Media Standards Australia

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Printed in The West Australian, 8th August 08

Hear hear Mr. Murray your points in your article: Not Wanted: The ugly side of Hollywood (page 21 Aug.2.) is pretty much on the mark. The real problem and it is getting worse, is the entertainment industry's insistence for realism, not just realism in movies but also in computer games.

Concern has always been that many of the MA15+ rated movies should have an R rating and yet the current battle is that the computer game industry is continually hassling the government to include an R rating for computer games (the highest rating for computer games is MA15+). Their argument is that the R rating can be so the lower rated computer games can be upgraded into the R rating.

But we all know that an R rating will only allow more realistic violence into the interactive games. Currently the computer game programmers have to dilute the more violent games for the lower MA15+ rating. Just recently a group of boys decided to act out a violent "R rated" game in the US, machine guns and all, not to mention that every year there are reports of detrimental copycat behaviour from the Jackass movies.

While the concerns for realism in movies is legitimate, the push by directors on the actors must be questioned when we see the warning signs on the fragility and coping mechanisms of those such as Heath Ledger, Melissa George (working on new movie) and Christian Bale (hurting Mother & sister) and maybe even Russell Crowe (after
Gladiator). But when we look back as far as the 1960's when the first "Superman" George Reeves killed himself by jumping off a building, surely we could have learn't as far back as then?

A recent movie called "The Valley of Elah" featuring Tommy Lee Jones is about soldiers who have come back from Iraq with severe psychological problems because of their experience with realism of violence of war, so if the actors and soldiers are having problems coping with "realism", then what hope have our children got when they are exposed to copious amounts of violence which is celebrated as entertainment?

Paul Hotchkin
president, Media Standards Australia