Because they suspected they were going to be ambushed in the latest political skirmish over violent entertainment. The executives were summoned to answer a stinging Federal Trade Commission report ordered by President Bill Clinton on marketing violent films, videogames and records to underage consumers. The $1 million report was based on internal marketing memos and advertising plans for violent products. While representatives from the game and music worlds defended their sales tactics, only Motion Picture Association of America lobbyist Jack Valenti spoke for the movie studios. DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg says he was never asked to attend, although Sen. John McCain listed him as a witness. Universal Pictures chairman Stacey Snider was prepared to testify, until she realized that with all her colleagues somehow unable to cancel their Los Angeles lunches, she would become a human dartboard for every congressional critic. “Their hubris is stunning,” McCain said of the absences, pledging to again invite a dozen top Hollywood moguls for a follow-up hearing in two weeks.
Even though the Senate hearing was supposed to focus on questionable show-business marketing strategies, including the marketing of R-rated movies to children, it turned into a litany of complaints about content. Lynne Cheney (Dick’s wife and former National Endowment for the Humanities head) blasted the 1995 movie “Kids,” while Sen. Sam Brownback displayed nasty rap lyrics from Eminem. “They were interested in a political show,” says DreamWorks’ head of corporate affairs Andy Spahn. “To provide us with the 300-page report on Monday and to ask us for written testimony by 9 a.m. Tuesday is disingenuous.”
The legislators’ real problem, though, is that they can’t go after grisly entertainment through the front door: the First Amendment protects artists’ rights to expression free from government censors. By focusing on marketing, however, they found a side-door friend in Joe Camel. While it’s not illegal to pitch slasher flicks to fifth graders, it looks about as seemly as selling them tobacco. Produced in the wake of the Columbine shootings, the FTC report found that violent movies, videogames and CDs are “routinely” marketed to children, with blood-splattered movies even hawked to Camp Fire Girls. “It’s intolerable,” FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky told NEWSWEEK of the industry’s sales strategies. “They are deliberately marketing the very products they’ve labeled for older audiences to young people.”
According to the report, 80 percent of the unidentified 44 violent, R-rated movies examined were marketed to children under 17. The plan for one violent film was to “make sure everyone between the ages of 12-18 was exposed to the film.” Valenti admitted such tactics were unacceptable, but added that the ratings are designed for parents and don’t prevent children from attending R-rated movies with an adult (the Directors Guild of America immediately undercut Valenti’s testimony, calling for more detailed ratings). “Explicit content” labels did not prevent each of the 55 CDs studied from being marketed to young teenagers. Advertising for 83 of 118 videogames carrying ratings for persons 17 and older was similarly directed at youngsters, including children no older than 6.
The FTC hired undercover teenage testers who were waved right through the turnstile, both for R-rated movies and mature-rated videogames. That’s hardly a startling revelation. For years, the entertainment industry’s recipe for success has hinged on encouraging young teens to sample forbidden fruit. “I’ve never aimed an R-rated movie at 10- or 12-year-olds. But do we sometimes aim our movies younger than 17? Yes,” says Neal Moritz, whose violent, R-rated “Urban Legends: Final Cut” opens Sept. 22. “There’s nothing in an R-rated movie that I think 15- and 16-year-olds can’t see. They’re old enough to drive and they can’t see an R-rated film? Come on.”
A day after the report came out, Disney said its ABC networks would ban R-rated movie ads before 9 p.m. A month earlier the recording industry’s trade association recommended against advertising explicit records directly to children under 17. Even with all the moguls staying at home, the threat of regulation was heard loud and clear 3,000 miles away. “The free market,” McCain said, does not trump “our children’s well-being.”
