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 ommon goal: to protect children from various 'unacceptable' ideas.
As mentioned before, censorship can take on various forms and reasoning. Despite these variations there is usually a common goal: to protect children from various 'unacceptable' ideas. All things being equal, adults are generally considered to be able to distinguish between 'right' and 'wrong' and between fiction and reality. The very nature of a rating or censorship system is that it creates either imposed age regulations or recommended ages for the media; it simply serves to insulate the youth from something 'harsh' in nature. Though the latter does not prevent the viewer from access despite age, it just informs the viewer of what is to be expected in the movie, video game, television show, etc. ensorship creates a very convenient way of regulating...
If this is taken in the perspective of a parent, censorship creates a very convenient way of regulating what ideas children are exposed to. In Mary Eberstadt's essay "Home-Alone America" the problematic trend toward less and less parental involvement is explored. She also discusses ways in which people reinforce this trend through various forms of artificial parenting such as baby sitters and day care. What i will explore is the notion of censorship as one of these reinforcing establishments that do more harm than good. Essentially, she describes how, over the years, both fathers and mothers have grown to spend less and less time at home and, therefore, less and less time with their children and how this has effected the children of these absent parents. She describes how several of the most recent 'celebrity killers' were kids who grew up in all-but-parentless environments such as Timothy McVeigh and Jeffery Dahmer (Eberstadt 7). She even goes so far to sate that the correlation between "empty homes" and "childhood problems" are "dots fairly demanding to be connected"(Eberstadt 11). Though all this is interesting, the real relevance is found in her discussion of programs developed for parents by the companies that employ them so that the parent can spend more time with his or her child(ren). "Programs that allowed parents to work undistracted by family concerns were endlessly in demand, while policies offering shorter hours that allowed workers more free time languished" (Qtd. Eberstadt 11). This means that parents had the option to spend more time at home, but chose not to do so. This is the nature of things, unfortunately, and is the reason for the "latchkey phenomenon". As a result "parents who can barely be on hand for real emergencies can hardly be expected to stay apprised of the many lower-intensity conflicts that are routine facts of childhood and adolescence"(Eberstadt 15). These conflicts can be anything as minor as permission to cook food or as difficult and troublesome as the question of sex before marriage. The conundrum here is: how does a parent who is not there for such problems keep some amount of control in the situation? The answer comes in things such as lists of rules, lists of chores, questions about the days events on the eventual return of the parent, and, possibly, control accomplished vicariously through censorship organizations. ontrol: different forms
Devices such as smart televisions and cable boxes allow for restrictions to be placed upon the type of television that the viewer has access to. Programs such as Net Nanny and Cyber Patrol provide the same sort of service over the internet. Such products extend the reach of control of the absent parent over the shows their children can watch and internet content they can view. These devices utilize the television rating system that is only recently becoming widely available. There are two problems with such systems. 1. Assuming that the parent takes the time and is able to set up the parental control features, it is only a matter of time before the child figures out a way to bypass the system or simply find such media elsewhere. Moreover, censorship in general has the same result of the use of a 'smart' television has in that it removes 'objectionable' material from the reach of our youth. The same result also is incurred by the use of general censorship: children can find ways around this control and it only reinforces the absentee parenting strategy. ensorship is an inadequate response to the problem...
To say that there is no such thing as objectionable material is ludicrous. Though, to make the assumption that self imposed or required rating systems will shield our youth from such material is just as ludicrous. The fact is that what is shown on television is a reflection of our society and times just as much as the literature was of ages ago, which means that there is usually some degree of truth to what is shown despite the extent to which it is presumed to be fictional. That is to say, reality exists whether or not we expose our children to it. The problem then is not what is accessible to our children, but rather what is not: parental guidance. The use of censorship technologies do nothing more than make the real problems worse on our children. In this sense censorship is an inadequate response to the problems that this country's youth seem to be facing. What is needed instead of newer better censorship laws and technologies is social reform. Furthermore, often times the most violet shows on television are not based upon the figments of some writer's mind. It is the nightly news and all its grizzly details of the day's events that is claim to this title, and to censor this would truely be to censor reality. |
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