Think About It: Understanding the Impact of TV/Movie Violence

If you're going to launch an argument on a controversial subject, my advice is a) be upfront about where you're coming from, and b) select credible experts. Think About It: Understanding the Impact of TV/Movie Violence, hosted by "youth culture critic" John Andrew Murray, fails on both counts. Combining stock CNN news footage from the rash of school shootings a couple of years back, together with commentary and guidelines from less than luminous media personalities, this speciously reasoned documentary moves from the controversial and unsubstantiated claim that thousands of studies have shown that viewing media violence begets real violence (in actual fact, the most famous of these studies found a positive link in three boys), to the argument that overexposure to TV and movie violence leads to exaggerated fears, removal of inhibitions, and desensitization. While I am hardly convinced by media critics who claim that there is absolutely no correlation between what we watch and what we do (if that's true, billions of dollars per annum are being wasted on advertising), I'm even less moved by unsupported scaremongering diatribes such as this, which doesn't even have the courage to honestly embrace its Christian perspective. As for those experts, what can you say about an anti-violence program that offers up commentary from Erica Andoz (actress, American Gladiators), ex-jailbird Chuck Colson (in an exceptional case of the pol calling the public morally deficient), and writer-director Ronald F. Maxwell (whose plea for subtle violence, as we're forced to watch a long and shamelessly romanticized death scene from his lethargic made-for-TV Gettysburg, confuses TV movie conventions with personal philosophy). After an utterly incoherent segment on Hitler (something about films on abortion and euthanasia paving the way for the Holocaust), the program concludes with suggested guidelines from Ted Baehr (author of, we are not told, the 1988 book The Movie and Video Guide for Christian Families, which points out potentially objectionable aspects of feature films, such as "magical thinking" in Mary Poppins and "yoga" in Down and Out in Beverly Hills--and, no, I'm not joking). Not a necessary purchase. Aud: J, H, P. (R. Pitman)