[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 15 (Tuesday, February 22, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: February 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
SPEECH BY JACK VALENTI
Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, on January 29, 1994, Mr. Jack Valenti, the
president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, gave a
speech outlining his views about violence on television. I would like
to commend Mr. Valenti for one of his best speeches yet on this
subject. He has shown true leadership in his industry with his call for
shared responsibility between families, the Government, and the
entertainment industry in addressing the issue of television violence.
In his latest speech, Mr. Valenti pointed out that the freedoms
guaranteed by the first amendment carry with them an obligation to act
socially responsible. He called on his colleagues in the creative
community to take responsibility for their work. Mr. Valenti has once
again proven his sensitivity and insight into this complicated matter,
and I would like to thank him for his work.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Jack Valenti's January 29 speech,
``The American Creative Community--Best in the World--Must Take
Responsibility for What It Offers to Television Audiences'' be entered
at this point in the Record.
There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
The American Creative Community--Best in the World--Must Take
Responsibility For What It Offers to Television Audiences
(By Jack Valenti)
Today, it takes a William Butler Yeats to throw a defining
light on our society. Things fall apart, the center cannot
hold, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. And I suppose if
you agree with Yeats, you would then follow Woody Allen. In
Woody's words, ``humankind is at a crossroads. One path leads
to utter despair and hopelessness. The other path to total
extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose
correctly.''
I am not a pessimist. Never have been. Don't choose to
start now. This country did not survive more than 200 years
of cruel disjointing to break down at this particular moment
when the nation seemingly can't cope with crime, madness and
mayhem in the neighborhoods. Violence is the sovereign of the
street. It reigns with expanding fury.
But this scrambling, unquiet, violent time is one of the
rare moments in our history when the Washington politicians
and the folks who live and work and raise their kids in
cities and towns all over the country are in concert. Fear is
the scarlet threat that ties them together.
There is nothing so compelling to a public official as the
angry buzz of the local multitudes. The Congress, hearing the
frustrations of constituents, has stirred itself. Make no
mistake about it. These public frustrations are real. The
zeal to do something is also real. Members of Congress like
Senator Paul Simon, Senator Fritz Hollings, Congressman Ed
Markey are committed by passion and belief to this cause.
There is afoot in the land a profound anxiety about what
the hell is going on in this country where people mug,
rob, rape, and kill each other without remorse, without
reason, and without end. Which is why in the congressional
hopper are a dozen or more pieces of legislation, all
aimed at getting rid of violence on television. A goodly
number of law makers truly believe that if we banish
violence from TV the surly streets will become tranquil.
I don't know, and neither does anyone else know, what exact
role violence on television plays in this dismal real life
drama. The research available is loose fibered, incapable of
precise conclusions. But that really doesn't matter. What we
in our industry must do is act as if TV is indeed a factor in
antisocial behavior. Which is why I say to you today that if
these disturbing civic rhythms are not to overwhelm us, our
industry must confront one indispensable truth: Each of us
has to be responsible for what we create.
Whatever happened to individual responsibility? Is the
government to become the surrogate guardian of family value
standards? Doonesbury would doubtless weigh in with some
wholesome comments about that. The hard fact is that parents
must be responsible for their children, young people must be
responsible for their own behavior, churches and schools must
responsibly give their best to those who pray and learn. The
Congress and the White House must be responsible for its
leadership.
Should not, then, the American creative community be
responsible for what it presents to audiences? We have to
believe our individual work is crucial to the country. By
``country,'' I mean plain American citizens who admire what
we create, and who mostly are enchanted by what they see and
hear. No wonder. The American creative community is the best
in the world.
Which is why each of us, with serious forethought, must
contemplate what we write, produce, direct, act in, market,
distribute and exhibit. We must shape the stories we tell so
that the action which drives our narrative is, in the mind of
the creator, essential to the drama and the development of
character. But no more than that, or perhaps, less than that.
Of course our film and TV industry is protected by the
First Amendment. No one is going to coerce you or force you
to say, write, present or distribute anything you don't want
to do. But the First Amendment does not guarantee responsible
acts. The individual is the only guarantor of his or her
actions.
What I am saying is simple. We have a national dilemma. We
have to be part of its solution. We in the creative community
have an obligation to be responsible for what we conceive,
accountable only to our lucid, moral instincts. We have to be
part of a national effort to get a collective grip on
ourselves, to deal with the dirty business of crime or we
will soon be at Woody Allen's fork in the road.
No one needs to tell a story teller when ``just enough''
gets to be ``too much.'' No one needs to instruct you how to
tell your story so that you are sensitive to action which may
not be necessary. It's your decision. Your responsibility. No
government official, no agency or department has any right to
force on you a design for the work you create.
But I don't believe you have the right to stand aloof while
that great shapeless beast slouches toward the next
neighborhood. We just can't allow ourselves to conclude that
the First Amendment somehow is antagonistic to individual
decision making.
So, let me sum it up.
No matter what anyone may proclaim in Washington, or
elsewhere, the First Amendment will not be penetrated by
rhetoric, or threats or legislation. It is the least
ambiguous clause in the Constitution. It has withstood more
fierce assaults than what might be heaped upon it over the
next several months. It will prevail.
The issue here is whether or not individual creative
artists, studio executives, TV programmers, cable networks,
national broadcast networks, distribution companies, all
those who lay some claim, minor or otherwise, on the final
form of TV programs, will take full responsibility for what
they put before the American audience.
We have to act as if there are viewers of television who
will be inspired to do unhappy things to others because of
what is absorbed by their viewing. To repeat, no one really
knows what incites violence. I personally believe that what
ails us is a breakdown in the assumed social normalities
which guide a society through the daily moral grind. Too many
one-parent or no-parent homes, too much abject poverty, too
many children having babies, too much drugs, too many guns in
the hands of too many young people, the collapse of
discipline in the schools and the faltering role of the
Church.
Until both law makers and citizens of this liberty-loving
land get serious about these hard, seemingly unfixable
problems, we are kidding ourselves about diminishing
violence.
But we who create, produce and exhibit visual entertainment
have to be part of the national exertion. If we react with
less than we ought and can do, then each of us has to engage
our individual conscience. Some of us may be perfunctory in
that examination. Others will be peevish. And still others
will stuff themselves with so much of a sense of freedom that
there is nowhere to put their sense of shame.
But the great majority of artists, proud of their skills,
their fidelity to their art intact, recognize that their
labors inhabit the most fluent and revelatory of all the art
forms. Which is why story telling on a screen cannot be
immune to the possibility of reality on the streets. We are
responsible for what we do. In this country, responsibility
carries the weight of both freedom and obligation.
____________________