Defending the Undefendable II: Freedom in All Realms

16.

BURNING BED

In 1984, NBC presented a made-for-TV movie, “The Burning Bed.” Starring the late Farrah Fawcett, it told the story of Francine Hughes, a woman who had been beaten by her husband for 13 years. Finally, the battered wife soaked her sleeping husband’s bed with gasoline, lit a match and burned him to death.

Right after the broadcast of this movie, violence occurred in three separate cities in the U.S. In Milwaukee, thirty-nine-year-old Joseph Brandt waited for his estranged thirty-seven-year-old wife, Sharon, in her driveway. When she pulled up, he doused her with gasoline and threw a lighted match at her. In Quincy, Massachusetts, a husband became enraged by the show and beat his wife to a bloody pulp. According to the director of the shelter that took her in, the husband told her he wanted to get her before she got him. And in Chicago, as if to feed the fears of this Quincy husband, a battered wife watched “The Burning Bed” and shot her husband with a pistol.

Nor was this the only case of life imitating art. In Portsmouth, Virginia, a man watched the movie “Revenge of the Ninja,” a story about a Japanese assassin. Depressed over his families’ eviction from their home, twenty-four-year-old Gregory Eley donned oriental garb and battle stars, armed himself with a submachine gun, two crossbows and a hand gun, and murdered a woman who had sued him over a business deal.

A question not unnaturally arises. Should society ban movies which feature themes of death and destruction, which may lead people to emulate them? It is easy to advocate censorship, for, had these two movies not been shown, several people may not have been killed.

But a moment’s reflection casts doubt on such a public policy decision. If we banned movies, we would have to ban books, stories, paintings, plays, operas, etc. Even children’s fairy tales—Jack and the Bean Stalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Chicken Little, Hansel and Gretel—are replete with mayhem and murder. Down this path lies the end of culture and art as we know it.

But there is an even more basic objection to censorship and prior restraint. The human being is a creature of free will. People, whether they like it or not, are responsible for their own acts. “The Burning Bed” and all other artistic endeavors that depict violence are not to blame for the acts of those who chose to emulate them. Only the criminals themselves are responsible and guilty.

As to prior restraint, we know that the wild celebrations that follow any significant world sporting event sometimes result in deaths, either out of exuberance, or, sometimes, unruly hooligans. If we follow the “logic” here, we would have to ban all such athletic events, surely something that should give us pause. It would be insufficient to prohibit, merely, celebratory parades afterward; the enthusiasm of these sports fans would likely overcome any such attempt. Moreover, the hoodlums who engage in mayhem at these times are pretty well known in terms of demography: males from their teens until the end of their twenties. We could save lives with a little “prior restraint” here: throw all males into jail at age 15 or so, and throw away the key until they have reached three decades of age.

Sounds silly, does it not? But, the same reasoning applies to censoring movies, plays, and literature even if it could be shown that they incite violence.

More recently, in Tucson, a crazed gunman murdered six people and wounded thirteen others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. In a blood libel launched by “progressives,” this tragedy was widely blamed upon Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and other conservatives for their “vitriolic” political speech. Should we prohibit commentators who occupy the right wing part of the spectrum from speaking out? This is just as problematic. Surely, the call for precisely that result might well be regarded as “hateful,” and thus, if the logic of the leftist critics is employed, they would be hoist by their own petard: their very charges would be deemed illegal based on the laws they themselves favor.