What the World’s Watching

Recent debate on violence in movies has not been so much about Van Damme-type action movies, but rather the more morbid studies of sex and violence such as David Cronenberg’s “Crash” or the more recent French film “Seul Contre Tous (I Stand Alone),” with its scenes of explicit, realistic violence.

In the Independent newspaper in January, outgoing British Board of Film Classification director James Ferman concluded that “violence is still the thorniest problem: To what extent should the goal of free speech vindicate scenes of brutality and bloodletting?”

In the ‘90s, a rise in violent crime, particularly murders involving children, was attributed by the media and public opinion to the influence of violent videos. But research and a government report indicate that police reports do not support that theory.

Still, after the murder of 6-year-old Jamie Bulger by two preteen boys in 1994, there was a general incrimination of movie violence. In the wake of the killing, Parliament passed stronger legislation that called on the film board to consider the “likely harm” a film or video could cause, directly or indirectly, in its treatment of drugs, sex or violence.

In 1996, the wanton murder of Scottish schoolchildren by deranged loner Thomas Hamilton was linked to the Oliver Stone film “Natural Born Killers.”

After the brutal killing last year of a 17-year-old boy by two of his college student friends, some of the culprits’ favorite videos were said to be explicitly violent murder movies such as “Scream” and “Children of the Corn.” Summing up, the judge said the videos had “served to fuel your fantasies and isolated you from counterbalancing influences.”