In the comment section of the Fireant Gazette post that inspired my Cable a la Carte post, the subject of parental control came up. One of the reasons given by the FCC for the a la carte plan was to allow parents not to get objectionable material to keep it away from their children (or their spouses or themselves, for that matter). Eric and I batted back and forth over the merits of this particular method of reasserting parental control, though in a friendly manner that was missing in my discussion with Nathan on the same subject.

The issue at hand is what responsibility an outside society (in this case, entertainment producers and distributors as well as the government) has in protecting our young from material that may adversely affect their dispositions. In other words, what can we do about the smut, the blood, and the commercialism and who can do it?

This is an issue that I am greatly conficted about. Much moreso as I consider the childen I hope to some day have and noticing, as I get older, that the biddies were not entirely wrong: Negative cultural influences do, in fact, affect society quite negatively. Violent video games do not compel someone to go out and kill people, but there is a case to be made that they do adversely affect our approach and reaction to the violence. Truth be told, though, I am personally more interested in the sex and materialism promoted by popular entertainment.

When we're young and impressionable, we take cues from the society in which we live. Our values are usually incorporated by what we consider normal and reasonable. It provides us with a frame of reference and a prysm by which we will see the outside world that can only be undone by personal experiences that contradict what we were presented in our younger years (or crass rebellion). That's why most children of Republicans grow up to be Republicans, most Democrats to be Democrats, most Christians to be Christians, and so on.

It is an unfortunate fact that from our youth onward an increasing amount of our interaction with society is done through television and radio. More unfortunate still is that the cues we pick up there then influence the society that we interact with when we're unplugged. It usurps our value system and before we know it, we've taken cues from completely staged events that are not accountable to honest human behavior at all. Anyone my age that can still say that we have compartmentalized popular entertainment and that it has had no bearing on our own lives and perceptions or the lives and perceptions of those around them hasn't been looking closely enough.

Entertainment smut didn't invent sex, but it has given us a familiarity with it unknown to previous generations (not altogether a bad thing, to be sure) and it has warped our view of it (a bad thing). Entertainment violence didn't invent violence, but again comes the familiarity (in this case probably a more bad thing than not) and given many of us a sense of detachment from it (a bad thing). The commercials on television and the pervasive nature of material goods (which are not altogether unimportant to a story in a visual medium such as television) didn't invent materialism, but it has given us limitless ways with which to be superficially materialistic (a bad thing).

So on one hand we have all of these things. On the other hand, there isn't a clear answer to me as to what we as a society can do about it. As individual parents and heads or co-heads of households, we can set our own parameters. Unfortunately, the mere act of doing so risks social alienation and casts boundaries between the kids and their peers, making them the exception and making it more difficult to integrate. If all the other kids are jumping off a bridge, your kid may be wise not to but he will forever be branded a coward. I believe that there is a trade-off to be made here, though I will probably fall more on the side of exceptionalism rather than integration than did my parents, who fell more on that side than did most other parents. (Of course, what I say I will do and how I react when my kid is crying cause he's left out of all conversations about the latest video game console are two different things. We'll see how that turns out.)

But ultimately, what other parents do will affect the environment in which our children will be raised. Therefore it is not enough, in my mind, to take the libertarian approach that no one should tell anyone else what to watch or listen to. This stuff matters! On the other hand, using the government to compell people to avoid certain things and limiting their access to said things is censorship. I don't believe censorship to be uniformly evil, but I do believe it to be unhealthy for a society and unless lines are clearly drawn before hand a difficult ball to stop rolling.

For the most part, that line has been drawn in two places: government censorship and advertiser accountability.

The first place is with broadcast entertainment, where it's been decided that the government (the FCC, in this case) can regulate what is and is not shown on the airwaves. The idea behind this is that the airwaves belong to the public and therefore the public, through its elected representatives, can decide what is and is not appropriate for it. Though I'm uncertain to the degree that I buy this logic, I do agree with the result. The broadcast market is inherently limited because there are only so many frequencies that can be assigned. Since somebody has to make those decisions, the government is the most obvious arbiter when it comes to matters of decency and to matters of corporate consolidation of media.

That logic does not, however, hold true for private entertainment venues including movie theaters, private performance venues, and to cable television and satellite (TV and radio). Because these are forms of entertainment in which the customer actively paid money for the entertainment, it is presumed that he or she is responsible for what they see and hear. If you don't want to see or hear it, some are quick to point out, don't buy it. However, cable and satellite television are subject to a different form of expression-limitation in the form of advertisers. The edgier a show gets, the more likely advertisers are to shy away from it and the less money they are likely to get. This form of self-policing is the only thing that separates regular cable from premium cable. Premium cable, like satellite radio and often (though not always) theaters and private performance venues, is only limited by whether or not they can bring in enough people to make money. Their only concerns are picketers and boycotters, and they are particularly vulnerable to neither and therefore not accountable to the public at large, provided they aren't doing anything illegal.

The FCC does not currently have the power to regulate the content of cable and satellite, though there have been noises made recently to give the FCC that power.

That's where I start getting awfully skittish.

I'm more conservative about what should be available for the consumption of minors compared to what I personally prefer to indulge in. I am an adult and believe that I am capable, for the most part, of determining what is and is not appropriate for me. Whatever limitations I may have, I put more faith in my own judgment than that of the government. I like edgier programming that doesn't pull punches. I have a particular distaste for gratuitous sex and violence, so I don't like sex and violence for the sake of sex and violence. But a lot of the stuff I like has sex and violence in it. Sometimes it's necessary and sometimes I wish it weren't there, but if people looking for that sort of thing contribute to a show's success (and therefore its continued production) then so be it.

So the problem is how do we try to restrict access to minors while allowing adults freedom of entertainment choice? It's a question with no clear answer, in my view. In some ways I think I've resigned myself to the fact that a lot of kids will continually be exposed to material that warps their minds because most parents do not monitor what their kids are watching, listening to, or playing. There is, unfortunately, not a whole lot that can be done about that without limiting options for consenting adults. However, I do believe that we ought to give concerned adults every possible paddle with which to swim upstream against the prevailing tides (to mix my metaphors).

A long while back I wrote about ClearPlay, a company in Utah that edits movies, puts them on take, and sends back a cleaner version to their customers. A lot of people apparently disagree because it endorses parental laziness and/or hinders the artistic integrity of the original work (Ironically, many of the same people are big boosters of the "Fair Use Act" a concept which allows people to do what they want with artistic works that they purchase, provided they don't start giving it away.), but I think it's pretty silly to prohibit parents from taking a more active role in shaping their children -- even if I don't agree with the methods employed (I would never use ClearPlay).

I am also a big supporter of satellite companies and their attempts to help parents set guidelines for what will and will not come through on their sets. DirecTV has Locks & Limits and DISH Network has Adult Guard, both of which can not only cut off certain channels but all shows above a certain rating (or below, depending on how you look at it). There is also the good ole V-Chip, which can block television coming from any direction (though it's not nearly as easy to use as the satellite options are).

The unfortunate thing, though, is that most of these methods are not really utilized. The V-Chip is something of a relic and it never really took off even among those trained how to do it. Though it only took a couple minutes to talk someone through OmniStar's parental control system, I got as many calls from people that accidentally turned it on as I did parents actually wanting to use it. Though I'd like to think that's just cause they figured it out, I doubt it.

The unfortunate reality is that cleaner television is something most parents say they really want, but a much smaller amount are willing to take even smaller steps towards that end. And ultimately I don't think a government can do parents' jobs for them. And unfortunately that means things are unlikely to change any time soon.