Film Ethics: The Impact of Film and Video
From Valenti, E. Miguel, More Than A Movie: Ethics in Entertainment, 2000, Boulder, CO: Westview Press
How much of an impact does the work of film and television creators have on our society and on societies abroad? How important is it to the world?
The entertainment and electronic media (including the Internet, computers, and video games) is arguably the most pervasive force in American society today. Its almost incomprehensible impact continues to grow here at home as our more traditional political, social, civic, and religious institutions degrade and decay.
Compared to the past-even to our relatively recent, pre-Watergate past, we as a society have lost much of our respect for the political system that was once the cornerstone of our nation as well as the envy of the world. Unfortunately, nowadays it has become more important to know with whom the president has had sex than to know about the treaties he signs, the laws he enacts, or the bombs he drops.
Organized religion, meanwhile, long the bedrock of American national life, has lost its once solid hold on many American families. 1
In an age where, in many cases, both parents work, the divorce rate is extremely high,2 and the number of single parent families is soaring, the institution of the American family has lost much of its ability to stabilize society.
Our educational system can no longer plug these holes, as it is also deeply flawed, mired in bureaucratic morass and, as a frightening new trend, awash in senseless violence.
Thus, as a society we have arrived at a point where the institutions that gave structure to daily life in times past have eroded severely, leaving a vacuum.
No pressure or anything, but into this vacuum has stepped, you guessed it ... us. Whether we like it or not, the entertainment industry has become the new national institution, the common thread. Movie theaters are one of the few places groups of people still gather to focus on the same stimulus. Theaters have, in a sense, replaced the village green.
Television, too, provides societal bonding through common experience. A huge percentage of the population rallies around the tube for such things as the final episode of Seinfeld3 or the season finale of ER.4 What's more, even absent these landmark events, what we see on television factors into our cultural image, again through shared experience.
Many of us are extremely uncomfortable in this role of arbiter of national taste and to some degree, morals. For the most part, we see ourselves as being in the entertainment business. However, the reality is that we have become "educators," or at the very least, strong influences, particularly on young people.
Nowadays, we are drowning in a veritable sea of media. With the rampage of multiplex cinema building-and the construction of giant new 40- and 50-plexes being experimented with in several regions;5 and with statistically very nearly every household in the land having at least one television6 and most having a VCR; as well as the proliferation of the personal computer and the Internet it brings with it-media is all around us. For many households in the United States and other countries, the TV is a de facto member of the family. On it sits all day, talking, whether anyone is watching or not. It filters into the background of daily life like no influence before it. Children, especially, spend a very large percentage of their time planted in front of it-more time, actually, than they spend in school at certain ages (see the section, "Children: A Higher Standard").
For film, box office receipts in 1998 crested at $7 billion, which means there were more than 1.5 billion theatrical admissions.8 That's right -- more than 1.5 billion people (obviously many repeat viewers) paid to see our product in the United States alone, and that just at the movies! In addition, home video topped $9 billion for U.S. distributors and $12.6 billion worldwide,9 thanks, in part, to the release of some major titles. Finally, television advertising revenues topped $25 billion for the year.10
As Les Brown forcefully illuminates in his essay "Entertainment in Our Extended World," the first essay at the end of this section, our society has become completely and obsessively "hooked on entertainment." This essay examines the level of this, our national addiction, and describes how we got to this point. Brown focuses on the development of the film and television industries here at home, historical attempts to rate and censor media content, and the overall expansion of entertainment tentacles into our psyches.
And what about the rest of the world? Is this immersion into media culture a uniquely American aberration? Decidedly not. Movies and television produced here are seen in most of the more than 190 separate nations around the globe.ll
For starters, entertainment has become the leading export industry of the United States, having surpassed the aeronautics and aerospace industry, with no end of growth in sight.12 As an increasing number of new television stations and other media outlets are established internationally, world hunger for American product will only increase. So too, the current multiplex theater building frenzy taking place throughout Europe and elsewhere will create an enormous need for programming output, much of it originating in the United States. According to Mark Gill, president of Miramax in Los Angeles, it is currently true that "[s]ome 86 percent of tickets sold around the world are to American movies." 13 Entertainment is not only our leading export, but our leading cultural ambassador as well. Globally, more people form their perceptions and opinions of the United States from entertainment product than from any other source.
Through the media, American culture invades other societies and infiltrates their cultures to an almost ridiculous degree. In an earlier era, this was mostly true of American-manufactured products.
Often, even in remote parts of the so-called Third World, one could find the ubiquitous Coca-ColaŽ sign. Yet this was not nearly as invasive as our worldwide media blitz is today. After all, these were products, not an assaultive and extremely visible stream of values and ideas presented as entertainment.
It is sad to realize that nowadays, for example, the natives inhabiting the jungles surrounding Iquitos, Peru, at the upper reaches of the Amazon River, see Baywatch14 on blaring old televisions when they come to town (by dugout canoe) to pick up supplies. The natives have no electricity or running water except the river. Iquitos can only be reached by air or river. There are no roads. Yet there is Baywatch.
