COLUMN: Blame It On Butthead

From Jennie Rosenbaum's "That Would Be Telling," Fall '93 From Jennie Rosenbaum's "That Would Be Telling," Fall '93"Heh heh. Fire is cool. Heh heh."From Jennie Rosenbaum's "That Would Be Telling," Fall '93"Heh heh. Fire is cool. Heh heh."A five-year-old may not be able to tell you who the current president of the United States is, but he'll be able to identify the source of the above quote. While "Beavis and Butthead" is at the height of its popularity, the cartoon is not universally loved. Some adults complain that the show teaches children the wrong morals, such as "school is bad." It is also too violent for some parents' tastes. Parents are worried that their children will see Beavis and Butthead as role models instead of as the fictional idiots they were created to be. But "Beavis and Butthead" didn't really come under fire – literally – until an Ohio woman blamed the TV show for the death of her daughter. Who's responsible for this child's death: the media or the mother? Does the job of educating our children still belong to men and women who are paid to stand in front of a classroom, or is television now expected to take up the slack after school hours? The Ohio woman is grieving, and she wants "Beavis and Butthead" pulled off the air. The woman's son watched an episode of the show called "Pyromania," in which Beavis and Butthead play with fire. The kid thought this was a cool idea and lit a match. Suddenly, the house was in flames and the boy's younger sister was trapped inside. The woman claims that if her son hadn't watched the TV show, he never would have gotten the idea to light the match in the first place. Is this true? There's no way of knowing. But when the mother stated that she had always been an opponent of the show, she was asked why she let her son watch it. "I'm busy," she said. "Parents can't be watching their kids all the time." So because this woman was too busy to monitor what her kids watched on TV, she blames MTV for airing a show that she doesn't approve of. MTV has taken steps to pacify parents in order to keep the show on the air. The 7 PM showing has been moved back to 10:30, a time when most young viewers should be asleep. MTV pulled the five most controversial episodes off the air, including "Pyromania," and removed all references to fire from the remaining episodes. This may keep people happy for now, but what will happen when a kid saws another kid's arm off because he saw it on "Beavis and Butthead"? If MTV has to remove all subject matter that parents find offensive, all that will be left is "Heh heh." Parents are putting blame in the wrong place. Instead of taking responsibility for not making sure children are supervised, they expect the media to baby-sit for them. Is it realistic to expect an electric box to think, worry, and care about the people it entertains? And parents are not just blaming TV for their kids' behavior. The motion picture The Program has been accused of causing a fatality as well. In one highly dramatic scene, some college football players lie in the middle of a street to prove they're not afraid of anything. This is a highly effective scene which illustrates the point the movie is trying to make – that some people get so caught up in one thing that they forget about everything else in the world – such as fatality. But societal pressure has forced the producers of The Program to remove this scene from the film, and to omit it from the home video version that will be released. Why? Some people decided to test their own manhood by lying out in the middle of the street and let cars pass them by. The problem is that this is real life. Cars won't necessarily swerve to avoid hitting someone lying in the street like they do in the movies. Two cases of paralysis and one death have been blamed on this one scene so far. In the "Beavis and Butthead" case, one can very well claim that a five-year-old wouldn't know any better than to play with matches. But the guy who got killed lying in the street should have. He was 24. Again, the media is being blamed for the bad judgment of a few people. By taking the scene out of the movie, the producers are agreeing with the public that people are too stupid to tell fact from fiction. If this is a first step in an effort to make society stupidity-proof, the next step will have to be to ban movies and TV altogether. The media obviously can't be trusted. The first thing parents have to do is teach their children the difference between real and make-believe. Kids need to know that what they see on the TV or movie screen is make-believe, even if it looks real. Once these kids are out of elementary school, they're on their own. They shouldn't have to be reminded about what is real and what isn't. If we don't trust these kids to make their own decisions, they'll never be mature enough to do it. Parents who don't have time to supervise their children should use a device to block certain TV shows from being watched. Maybe there could be a debit device that works the TV, like a copy card, and the parents could allow the kids a certain amount of programming each week. Then parents wouldn't have to worry about how much TV their children were watching. But we should all worry about the current trend to blame a tragedy on an indirect cause. The Ohio girl died because her brother lit the house on fire, not because Beavis and Butthead told him to. The death in the street happened because the man didn't see his actions as dangerous, not because The Program endorses such stunts. If we keep blaming the media for our own deficiencies, soon there won't be any media left to blame. Jennie Rosenbaum is a senior Theater Arts and Comparative Literature major from Forest Hills, New York. That Would Be Telling appears alternate Mondays.

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