[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.

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