic? Why are we so quick to explode? What makes a group of young people beat another young person to death? What makes a gang of men chase and rape and stab and murder a woman? What makes a father kill his wife and children? A child shoot another child? A crowd riot and plunder and murder?

Permission.

Permission is in the air, on the screen, in our ears. Permission fills our heads. It has been given by movies, which glorify violence; by television, which wallows in violence; by crime shows, which make celebrities out of violent men who beat their pregnant wives, out of violent people who kill and get away with it, out of every conceivable violent aberration that can draw an audience.

America is a freak show and we are the freaks. We're polluted, like our air, like our streams, and we don't even know it. And it's the entertainment industry that has polluted us.

If there is one thing that has changed dramatically in 30 years it is what we see on TV, what we watch at the movies, what we hear on the radio. In 1962 on a Thursday night on CBS, viewers could watch "Zane Grey Theater" (a western); "Ann Sothern"(a comedy); "June Allyson"(a drama); and "Person to Person"(an interview show).

Last Thursday night on CBS, viewers got to see "Top Cops" (Sheriff tracks a homicidal missing person; off-duty officer thwarts armed robber); "Street Stories" (Interview with Mike Tyson); "Bodies of Evidence"(Solved and unsolved cases haunt Los Angeles homicide detectives).

On cable the fare is far worse. On any night a viewer can see people blown up, beaten, tortured, raped and murdered. Bruce Willis throws a bomb down a shaft and yells "Yippee Ki Yi Yeah, Motherf----" and everyone laughs. Our films are full of these things - slashings and stalkings and hate.

Then there's rap music. Too much of it promotes violence, demeans women and preaches hate. Stab, shoot, burn, maim, kill - this is the message we are constantly getting.

All these images get under the skin. Like language heard again and again, they become a part of us. And they have an effect. They demean. They desensitize. They devalue human life.

The hottest thing in the entertainment business today are true crime stories. Someone kills and Hollywood's at the door.

"Tell me how you did it? What did you feel like when you stabbed your lover's wife? Do you think you could recreate the murder for the camera?"

Thirty years ago, this nation was a safer place because we were a gentler people. We are no longer gentle. We have absorbed what we've heard, what we've seen, what we've been exposed to continually for years.

The result is a generation for whom crime equals celebrity. For this is what they were taught. And this is what they learned.