Debate

Television invaded Sri Lanka in the 1980s and now it has expanded to every nook and corner of the country. There is a surfeit of channels on terrestrial free-to-air television and even more if you have access to cable or satellite.

More channels are being added. Television dominates our evenings, with most people glued to teledramas and foreign teleserials.

Today’s children literally grow up with television. Children are instantly attracted to this visual medium. Their growing minds are susceptible to accumulate everything shown on the telly. There is a lot of blood on show on television. Local teledramas as well as foreign serials show countless murders, shootings, kidnappings, explosions etc.

There are many who believe that young minds exposed to such violence on television will turn out to be citizens with unsound minds. But can anything be done about it in this modern age when even the news telecasts feature loads of violence?

What are your views on ‘Violence on Television: The broader picture’. Do write to us on the abive topic to Daily News Debate, Daily News, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited, PO Box 1217, Colombo, or via e-mail to [email protected] before March 31, 2008. Limit your contributions to a maximum 1,000 words.

Visual violence an injurious influence

Miran PERERA

We humans whether adults or children all love freedom. In a democracy we all believe that we all are free, and the Television is supposed to ensure the freedom for recreation. We have the obligation of achieving this freedom and safeguarding it. Whatever the parky in Government they have been accused of interfering with the visual media sometime or other.

The Television media quite rightly has a duty to protect the rights of the people they are supposed to entertain without giving in to Television critics.

However the Television media should remember that they have the obligation to protect the rights of all adults and children, to protect the rights of the whole community and not their personal rights or rights of one sector of the community. Unfortunately the term Freedom of Television is used mainly in the context of politics.

This debate about the role and function of the Television in general has been a topic of public debate for quite sometime now. It began when the private Television channels took on the State Television for a perceived blatant bias towards the government. This is really nothing new, the State Television has always been supportive of the government in power.

Humans have a weakness for sensation and controversy whether they are adults or children. We all like to watch Television with a controversial or a sensational plot in the programmes.

Similarly adults and children love sensational news items and the Television caters to this need and needless to say thrives on this weakness. Obviously child abuse specially sexual abuse is something that interests the general public as news items and to the children themselves a Television induced self abuse.

All professionals of the Television media should use the topic of violence in Television quite effectively and carefully to please not only the adult and child viewers by catering to their needs but also the Editors and the sponsors who are interested in the profit of sales.

Modern technology has created a dilemma in the media sector worldwide. The advent of worldwide 24 hour satellite Television channels are giving other types of media a hard time because TV always gets it first. It is true that by the time a reader glances at a news item in the morning paper he would have seen it many times on TV.

However Television news often come up with violence, sometimes show consuming in toxicants, sexual scenes and offers only a fleeting glance of a news report. There is violent visual impact which is an injurious influence on all, but hardly any in depth analysis.

The task at hand is to make all Television channels to be responsible for the nation. Television should guide other sections through their good example since Television control through law enforcement is out of the question.

This paradigm would require the State Television to identify and represent the common good at all times. All Television channels should continuously exercise a sense of social responsibility. If the Television channels in this country adhere to stringent standards the possibility is great that they would be trend setters for the risk of other media.

The public interest thus becomes the cornerstone of the operations of all media in the country. The significance of this debate in the Daily News to expose and clarify issues of violence on Television itself is remarkable.

The Television channels in this country would need to operate without most restraint and with an acute sense of responsibility when it concerns violence on Television. It is no secret that some sections of the local Television are in the hands of partisan political and business interest.

These tend to colour and distort the perceptions of these sections of the Television. Meanwhile the public interest is always compromised through violence and pervertedness by Television.

It is not only the Television that is challenging the traditional other forms of media. The internes is teeming with on line news sites, crime, violence and sex always available to the persistent searcher which can of course be accessed from any part of the world.

News is new by definition, it should be used immediately like on Television. There is no point sitting on a good story. It goes without saying that the mandatory checks on the story should be carried out before rushing to the cameras or to the press.

