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Efforts to censor Hollywood nothing new, USU professor says By
the USU journalism & communication department
A USU journalism professor examines the collision between free expression and pop culture as part of a new book on the American entertainment industry. Ted Pease, head of the journalism and communication department at Utah State University, says free expression has often been more threatened in entertainment -- movies, radio and television -- than in newspapers and TV news. "Every time technology has offered us an opportunity to express ourselves, it has been burned at the stake by the existing powers that be," Pease says. "It's not that people don't want to know or think about new things, but new things scare us. And when you add the loaded question of 'public morality,' free expression is always at risk." The book is More Than a Movie -- Ethics in Entertainment, compiled by Hollywood filmmaker F. Miguel Valenti, veteran TV critic Les Brown and Hollywood writer Laurie Trotta. It features chapters by Pease, TV Guide's Neil Hickey, scriptwriter Jack Pittman, film scholar Annette Insdorf and a forward by movie director Peter Bogdanovich. Also included are interviews with Hollywood executives, directors, writers and producers. Valenti and the others argue for greater reflection and responsibility on the part of those who create Hollywood images and messages, and for educating the public on how to make sense of what they see in the movies and on TV. More Than a Movie examines media influences on society and society's efforts to legislate responsibility, as well as looking at ethics, media violence, documentaries and children's programming. "This is a brilliant book," said author and veteran TV personality Steve Allen, who chaired the watchdog Parents Television Council until his death last month. Karl Bardosh, a New York University film professor, called it "an important book about burning issues." In his chapter, Pease reviews how societies have often threatened freedoms in reaction to unwanted messages, and traces efforts to curb Hollywood's "threats to civilization" from the motion picture codes of the 1920s through continuing complaints today that movies cause violence and sexual permissiveness. "More and more Americans, from political leaders to grandmothers, are calling for more 'morality,' accountability, regulation and self-restraint" in Hollywood, Pease writes. But the issue is not social morality, he says, but who decides what citizens see and read and hear in the mass media. "Clearly, the mass media are an important part of our culture, but Hollywood can't be blamed for 'ruining' society today any more than the printing press can be called responsible for polluting the world when people learned to read," Pease said. "The mass media always have been made the villain, but books, newspapers, TV and movies only reflect what's already going on in society. Technology can be blamed only for allowing new ideas to circulate." (VALENTI, F. Miguel, Les Brown and Laurie Trotta, Eds. MORE THAN A MOVIE: ETHICS IN ENTERTAINMENT. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000) 272 pp. ISBN 0-8133-9075-3, $25 hardcover)
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