In fact, Baywatch is seen in some 144 countries, generating revenues in excess of $100 million per year, with approximately 70 percent of that revenue coming from foreign markets. Not only does this give a rather skewed vision of America, unless you happen to BE an LA County lifeguard, but it also creates a desire for material things and for a life that is not remotely possible where many of these viewers live.
This phenomenon occurs all over the world. So-called cultural "pollution" is one of the principal reasons why many countries resent the United States, and why these sentiments are on the rise. Protectionism in foreign film and television industries all over the world, designed to restrict the import of U.S. programming in the form of quotas and taxes on U.S. product, is a direct result of this sentiment. So too are the numerous international co-production treaties that exist between various countries for film and television production, most of which specifically exclude the United States. As a result of our dominance of world markets for entertainment product and the cultural sabotage that accompanies that product, we have become the "bad guy" on the block.
We, as creators, are wielding an ever more powerful cultural weapon-a big stick with immense global impact. We are also projecting a picture of America in our programming by which the world judges us.
In his essay entitled "How The World Sees Us," noted journalist Jack Pitman gives an insider's overview of international perspectives on the United States drawn from our media exports. He brings to life the importance of U.S. programming overseas and the way in which that programming projects images of us as a society.
Quotes:
(Director Mike) Nichols' protestation to the contrary, it is probable that millions of people in the U.S. and abroad formed some lasting impressions-fair or not-of the president and the first lady from the characters played by John Travolta and Emma Thompson in Primary Colors. --Les Brown
Entertainment is about diversity. There's no greater community than a movie theater with 500 strangers, all sharing this experience together. --Stu Zakim
The French Minister of Culture was in my office a couple of years ago, and he said, "I have concluded that what Miramax does is take culture and sell it as entertainment." That is very true: In the case of Like Water for Chocolate, sell the food, sell the sex.--Mark Gill
I never look at my films as art or entertainment. I look at them as just stories. But I look at them more seriously than as just entertainment. I'm concerned with topics that are accountable and socially redeeming. It costs so much to make a film, so you just can't play around with it. It has such a major impact on audiences that you really have to take what you say seriously. --Charles Burnett
I hope that people will understand that television has a huge amount of power. More people saw Schindler's List on NBC in one night than had ever seen that film before. People who didn't believe there had been a Holocaust saw that film on TV. Entertainment on television, in the right hands, can be a really positive social force. --Bridget Potter
There is a new sense that anyone can make a movie. The medium is accessible to all and if you have a story to tell, get yourself a movie camera. I think that's really not true. Like any art form there are great filmmakers and lesser ones, and the great ones are few and far between. I find a lot of young filmmakers coming out today don't really know film history, and don't have sense of who came before them, who the great masters were.
--Christine Vachon
It'd be nice if we could function at a slightly higher level. That doesn't mean that you do things that are not interesting. A lot of interesting stuff is coming out of independent filmmakers. It's good to see that not everyone is brain dead except major studios. --Gordon Willis
I just don't think that people react to something they see on the screen except as a tie-in to their 15 minutes of fame. There is nothing that I-as a normal human being with no inclination to hurt or kill anybody-can see on the screen that can make me want do the opposite. --Rob Legato
Notes
1 Although traditional religion and religious institutions may be waning to some ex-
tent, the interest in spirituality, it seems, is not-note the success of such programming as Touched by an Angel, 1994-present, CBS Television, and the growth of such channels as Pax and Odyssey.
2 In 1999, the U.S. divorce rate was approximately 50 percent. Maeder, Libby.
"How to Live Happily Ever After," The Buffalo News, January 9, 2000, p. 14M.
3 1990-1998, NBC.
4 1994-present, NBC.
5 Actually, there were 34,168 screens as of late 1999. Smith, Samantha Thompson.
"Despite Rise in Ticket Sales, Cinema Owners Count Losses," News & Observer, December 24, 1999.
6 Currently, approximately 98.5 percent of all households in this country have at least one television set, with a large percentage having multiple sets. "Statistical Abstracts of the United States 1993." Country Reports, Walden Publishing, January 30,1995. 7 "Nationwide, VCR penetration stood at 87% in 1998." "VCR Households," PRC News, December 20, 1999, Volume 1, Number 12, p. 3.
8 Mann, Jennifer. "For Cinema Chains, Record Sales Not Balancing Costs of Overbuilding," The Kansas City Star, November 9, 1999.
9 Schroder. "Home Video Will Remain Studio Breadwinner," Video Week, January 10,2000, Section: This Week's News.
10 TV advertising revenues were $25.66 billion in 1998. "Cable Television Advertising
Bureau Research Update," Cable Avails, April 1999, Volume 9, Number 3, p. 17. 11 World Almanac & Book of Facts 1999, (Primedia Reference Inc., March 1999).
12 Stern, Christopher. "U.s. Ideas Top Export Biz," Variety, May 11-17, 1998, p. 50. 13 Interview with Laura Blum, Summer 1998.
14 1989-present, The Baywatch Company, Syndicated.
Department of Communication, Seton Hall University