Every Television film or news story with violence and sex is different. Likewise, the same violent news item can be told in a variety of ways. No two Television programmes will telecast a story in exactly the same way. There is ample room for different points of view on the same issues.

Some Television channels will argue passionately for a certain cause or issue while others will shun it. This is indeed why different TV channels appeal to different people.

Deleterious effect continues on younger generation

J.A.R. WEERASINGHE

Much has been said and written on the subject of violence on television (and the cinema screen) and the alleged unwholesome and deleterious effect it has had and continues to have on the morals and outlook of the younger generation.

I venture to add that much has been left unsaid and unwritten on this subject and, as a result, what has been presented to the public is a totally lopsided picture of this very important topic!

Before the invention of television, the media through which the public was usually entertained was the cinema screen. Indeed this form of entertainment was eagerly anticipated by children and adults alike as it could be bought at a very moderate price affordable by all classes of society.

I recall my school days at St. Peter’s College, Bambalapitiya, in the 1930 decade, when cinema goers patronized the Plaza Theatre at Wellawatta, at which were screened serialized films or “thrillers” which lasted about four hours at a showing.

Scenes of violence were shown in plenty, even including bloody deaths, but the audience, consisting of both children and adults, genuinely enjoyed these scenes.

It could even be said that we as schoolboys particularly enjoyed these scenes of violence as they presented a battle between right and wrong, justice and injustice, which culminated in our having the psychological satisfaction of seeing justice triumph in the end!

I think that basically it was the child’s sense of fair play that induced us to eagerly await every change of film at the Plaza Theatre in order that we may cheer on our heroes against the villains in the screen story and leave the theatre at the end of the film, satisfied that justice had triumphed.

It never occurred to us (and apparently even to our parents) that the screen tough guys of that era e.g. Buck Jones, Tom Mix, Tim McCoy or Tom Tyler could exert an undesirable influence on our innocent minds as they thrilled us with their feats of “derring do” to the accompaniment of shrill cries of delight and cheers with an occasional “tower hall whistle” emanating from the gallery.

Nor was there any notion of a “corrupting” influence that could be wielded by Buster Crabbe as, in his screen role of Flash Gordon, he took us through an amazing series of adventures on the planet Mars!

As for these sanguinary stories of violence “corrupting” our morals and “warping” our characters, I could declare emphatically that I have never at any time been induced by these scenes of violence to commit murder or robbery or any other felony, which those who argue against the depiction of violence on the screen, cinema or television, present as the inevitable or likely consequence of exposing the younger generation to such scenes.

As any intelligent observer is aware, scenes of unspeakable violence are very frequently shown on the television as part of the daily news telecasts and the presentation of such scenes to the public, which in almost every home includes a fair proportion of sensitive and impressionable young children, should, by the logical reasoning of the anti-media presented violence section of the critics, be deleted from the news telecasts!

Why even young and impressionable children are not adversely affected by the presentation of violence and bloody scenes on the screen, whether cinema or television, is not hard to perceive. Even the average child knows that scenes of violence on the screen are not genuine-they are all acted in a studio and therefore nothing but “spurious” violence.

The blood on corpses in a battle field is simple Tomato Ketchup, the fighter pilot who emits a sigh and collapses right in the cockpit with blood pouring from the corner of his mouth has on cue bitten a capsule of chocolate sauce, the villain who throws up his hands with a shriek of pain on receiving the sharp thrust of a dagger in the hero’s hand has just indulged in convincing mimicry (since the so-called dagger contains a retractable blade that depresses itself into the handle on impact) and the “gangster” who has just been knocked off the top of a skyscraper to fall crashing earthwards to meet a violent end on the pavement below is nothing but a dummy substituted at the relevant time for the real man.

Illustrations could be given ad infinitum to show that children are not easily fooled and very definitely know the difference between the genuine and the spurious! Had it not been so, then almost all of us who began with watching cinema films and progressed to television would have turned out to be violent criminals and menaces to society!