[Reader-list] Studying Up

[Toby Miller]

STUDYING UP
by Toby Miller
Like most folks on the cultural left who are concerned with such matters, I
have long felt ambivalent about investigations into media effects. When I
look at the data on the impact of product placement and advertising, where
correlations between campaigns and purchases can be arrived at quite
easily, I have little doubt that there is a link. But when claims are made
about ties between violence on and off-screen, I am rather dubious about
the seemingly endless cycle of public-policy panic, research funding, and
academic sucking. We got the answer on this question quite a while ago:
some people some of the time are encouraged, for brief moments, to
replicate in their conduct what they have seen in dramatic form. In
response to a referral from Bill Clinton after the Colombine school
shootings, the Federal Trade Commission (2000) surveyed studies of
'exposure to violence in entertainment.' It concluded that consuming
violent texts was only one 'factor contributing to youth aggression,
anti-social attitudes and violence. Nevertheless, there is widespread
agreement that it is a cause for concern.' The Commission noted that high
levels of exposure to violent texts generated 'an exaggerated perception of
the amount of violence in society' (2000: i-ii). Thank you, Aristotle of
The Poetics--and thousands of over-employed behavioral scientists since the
1960s. Can we move on now?

Perhaps not. Because I think there is room for a new effects study. It
seems to me that a major research program is needed that looks at the
viewing patterns since early childhood of US Congressional representatives,
Defense Department officials, and state politicians and judges who preside
over capital punishment. This might allow us to understand their
bloodthirsty arrogance in world affairs and domestic executions--in short,
their violent tendencies. The Bush Administration supports the death
penalty, despite the welter of evidence that it fails to deter criminals
and arguments against its Constitutionality (Sarat, 2001). It presides over
the most violent developed capitalist society in world history. Its foreign
policy is opposed to international law's attempt to provide norms of
conduct that are democratically arrived at and enforced. It asserts that
threats to US society exist where rigorous scrutiny by academic and policy
experts doubt the fact. In short, this seems like a suitable case for
inquiry. Put another way, and following Laura Nader's (1972) imprecation to
her fellow-anthropologists that they "study up," let's investigate hegemony.

Here are some threshold questions:
·	How many war films has Donald Rumsfeld seen?
·	Which movies espousing anti-Palestinian positions has Ari Fleischer been
exposed to?
·	Does Paul Wolfowitz have a history of anti-social conduct after watching
The Wild Bunch or playing Grand Theft Auto--Vice City?
·	Did Colin Powell attend any screenings of The Green Berets before,
during, or after his work to conceal the My Lai massacre, or his other
wartime service?
·	Does Dick Cheney have a special relationship to the Rambo films that can
be correlated with his policy advice? Could he in any sense be said to
'cycle' with these texts?
·	When George W Bush sent a record number of people to be executed during
his time as Governor of Texas, which TV programs and movies had he been
watching and which Biblical texts had he been reading? Conversely, what was
George Ryan watching before he became Governor of Illinois and during his
tenure?
·	When George W Bush was arrested for driving while intoxicated, what had
been his history of interaction with screen texts involving alcohol, and
what has it been since?
·	When George W Bush's children were arrested for under-age drinking, what
had been their record of parental supervision of film, television programs
and advertisements involving alcohol? What has it been since?
·	When Jeb Bush's daughter was arrested for drug use and parole
infractions, what had been her record of parental supervision of films,
television programs, and advertisements concerning drug use? What has it
been since?
·	When the Cabinet is shown graphics referring to 'collateral damage' from
proposed military intervention, are members' heart-beats and other signs of
excitation regularly measured?
·	When the Administration offers or witnesses military power-point
presentations, have any studies been done of their genital responses to the
material?
·	Which members of the Administration have been exposed to criminological
studies of the costliness and ineffectiveness of capital punishment, and
what have their responses been to this research?
·	Does the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the key means of
establishing sanity and insanity cross-culturally (Katigbak, Church, &
Akamine, 1996), need rewriting in the face of this Administration's
attitudes and values?

I hope that readers will pick up on this challenging agenda. Perhaps we can
mount a collaborative project, complete with coder validity, N=
information, regression analysis, avowedly non-random sampling, and
electrodes planted on audiences. Cultural studies grows up. Enough
arguments about whether the audience is a 'dope' (Garfinkel, 1992). This
time we can approach that question with supreme confidence.

WORKS CITED
Federal Trade Commission. (2000). Marketing violent entertainment to
children: A review of self-regulation and industry practices in the motion
picture, music recording & electronic game industries. Washington, D. C.:
Federal Trade Commission.
Garfinkel, H. (1992). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Katigbak M. S., Church A. T., & Akamine T. X. (1996). Cross-cultural
generalizability of personality dimensions: Relating indigenous and
imported dimensions in two cultures. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 70: 99-114.
Nader, L. (1972). Up the anthropologist-perspectives gained from studying
up. (Ed. Dell H. Hymes). Reinventing anthropology. New York: Pantheon
Books. 284-311.
Sarat, A. (2001). When the state kills: Capital punishment and the American
condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Toby Miller

Professor of Cultural Studies and Cultural Policy

Department of Cinema Studies
New York University
721 Broadway Room 600
NY NY 10003
Fax: 212 9954061

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~tm3/

'Miller writes like one of those stuffed shirts whom Emma would dispatch
with a karate chop and a
beautiful smirk. B-'. Entertainment Weekly, 1998